Meridian Brothers, “Mandala” (Ansonia Data)
Led by guitarist/vocalist Eblis Álvarez, Colombia’s Meridian Brothers have been weirding up the Latin American musical genres corresponding to cumbia, salsa, and vallenato on recordings during the last 18 years. On albums corresponding to 2012’s Desesperanza and 2015’s Los Suicidas, for instance, they deploy space-age-electronic textures throughout the framework of cumbia’s intricate, sinuous rhythms and vivacious melodies. The outcomes are deliriously disorienting. {That a} South American group this unusual has damaged by way of, to a level, in North America is extremely uncommon. Generally the music-industry gods bestow benevolence whenever you least count on it.
Meridian Brothers’ new album, Mi Latinoamérica Sufre (out July 12), once more finds Álvarez enjoying each instrument on it. The person’s occasional penchant for goofy singing sadly surfaces on the file’s first single, “En el Caribe Estoy Triste,” however the sprightly, Ghanaian highlife guitar determine, galloping beats, and vigorously shaken maracas tilt the track into the “W” column. You’ll really feel one-quarter of your precise weight whereas this zesty gem is enjoying.
Mi Latinoamérica Sufre‘s latest single, “Mandala,” once more options Álvarez’s guttural-vocal shtick, however the music’s much more off-kilter, an oddly metered rhythm rolling and tumbling over a pointillistic, hypnotic guitar spangle that bears a timbral similarity to NYC No Wavers Robert Quine and Jody Harris’s eccentric interaction on the 1981 cult traditional, Escape. The press launch for Mi Latinoamérica Sufre cites the affect of the “rhythmic pulse of Afro-Venezuelan ‘tambor,'” and on this proof, all of us have to discover that style in additional depth.
Meridian Brothers show that irreverence towards creative custom and unlikely fusions of sonic parts typically yield probably the most attention-grabbing outcomes. Greater than 1 / 4 century into their existence, they proceed to generate contemporary concepts whereas sustaining their distinctive identification.
enereph, “Chilly Household” (NAGA)
Seattle producer enereph (aka Connie Fu) is making a number of the most attention-grabbing digital music within the Pacific Northwest. A proponent of the Seattle-based electronic-instrument firm Madrona Labs, Fu makes use of its software program synth Kaivo and different merchandise to forge advanced tracks that flit amongst types with scientific rigor and a gusto for unusually fascinating timbres.
You possibly can hear enereph attaining an excellent stronger command of her appreciable abilities on the brand new Immortal Mirth mini-album (launched June 10 on Vancouver, B.C. label NAGA). The file begins auspiciously with “Talisman,” a brand new species of trip-hop that is far more otherworldly than the unique ’90s model. Fathoms-deep bass bellows amid swirling, sub-aquatic synth sorcery and strange percussion tics as finely delineated as needlepoint. This is the way you attract listeners.
“Carved Nephrite” is deeply cavernous, kinetic IDM wherein enereph slices and dices beats with the depth of a world-class sushi chef. The influence of Autechre’s mid-’90s machine funk looms, however not in an overbearing method. “Carved Nephrite” achieves the tough feat of sounding each disciplined and haywire. (By the best way, the web informs me that nephrite is a lesser-valued jade that symbolizes stability, concord, and luck. This minimize is as laborious as that substance.) With its splenetic, punch-press beats, glistening, alien atmospheres, and wispy chants, “Insolubility” balances aggression and vaporousness with spectacular ability. “Numbers Fall From Stars” deviates from the file’s punchy norm, going into meditative-ambient mode, all icy grandeur and tremulous magnificence.
Powered by the frantic skittering beats of footwork, “Chilly Household” additionally evokes a rave anthem of kinds, however with extra advanced rhythms and attention-grabbing textures than these sometimes possess. These whiplash, threshing beats slap laborious and the sounds whooshing, burbling, and boinging above them duly psychedelicize your thoughts. This monitor is so robust, it merited its personal pugnacious remix, by the Canadian producer Looting.
After seeing enereph carry out at 4Bs Tavern not that way back, I predicted that she could be enjoying festivals earlier than 2024 was over. If that prognostication would not come to move, then that is on pageant organizers, not enereph.