COGHLAN and Argentina pop artist. His name is taken from a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, the city he is from. Imagine that. What if an artist from Brooklyn just started calling themselves Bushwick, like they were the mayor or something. You'd think that would be a bigger deal, but it's not for COGHLAN. Not as far as I can see while researching him anyway. Zero shade. Of course, if you could try and throw some over him, but he would cut through it like a laser through a smoke machine's stream. As an artist, he is bright and focused, and impossible to capture, and these qualities make his 2021 album Bossa Buenos Aires powerful. There isn't any single focal point for the record, but it hangs together quite miraculously- like a constellation of stars that is always changing shape, and yet, always retaining some recognizably epic form. Like a dragon. Then a tiger. A person with a bow. And then a scorpion in a hard hat, crushing a tall can of PBR in its big pincer. The first number "En Pinamar" most closely resembles the mood of the cover, watery textures make you feel like you've inverted and are now floating on your head while leafy electronics shimmer and scrape around you, exfoliating and widdling away the excess until only a pristine, golden figure remains in a ringing aura of clarity and tranquility. And it only gets more exciting from there! "El Último Baile" is a lush, acid house dosed pivot, "UFO Point" collides trappy reggaeton and far-out house music in fiery display of controlled excess, and "Santa Lucía" trips around pools of vaporous new agey remnants in a subdued but lucid mood. Then there is the very excellent, "Después en los Bailes"a number with a real kick to it, combining the frantic energy of a post-club J-pop single with the deathless, breathless teenage allure and lofi exuberance of a hyperpop mixtape distributed exclusively via cassette. COGHLAN has molded himself into a very rare and charismatic beast on Bossa Buenos Aires. You can try and get a collar around him and claim him for your own, but he will always evade you- thus is his mystery and his undying appeal.
