Idents by Julia Schimautz, collage by Emma Shore
This feature is part of Bandcamp Daily’s Slept-On Week, covering records, scenes, and artists we overlooked the first time around. Today we revisit records released between 2019 and 2021. Read more here.
Sismo En Bucarest
Indigentes
Peru’s electronic music scene is known for its experimental spin on Latin pop sounds, a la Dengue Dengue Dengue’s dubby cumbia or Deltatron’s campy neoperreo. Sismo en Bucarest’s Indigentes is another prodigious dispatch from Lima, an hour-long collage of street noise, looping breakbeats, and distorted reggaetón samples. Released in 2019, it anticipated sounds that Latin pop’s auteurs would explore in the years since, from jazz fusion to Soundcloud rap-influenced blown-out bass. Sismo describes his process as “search[ing] for sounds that I can mesh together to build the feeling of a riot,” and Indigentes, which means “the poor,” celebrates the power of dance music to bring people out and together, to turn an empty lot into a social venue with a few cheap speakers and a laptop. “Venus,” in the middle of the album, dramatizes this point: it traverses at least three different genres during its five-minute run time, switching abruptly between pop, reggaetón, and house as if switching radio channels, before dissolving into the cheers of a riotous crowd. Needless to say, it’s one hell of a party.
-Adesh Thapliyal
BLKLN
Speaking in snake tongue
Vinyl LP
Trying to explain BLKLN’s brilliant Speaking in snake tongue is really trying to explain 40+ years of music history packed into barely half an hour of frenetic, dissonant, and ultimately playful post-punk. At its core, this is a heady mix of downtown art rock and no wave—think Theoretical Girls and Sonic Youth—with math rock that wouldn’t sound out of place in the Quarterstick Records catalog from the mid-’90s. While this is his first solo release, the somewhat enigmatic, NYC-based guitarist boasts a resume that runs the gamut from John Zorn and Jon Hassell to Tristeza and Necking, all of which makes total sense when you listen to his music.
-Yoni Kroll
Diamante Eléctrico
Mira Lo Que Me Hiciste Hacer
By the time 2020 hit, Diamante Eléctrico was aching for a do-over. The beloved Colombian rock ‘n’ roll band—comprising Juan Galeano and Daniel Álvarez—was grappling with the departure of drummer and founding member Andee Zeta, as well as the death of studio engineer and intimate collaborator Daniel Bustos. Stricken with grief and anxiety over a global shutdown, los diamantes began working on their fourth studio album Mira Lo Que Me Hiciste Hacer (or Look What You Made Me Do), recorded between Bogotá, Mexico City, and Los Angeles, and breaking from their signature pub rock sound with blasts of funk, synth pop, and even jazz. The inspired reinvention included singles “Suéltame, Bogotá,” a bittersweet love letter to their chaotic hometown, and an astute dissection of obsolete patriarchal structures on “Los Chicos Sí Lloran.” Galeano’s penchant for boozy crooning is also very much alive on “Amalia” and “Cuando Quieras Llegar;” songs that remained faithful to Diamante Eléctrico’s legacy as a soundtrack for tumultuous romances.
-Richard Villegas
Various Artists
ToquioBug Compilation
There’s been a bit of a funk carioca scene bubbling up in Tokyo in recent years, and its foremost artist might be DJ Bailefunk Kakeko. This compilation features names that might be familiar to those following the Tokyo club scene’s harder or more deconstructed tendencies (píccolo and WRACK, respectively), but here they put their own spin on Brazil’s favorite party rhythm. 2danimeghetto’s “Montagem Jingi” opens the comp with a bit of history, flipping the original Miami bass beat that birthed Brazilian funk, while Bailefunk Kakeko herself throws a bit of a donk on it, sprinkling noise and police sirens on top for good measure.
