Let me sum up life in an extreme way. Since birth, people experience numerous events and feel negative or positive emotions. Emotions and events become tangled in our heads and become memories. Sometimes we call it learning, sometimes we call it experience. There may be many other words.
At the beginning of this process is birth. If there is no beginning, there is no end. I can ask a question here. Are we born to have memories, experiences, learning, etc.? Or maybe there is another reason? In fact, philosophers who lived before us thought about this a lot. One of them, Heidegger, explained this through the word pitu. We were born without a reason or purpose. We weren’t even born because we wanted to be. It was just thrown away. So should we, who have been thrown out, just wander around? If you listen to Rakunerama’s [LUCHADOR], I think this may be a direction, even if it’s not the right answer.
The title ‘Luchador’ refers to a player of ‘Lucha Libre’, a Mexican professional wrestling, and ‘Lucha Libre’ means free fighting. Luchadors who are committed to free fighting want to ‘win’. So, by placing the limitation of ‘victory’ on yourself, you will try to throw away any other options other than the path to victory.
[LUCHADOR] also contains a narrative about overcoming the wandering brought about by extreme freedom. In “Cool Perc,” the pitched speaker faces ‘forward.’ When you turn, north, west, and south are all in front. After passing through “YARR”, where you are overwhelmed by the thoughts of countless options, and “HUH”, where you are aware of time constantly moving forward, you begin to fight for life by setting milestones through “B”. Rather than simply facing ‘forward’, we decided on a direction. Like a luchador who threw himself into victory.
Producing a variety of South American music is also fun. In particular, it’s really interesting to see the fluid transition from the samba-based “B” to dub, a subgenre of reggae. The subtle scent of South America that can be felt through the reggae groove is exquisite. Even the track name is “Dubby”. It’s a song that engages in quite intense wrestling with the lyrics. Do you want to feel well-made R&B based on South American music? How about watching Rakunerama’s [LUCHADOR]?