Rough Guide Latin Psychedelia

Rough Guide to Latin Psych
Reviewed by Sadie O., 2/21/13
Mostly 60’s and 70’s Latin Psych, from Nuyorican to South American. Most of the first half of CD 1 is from Latin explants in the US, after that it’s mostly Peruvian. Peru, eh? Who knew? Every track is terrific – your favorites might be different from mine.
CD 1:
1. 3:16 ***loungy mambo with vibes, rock ‘n’ roll vocals in English.
2. 3:34 ***soul vocals in English, swingy cha-cha groove, manic laughter. Drug-related lyrics.
3. 3:13 **basically Cuban son, until it’s time for the guitar solo – yikes! Fuzzilicious!
4. 3:40 ****awesome Latin funk, great Latin percussion, totally stoned horn section.
5. 3:21 ***sweet swingy Latin soul, fine singing, playing and production – from OHIO?
6. 3:17 ***definitely schooled at the feet of Santana – very complex, uptempo percussion, with plenty of psych in the guitar and keyboards. Mostly a psych jam!
7. 4:02 ***funky swing with lots of rat-a-tat on the snare, farfisa, very sweet norteno-style harmonies. Groovy horns, only a hint of psych mostly, but a lot of jam.
8. 3:10 **groovy swingy son with major fuzz. Instrumental.
9. 3:38 ****sweet, soulful funky groove, pretty harmonies in Spanish. Offshoot of Antibalas and Grupo Fantasma. Nice stuff – great for burning trees…
10. 2:23 ***cumbia! Very stoned, with lots of wah wah. Female bandleader from Columbia. Wah wah wah wah wah…
11. 2:47 ****nice! Upbeat with lots of percussion, apparently a Peruvian-style version of a Barcelonan hit. Dribbly guitar bits, farfisa.
12. 3:28 ****fuzz-rock from Peru, driving guitar and freaky horns. Changes to a nice fuzzy cumbia, garage-rock vocals, then into a psych jam.
13. 3:30 ****WAH WAH guitar, relaxed cumbia jam with Santana feel to the guitar. Goes all laid-back psychedelic soul a bit, then back to jam.
14. 3:56 ***very downbeat hazy fuzzy psych mambo, pretty vocals, garage-y.
15. 4:34 ****slow cha cha, garage-rock vocals in English, plenty of fuzzy guitar, extremely prog-psych flute solo.
16. 2:48 ***slow cumbia, swingy and fuzzy, a bit proggy. Definite Santana influence.
17. 5:24 ***goats. Goats? After quite a bit of goats, a sort of low-key freaky crawl, then hard-driving funky something, with a bit of Tull-ish flute, and a bit of Os Mutantes. Interesting. Bird calls for a bit… Huh!
18. 3:19 *****wah wah farfisa (my life is fulfilled now!), deeply druggy psych. Processed vocals in English. Ends with squeebles.
CD 2:
1. 6:16 *****wah wah and heavily accented English announcement – pretty bizarre, looooong intro, then midtempo loungey rock with extremely fuzzy guitar solo. Psych, alright! Santana tinge.
2. 3:24 ***echo-y plinks, uptempo instrumental swing with fuzz guitar.
3. 3:25 ****cha cha with echo and a fair amount of drugs (and a bit of surf…) Odd.
4. 2:32 ****boogaloo with big drums, large chorus, Cuban sound. Cool percussion.
5. 3:19 ***goofy spoken intro and squeals, wobbly downbeat surf-garage-rock.
6. 3:55 ****sweet uptempo cover of a Latin classic. Not real psych, but fun.
7. 5:11 ***pretty, folky, uptempo son, with lots of echo. Electronic “flute” ending.
8. 2:53 ****uptempo folksy cumbia-bop with wah wah wah wah wah wah wah.
9. 3:11 *****very fast mambo with wah wah and percussion and lots of stuff.
10. 3:25 ****fast cumbia, lots of guitar. Not deeply psych, but nice.
11. 3:15 ***fast mambo with a bit of relaxed feel, gnarly guitar solo.
12. 3:18 ***uptempo cumbia with lots of guitar solo and percussion.
13. 3:26 ****mellow midtempo cumbia with tremolo and sweet male vocals.