MOLI VIEW™

The sun is setting over Biscayne Bay and Antonio Carmona is sitting in the growing dusk on the patio of The Standard hotel and spa in Miami Beach. His sharp gypsy features are striking, even as his long, dark hair disappears into the dark.

Carmona's voice stands out too, on his solo album released last fall, Vengo Venenoso (I Come Like Poison). After playing more than 20 years with his brother and his cousin in Ketama, a flamenco fusion band that changed the sound of Spanish pop for a generation, he is making his mark alone.

He's out to conquer America as well, with a tour that started at SOBs last month and lands in Miami tonight during the Rhythm Foundation's Heineken Transatlantic Festival. To that end, his record label set him up with super producer Gustavo Santaolalla (winner of Oscars for the soundtracks of Brokeback Mountain and Babel) and paired him with two of the biggest-selling artists in the US Latin market: Juanes and Alejandro Sanz. He also enlists a few lesser known friends, such as sinuous Spanish rapper Mala Rodriguez and an Iraqi street musician he met in a plaza in Madrid, playing a three-stringed Iraqi violin (featured on the mournful "Miedo" (Fear) that closes the disc). Much of the disc was recorded in Los Angeles, although the 41-year-old veteran says he shortened his stay there by wrapping up the production well-ahead of schedule. The rest he recorded in his basement studio and in another Madrid studio close to Mala's house, who had recently given birth and didn't want to stray far from home.

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