Slow, Slinky Psychedelic Cumbia Grooves From Locobeach in Queens

By ten in the evening, the back room at the Brooklyn bar had filled up with undulating bodies. The swaying groove from the drums and the sinister, spare reverb guitar mingled with the torrential textures, and swoosh and warp and wah-wah from the two little keyboards that Locobeach bandleader Josh Camp bent over patiently, like an alchemist trying to find a sonic secret that had disappeared in Peru around 1983.

Silhouetted in red neon, twisting little knobs to get the optimum psychedelic glimmer or wash, he played as if he had a whole pipe organ at his disposal instead of maybe a couple dozen notes on the mini-synths with the maze of pedals and effects underneath. Meanwhile, everybody kept dancing.

Slowly and suspensefully, the group behind him worked their way up into the familiar minor-key broken chord, and the song that everybody had come out for: Sonico Amazonico, the national anthem of cumbia. As usual, the band took their time with it, mutating from that basic bassline to more enigmatically floating textures that Camp took deeper and deeper into dub territory.

This could have been a Locobeach show in 2017, or for that matter a moment from either of the two years of their semi-regular monthly residency. This blog was in the house for a half dozen of them: after a few years, memories start to blend into each other. One of the group’s more experimental moments was a Monday night in November of 2018 when one or more members were AWOL. One of the guys who pulled a pickup band together asked out loud what they ought to call themselves. “Loco Bitch?”‘

The good news that is that they survived the lockdown and have a gig at 9ish on Feb 24 at at Bar Freda in Ridgewood; cover is $10. They released their more psychedelic and dubwise debut album in 2019, which has some straight-up oldschool disco as well as the kind of cinematic groove-scapes that guitarist José Luis Pardo plays in his other band Los Crema Paraiso.

Locobeach’s latest single is Isabella, a brisk, bouncy tune where singer Cheo Pardo relates a tongue-in-cheek post-gig encounter with a girl who is, um, not what she seems. Camp’s horror-movie intro basically gives it away, but it’s still a good story.

Advertisement

La Banda Chuska Put a Darkly Psychedelic New Spin on a Classic Cumbia Sound

La Banda Chuska played their first-ever gig on a Monday night in October, 2019 at a Brooklyn venue known for eclectic and unpredictable programming, One of the band members explained that their big influence was Los Belkings, one of the most surf-inspired of the great Peruvian psychedelic cumbia bands from the mid-to-late 1960s. These Brooklynites slunk and wafted their way through a handful of that band’s more ornate, psychedelic instrumentals, but they also played a bunch of originals that ranged from short and punchy to lush and cinematic. Calmly and intricately, these guys (and women) really slayed with a sound that’s hardly ever heard this far north: when were they going to play next?

We know what happened next. The good news is that the band survived the lockdown to release a debut ep at Bandcamp last spring. They’re playing second on one of those sprawling multi-band bills that Drom puts on every January as part of the annual booking agents’ convention. Whether that convention served any useful purpose before the lockdown is a useful question, but it always resulted in some great shows. This Jan 14, the group are hitting the stage there at around 8:30 PM, preceded by Greek surf band Habbina Habbina, who open the night at 7:30. Perennial party favorites Slavic Soul Party play their funky Balkan/hip-hop/Ellington mashups afterward at 9:30, then at around 10:30 Red Baraat’s fiery bhangra soul trumpeter Sonny Singh leads his band. After that, Mafer Bandola plays bouncy Venezuelan joropo llanero, around half past midnight Iranian violinist and bandleader Mehrnam Rastegari leads her group, with electroacoustic drummer Ravish Momin’s Sunken Cages doing their woomp-woomp dancefloor thing to close out the night. If you have the stamina for it, this could easily be the best concert lineup of 2023: general admission is $20.

The first song on the debut ep is Cumbia Chuska. Adele Fournet plays a pulsing, vaguely sinister progression on her organ, then a guitar – that’s either Sam Day Harmet or Felipe Wurst – comes in with an ominous spaghetti western riff over the undulating groove from bassist Abe Pollack and drummer Joel Mateo. Accordionist Erica Mancini floats in, then one of the guitarists hits his fuzz pedal. This is creepy fun!

Track two is Surf en CDMX, a catchy mashup of Ventures spacerock and uneasy Peruvian chicha with a deliciously clangy guitar interweave. The women in the band join voices in Arcoiris, which is not a bright rainbowy theme but a ghostly, airy, keyboard-driven undersea tableau that rises to a big guitar-driven peak and then a wry Fender Rhodes solo out.

From there they segue into Cine Olaya, where they do something predictable yet irresistibly fun with a slow, broodingly vampy chicha vamp. The final cut on the record is Playa Privada, a surreal mashup of the B-52s, Los Crema Paraiso and maybe the Police. We need more from this imaginative, original crew.

Kiko Villamizar Puts Out a New Socially Conscious Psychedelic Cumbia Album

Guitarist/bandleader Kiko Villamizar gives the listener plenty of food for thought with his new album Todo El Mundo, streaming at youtube. There’s a lot of impressively relevant subject matter for a party record. If you like your cumbia with some oldschool punk rock edge and bite, this is your jam.

But this isn’t any ordinary party record: in its ramshackle, ferocious way, it’s a throwback to the classic chicha music of the early 70s, when not all the songs were about drinking and partying and chasing women. Much as Villamizar’s songs are psychedelic and danceable, he’s been addressing issues like anti-immigrant bigotry and the threat of environmental destruction since the beginning of his career.

Villamizar is Colombian by heritage: he sings in Spanish, and even though there are plenty of serious songs on the album, he hasn’t lost his surreal sense of humor. He also asserts himself on guitar more than he ever has, right from the start with the opening track, Tuya Tuyita, a classic psychedelic cumbia in a Juaneco vein, burning with distortion over the flurrying groove from bassist Greg Goodman and drummer Michael Longoria, with Beto Cartagena on caja vallenata. The gist of the song is taking ownership of your life, for better or worse.

Villamizar turns up the surfy reverb on Siembra el Maiz, a trippy reminder that it’s time to start planting seeds if we want to create something better. Guest Victor Cruz’s gaita hembra reed flute wafts through the clang of the guitar and the thicket of percussion in the album’s title track, a swaying, electrified take on coastal Colombian bullerengue which addresses the ironies in how people native to the Americas are the first to be imprisoned by la migra.

Guru is not a an Indian theme but a biting funk-tinged latin soul groove. Flor de Maracuyá is a rambunctious tribute to the passion flower that’s ubiquitous in climates further south. Villamizar fires off some pretty wild guitar spirals in Papa Soltero, then mashes up a classic chicha sound with cheery bullerengue in La Caravana.

The best song on the album is Tiempo de los Cucuyos, a slow, slinky, elegantly careening number that poses some provocative questions about how the earth might be trying to wake us to how we need to take care of her. Later, the band wind their way through El Grillo, the record’s most amusing and crazed track. They close with Lelolai, which is funny for completely different reasons.

Smart, Politically Woke Party Music From Los Mocosos

Old ska bands never die: the party never stops. Look at the Skatalites. They invented ska, and even as they lost some members along the way – starting early, with Don Drummond – they had a fifty-year career. Los Mocosos have a long, long way to go before they get that far, but don’t rule them out. And they play a lot more than just ska. Their latest album, wryly titled All Grown Up, is streaming at Bandcamp.

Throughout the record, the band switch between English and Spanish, typically in the same song. They start out with the party songs and get more political as the album goes along. They open with the title cut, a catchy minor-key mashup of rocksteady, salsa and ska. “‘I’m just here to play my tunes, get your body to move and get all the ladies,” frontman Juan Ele sings in a resonant croon with a strong resemblance to Steel Pulse’s David Hinds.

Speaking of classic reggae, the second track, United We Stand, immediately brings to mind Bob Marley’s Exodus, right down to Steve Carter’s slinky organ, Happy Sanchez’s tightly clustering bassline and the punchy brass section. It’s a reminder that we’re one big nation of immigrants who need to stick together and fight, or else we’re all in trouble.

Mirala is a psychedelic cumbia party tune with balmy horns and a little reggaeton. Ready for the Weekend shifts back and forth between a turbocharged oldschool disco groove and a ska bounce. Then the band hit a simmering roots reggae pulse and make their way into a Sympathy For the Devil-style sway in Caminos, an anthem for hardworking strugglers everywhere.

They slow things down even further with the twinkling retro rock ballad Memories of Love and then give themselves a shout-out with the salsa-ska theme Viva Los Mocosos. Ele contemplates how an immigrant fits into a neighborhood and its history with It’s All Good, a brooding mashup of lowrider funk, oldschool soul and hip-hop.

The album’s most defiant track is Libre, a big, soaring rocksteady anthem. They close with Brothers & Sisters, a call for unity. It’s been a brutal year, and it’s been a long time since there’s been any party music on this page. Feels good to know bands like this still exist.

Amazing, Surreal, Psychedelic Sounds From the Brazilian Amazon

The new compilation Jambú e Os Míticos Sons Da Amazônia – streaming at Bandcamp – is a collection of surreal, psychedelic dance music from northern Brazil in the 70s. Its epicenter was Belem, at the mouth of the Guamá river, which connects the area deeper in the Amazon with the Atlantic. There’s a lot of similarity between what the Peruvians and Brazilians were doing at the time, a cross-pollination facilitated by the airwaves.Yet it’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before unless you were around at the time it was popular, or know someone who’s obsessed with it. Where the Peruvians namechecked their local spirits and psychedelic plants, these Brazilians are more likely to reference the Yoruban gods along with their own indigenous flora.

This is a vast playlist of rare records, nineteen tracks in all. The first one, Pinduca’s Vamos Farrear is pretty primitive: just tinny minor-key rhythm guitar, boomy bass, percussion, bizarrely oompahing trombone and a sax solo out. The percussionist/bandleader’s second number, Pai Xangô, is a diptych and much closer to chicha, with spare, trippy wah-wah leads. Yet neither song hints at the jazz influences in his third track here, Coco Da Bahia.

Os Muiraquitãns’ A Misturada could be a mashup of vallenato and salsa….or simply a carimbo dance tune with muted electric guitar grafted on. Praia Do Algodoal, by Os Quentes de Terra Alta is the most rustically thumping, acoustic number here, a lusciously chromatic trumpet solo at the center.

Janjão’s bouncy sailor song Meu Barquinho begins with one of the album’s trippiest interludes, a strangely dissociative women’s choir. Messias Holanda’s wedhead anthem O Galo Canta, O Macaco Assovia and Vieira e Seu Conjunto’s Lambada Da Baleia could be Peruvian legends Juaneco y Su Combo with Portuguese lyrics. The question is who stole what from whom?

Verequete e O Conjunto Uirapurú are represented by the brisk, smoky sax-driven Mambo Assanhado and Da Garrafa Uma Pinga. O Conjunto De Orlando Pereira also have two tracks here, the spooky organ-driven Maruda and Carimbó Para Yemanjá.

A second Messias Holanda number, Carimbó Da Pimenta has distant echoes of reggae. Track number two by Vieira e Seu Conjunto, Melô Do Bode, has the most gorgeously spiky guitar here and is arguably the highlight of the record.

There are two Grupo da Pesada tune here: Võa Andorinha sounds like a scampering, electrified Veracruz folk tune, while the woefully out-of-tune Lundun Da Yaya is more of a salsa tune. There’s also the biting, chicha-tinged Xangô, by Magalhães e Sua Guitarra and Mestre Cupijó e Seu Ritmo’s tumbling, darkly careening Despedida. What an incredible service Analog Africa have done to help rescue these amazing sounds from obscurity.

A Slinky, Danceable Debut Album and a Comfortable Barbes Show by Psychedelic Cumbia Supergroup Locobeach

Brooklyn psychedelic cumbia legends Chicha Libre may have resurrected themselves with a bang earlier this year, but they’d been on a long hiatus. That’s where Locobeach stepped in to fill that enormous void. Keyboardist Josh Camp and conguero Neil Ochoa brought their Chicha Libre cred and vast immersion in trippy, surfy 1960s and 70s Peruvian sounds, joined by guitar wizard José Luis Pardo of Los Crema Paraiso and Los Amigos Invisibles. Bassist Edward Marshall and timbalero/drummer Fernando Valladares ended up filling out the picture.  Locobeach’s debut album Psychedelic Disco Cumbia is streaming at Bandcamp; they’re playing their home base, Barbes (of course) on Nov 18 at around 9:30 PM.

The first cut on the new record, Dream of the Bellflower is a mashup of woozily texture keyboard-driven psychedelic cumbia and tightly wound new wave funk with a big stadium rock bridge. The second track, Mira Quien Llego has an elegant, bittersweet, almost classically tinged minor-key groove: with gruffer vocals, it could pass for Chicha Libre.

Six on the Stairway to 7 is a dead ringer for Los Crema Paraiso’s cinematic motorway instrumentals, fueled by Pardo’s variously textured guitar multitracks. Guaracheo has even more of a straight-up retro disco pulse, lit up by Pardo’s wry, slurry slide work and Camp’s wah-wah keys.

The album’s only really epic track is Javelin, almost eight minutes of midtempo, hypnotic, syncopated clave soul, metaphorically saluting indigenous and immigrant rights in the era of Trumpie nutjobs and their enablers. Success on the Dancefloor, part P-Funk, part synthy 80s chicha, is a lot more lighthearted.

The band mash up new wave pop, swirly Peruvian chicha and a little dub in Devil Is a Charmer. The big hit, and most straight-up cumbia here is Rata, a venomous dis with some classic, trippy, reverb-drenched keyboard work from Camp. The band go back to loopy disco with Kalakapapanga and close out the album with Introduced, a loping folk-rock song set to a cumbia beat. Until Chicha Libre (or Los Crema Paraiso) put out a new record, this one will do just fine.

A Rare New York Appearance by Peruvian Amazon Psychedelic Legends Los Wembler’s de Iquitos

In the late 60s, in a remote Peruvian Amazon oil town, the late guitarist Salomon Sanchez started a psychedelic cumbia group. It was a family band: his twelve-year-old son, the drummer, was the junior member. Sanchez named the group Los Wembler’s de Iquitos (the apostrophe was intentional, a mistake of primitive English), namechecking both his hometown along with Wembley Stadium in the UK. In the next decade or so, they put out a lot of records, toured relentlessly and became known as one of the most feral of all the groups mashing up American surf rock, psychedelia, ancient Peruvian melodies and Colombian cumbia into what’s now called chicha music. They never got to Wembley Stadium….at least not so far. But Los Wembler’s – with almost all of their original members – are making an extremely rare US appearance at the Poisson Rouge on Sept 23 at around 9 PM. The more rustic, acoustic Combo Lulo open the show at 8; you can get in for $20 in advance.

Rediscovered by Chicha Libre, the originators of Brooklyn psychedelic cumbia, Los Wembler’s put out an incredibly fresh-sounding ep in 2017, revealing their chops completely undiminshed by the wear and tear of half a century. Even more astonishingly, they have a new full-length album, Vision del Ayahuasca, just out from Barbes Records and streaming at Spotify. Recorded mostly live in the studio in a marathon two-day session in Lyon, France, it’s one of the trippiest and most deliciously strange records of the year. Most of the songs are basically instrumentals; the lyrics are funny and deal with dancing, partying, drugs and the battle of the sexes.

The undulating opening number, Lamentico Selvatico is exactly what the group sound like live: layers of surrealistically intertwining jangle and clang, and wah-wah and reverb, over a minor-key bassline and a rattling, shapeshifting percussion section It’s dance music, but it’s also psychedelic to the extreme, a kaleidoscope of textures rippling through the sonic picture.

There are hints of Indian music, and early 60s Bakersfield twang, in the album’s alternately majestic and trebly title track – or maybe that’s just what you hear while tripping on ayahuasca. Lead player Alberto Sanchez’s riffs in Mi Caprichito, a rapidfire minor-key shuffle, are part Dick Dale, part warped horror surf. Then the band slow things down a bit with the bright, spiky No Me Vuelvo a Enamorar. and the even more unselfconsciously cheery, catchy Cosa Muy Rico.

After five decades of doing this, they’ve earned the right to play Los Wembler’s Para El Mundo, a victory lap reminding how their once obscure jungle sound took over the world (cumbia bands tend to be just as self-referential as rappers).

Un Amor Que Se Va shuffles and clangs along bittersweetly, while Triste y Sola isn’t really a waltz, or cumbia, and it’s not straightforwardly sad and desolate either. Like the rest of the songs here, it defies description.

El Puente De Aguaytia is a mostly one-chord jam with sunshiney lead lines over muted wah riffs. The group wind up the album with the haphazardly swaying Todo Es Mentira, the most vivid and careeningly psychedelic throwback to their early years. If you’re in the right mood and open to the unexpected, there aren’t many albums that make you feel as good all over as much as this one does. Watch for it on the best albums of 2019 page here at the end of the year.

Kiko Villamizar Puts on a Furious, Funny, Politically Aware Dance Party at Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center’s Viviana Benitez introduced firebrand singer Kiko Villamizar as an artist dedicated to the cause of keeping families together. Although his eclectic, psychedelic tropical dance music addresses other pressing issues, he didn’t waste any time confirming that particular one. The burly, bushy-bearded Colombian-American singer and his slinky five-piece band opened their debut show here this past evening with wih Hasta Que Se Fue, its rumbling chalupa beat underpinning an allusively harrowing lyric about immigrant families being ripped apart in US concentration camps.

Villamizar blends ancient Afro-Colombian coastal gaita flute music with undulating chicha guitar music along with other styles he grew up with after his family moved from Florida to Colombia. “You don’t have to more your hands like “We Are the World,” but c’mon up here!” he told the crowd, who had been pretty sleepy on this rainy night so far. And suddenly everybody was up on their feet for as the guitarist played echoey, ominous spaghetti western licks over an irresistible cumbia groove. But this was a party for the right to fight: Villamizar’s big anthem addressed the lethal consequences of oil pipelines, which lave contaminated large parts of the world south of the equator.

Villmamizar is also an impresario: he books the annual Wepa cumbia festival in Austin, his home base these days. But it isn’t limited to cumbia, as he reminded with the scampering, skanking El Arbolito, a tribute both to his roots and our endangered forests, a long gaita solo floating over the rumbling beat from the bass, drums and traditional tambor alegre.

He dedicated the soulful, trickily rhythmic minor-key ballad after that to “the most important person in the universe: her name is Natalie – where are you?” he wanted to know, then imperceptibly shifted the beat into cumbia and then reggae. Villamizar’s sardonic sense of humor is relentless: he explained that an as-yet-unreleased, punchy, syncopated cumbia addressing the South American refugee crisis and the xenophobic Trump response was about “family values.”

From there the band hit a punchy, swinging quasi-ska beat it was like witnessing Peruvian chicha legends Juaneco y Su Combo, but with an otherworldly, swirly edge fueled by the gaita. Villamizar returned  to catchy cautionary tales with Aguas Frias, a swaying eco-disaster parable, then blended Santana-esque psychedelic with hard funk.

After blending what sounded like a traditional call-and-response cumbia with a classic 70s American disco shuffle and a spacerock guitar solo, Villamizar got the crowd singing along with a couple of centuries-old Colombian  trance-dance chants. By now, everybody except the old people and bloggers were up their feet.

“The word ‘ceremony’ doesn’t exist in most of those languages down there, it’s just the way you’re supposed to live your life,” Villamizar explained, then invited up members of the NYC Gaita Club to validate that with another ecstatic processional tune. His Austin buddy Victor Cruz joined them for a thunderous invocation of the spirits and then a communal circle dance by Colombian bullerengue legend Emilsen Pacheco .

The next free show at the atrium space at Lincoln Center on Broadway just north of 62nd St. is on Sept 19 at 7:30 PM with Korean janggu drummer Kim So Ra and her thunderous percussion troupe. Get there early if you want a seat.

Grupo Fantasma Bandleader Adrian Quesada Headines a Cutting-Edge Soul Triplebill at Lincoln Center Out of Doors

More about that oldschool and newschool soul triplebill at Lincoln Center Out of Doors on the 27th of this month: at 7 PM, British band the Black Pumas open the night, followed by late 60s singer-survivor Lee Fields & the Expressions. Headlining at around 9 are psychedelic guitar maven Adrian Quesada. leading a Texas soul band with a rotating cast of singers from his home state.

As the leader of Grupo Fantasma and its many, many spinoffs, Quesada is no stranger to fans of psychedelic and latin music. His main band’s latest album, American Music Vol. 17 is streaming at Spotify. It’s the group’s most political album, and one of their best, right from the ominous flurry of guitars that opens the first track Fugitivo, a cantering norteno desert rock number with spaghetti western riffage, lithe accordion and a grim narrative about being on the run, from La Migra, or more than one enemy.

Nubes is a sly, brassy mashup of psychedelic cumbia and salsa, while LT, a sex joint, has bright horn accents over a slinky, oscillating soul groove. The band go back to cumbia for the aching, bolero-tinged ballad Que Mas Quieres De Mi, then shift to a mashup of lowrider funk amd reggaeton in The Wall, a snide dismissal of Trumpie anti-immigrant bigotry.

La Cruda is a brightly bouncy, oldtime Mexican folk-flavored party anthem, followed by the gritty, anthemic, fuzztoned Nosotros, set to a circling beat that’s practically qawwali. The brand come across as a latin soul Rare Earth in Let Me Be, a defiant individualist’s anthem fueled by organ and guitar.

The group sandwich a brief dubwise interlude amid circling, dancing psychedelic chamame in Ausencia. They kick off the album’s most epic track, Hot Sauce with a trickily rhythmic intro and then hit a mighty, horn-driven cumbia sway, Quesada contributing his most incisive guitar work here.

Cuidado is hard-swinging wah funk tune with a growly baritone sax solo. The album’s best and most broodingly trippy number is Yo Quisiera, Quesada’s bittersweet wah guitar over moody organ chords; then the band make psychedelic salsa out of it. They close with the darkly otherworldly oldschool Colombian-style cumbia Sombra Roja, flute and accordion swirling over icy reverb guitar. There are as many flavors here as you could possibly find on both sides of the Tex-Mex border. Now imagine if this music, or this band possibly could have existed if there was a wall there.

Doctor Nativo Brings Irresistible Cumbia Grooves and Potent Global Relevance to Lincoln Center

It took Doctor Nativo about fifteen seconds this past evening to fill up the dancefloor at the album release show for his new one, Guatemaya, at Lincoln Center. That’s what a catchy cumbia like Ay Morena can do. But Doctor Nativo’s music is about more than just a good dance groove. Lincoln Center impresario Jordana Leigh spoke of how her programming seeks to reflect the multicultural beauty of New York communities, and that Doctor Nativo’s music and message dovetail with that.

Doctor Nativo, otherwise known as Juan Martinez, is the son of a Guatemalan restaurateur and freedom fighter murdered by an anti-democracy death squad. The defiance in the group’s lyrics reflects a corrosive cynicism toward political corruption, but also an equally defiant sense of hope. Their guiro player opened the show solo with a Quecha-language rap. Behind the band, video of native Guatemalan village life – weaving, cooking, protesting, playing indigenous instruments, parading in costumes that seemed straight out of Chinese New Year, and visiting the graveyard – panned on a screen above the stage.

Andrae Murchison’s incisive trombone licks lent a dubwise edge to the spicy, slinky Sabrosura: the sound engineer’s decision to crank the bass paid off, filling out the music’s otherwise relatively sparse arrangements. The next number on the bill had a clever anti-globalist reggaeton rap over a bouncy, vampy backdrop that was part roots reggae and part psychedelic cumbia. They kept the reggae-inspired party for the right to fight going with Zion, another insistent track from the new album, then added a touch of mariachi with the mythically-inspired El Mero Mero.

Doctor Nativo dedicated the number after that, La Voz Popular, to Guatemala’s only radio station that dared play “rebel music,” as he put it, during the genocidal thirty-year civil war there. Once again, the guiro player took centerstage, this time with a jubilant on-air tag to kick off more of the unstoppable cumbia pulse that they’d keep going for the rest of the set. There were also slight detours toward roots reggae (the album’s title track) and hip-hop (a grateful salute to a youthful breakdancer who spent his formative years in the band).

The bandleader took time to explain the Mayan mysticism behind El 20, the night’s most epic cumbia: it’s a matter of energy. The symbolism of Kandela turned out to be more reggae-inspired: bun down Babylon! 

The next event at Lincoln Center’s wildly popular atrium space on Broadway just north of 62nd St. is next Thurs, Sept 20, a panel discussion on the devastating effects of gentrification and real estate bubble madness featuring Jeremiah Moss of the indispensable blog Vanishing New York, plus Ensemble Connect playing avant garde and indie classical chamber works by Julius Eastman and others. Admission is free; if you want a seat, get there early.