FEBRUARY 7, 2012
Chicha Libre Announce New Album
Canibalismo Set For May Release
From gritty backwaters and backrooms, from retro equipment and deceptive nostalgia, the multinational outfit Chicha Libre returns with Canibalismo [Barbès Records/Crammed Discs] due out May 8, 2012.
The album of originals, while tackling obscure mathematics and psychedelic inventors, took its cues from Peruvian chicha, a style that put surf guitar, rainforest psychedelics, and Andean flavor to a cumbia beat with open-minded exuberance. Chicha Libre has learned from and teamed up with the unsung mad geniuses of the music-such as Ranil and Los Shapis, who were featured on Roots of Chicha - then taken it as a springboard to join the international stream of tropical experimenters from Colombia to Argentina.
Like the legends of 60s and 70s rock sucked up and radically transformed the blues and jazz, today's tropicalists are reshaping cumbia's sound to suit their own unabashed, unconventional tastes. For Chicha Libre, this means vintage rock sounds rumble past irrepressible bursts of percussion, the Valkyries cavort to mellotrons, pan-Latin beats merge with curious lyrics, and the occasional passerby joins in with Guinean guitar or pedal steel riffs.
Chicha Libre will bring this pop wave to cities across the planet on a worldwide tour that includes stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Bogota, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, and Moscow. In the meantime, they have a few dates at Brooklyn's own Barbès this month.
2/11/12 Barbès - Brooklyn, NY
2/20/12 Barbès - Brooklyn, NY
2/27/12 Barbès - Brooklyn, NY