Mi Latinoamerica Sufre

メリディアン・ブラザーズ'24新作はトロピカル・ラテンの文脈に沿いながらも、エレクトリック・ギターの可能性を探求する大胆不敵な音響実験!

オルタナラテンを牽引するコロンビア・ボゴタの音楽シーンを代表するバンド、エブリス・アルバレス率いるメリディアン・ブラザーズが'24新作を発表!

これまでもコロンビアの伝統音楽をベースに、電子音楽、クラウトロック、エキゾチカ、サイケロックを混在させた摩訶不思議な音楽性で、ファンを広げてきたメリディアン。待望となる最新作のテーマは、トロピカル・ラテンの文脈に沿いながらも、エレクトリック・ギターの可能性を探求するという極めて挑戦的なアルバムだ。 ルンバ・コンゴレース、ハイライフ、アフロビートの黄金期、さらにはそれらから影響を受けた南米の音楽であるチャンペータ、クンビア、チーチャ、そしてブラジルのトロピカリア、アングラ・サイケをインスピレーションにしつつ、ディストーションやクリシェを避け、ピュアでクリーンなアプローチを選択。発見、発明、遊び心、そしてエモーションを注ぎ込み、大胆不敵な音響実験を繰り広げた結果、他に類を見ないぶっ飛びサウンドを創出。お馴染みともいえるマテオ・リバーノのアートワーク含め、強烈極まりない一枚です!

For 18 years, Colombian multi-instrumentalist, composer, and musical explorer Eblis Alvarez has been screwing with Latin music traditions in his Meridian Brothers project. He composes and records all of MBs music solo but tours with a band. His delirium-inducing music cuts across cumbia , vallenato, salsa, champeta, poro, and bullerengue, and he grafts these styles onto futurist electronica, reggae, psychedelia, and more. Mi Latinoamerica Sufre ("My Latin America Suffers") is a concept album that seeks to explore the electric guitars unrealized potential in Tropical Latin contexts using a linked narrative. The pico dance clubs on Colombias Caribbean coast provided him with inspiration; its residents enthusiastically embrace Ghanaian highlife and rhumba, Nigerian Afrobeat, and Congolese soukous alongside Colombian styles. MBs guitars eschew distortion in bracing sonic contexts anchored by a plethora of Latin and African polyrhythms. Mi Latinoamerica Sufre delivers carefully detailed, rhythmically complex, wryly humorous compositions that exist in the aforementioned genres but add Brazilian Tropicalia and neo-psychedelia in what resembles an Afro-Latino guitar band format. The albums lyrics reflect the travails of the ego in a humorous yet introspective and ultimately triumphant journey of self-discovery. The central character, Junior Maximiliano the Third, navigates his confusing inner journey with drugs, political and social philosophies, folklore, spirituality, and existential surrender. This hallucinatory album portrays various psychological states of disorientation, self-pity, enlightenment, and ultimately, acceptance and optimism. In "Se Que Estoy Cambiando," Alvarez creates a Latin highlife rife with interlocking guitars and crisscrossing rhythms that wind through cumbia, rhumba, and highlife. The lyric reveals our itinerant hero using psychedelics and enjoying his youth, at least temporarily. He finds some fulfillment in "Es Mi Nueva Era," that weds soukous guitars and vallenato rhythms. "Mantra" finds Junior frustrated by his psychedelic trips, lifes ups and downs, and his critical self-image. Alvarez articulates with layered keyboards, doubling guitar lines, and hyperspeed loops with traces of Latin funk and trippy champeta. The beleaguered Junior, unwilling to give up, embraces civic philosophy in "Mi Pregunta" ("My Question"), a philosophical, psychedelic cumbia that weaves in porro and soukous. Alvarez takes his sad, wandering protagonist to Colombias Caribbean coast in "En el Caribe Estoy Triste." This crazy assault of wonky keyboards, electronic polyrhythms, and interlaced guitars are what Alvarez calls "Latin highlife." The progressive meld of minor-key cumbia and Afrobeat in "Quiero lo Mejor para Mi Huayno" reflects Juniors nostalgic memories of youth. "Todo Se Me Desvanece" finds him hunting for answers on both YouTube and in academic journals in a "scientific cumbia." In the pop vallenato "Los Latinos Sufrimos," Junior realizes that his Latin America is almost unbearably beautiful yet continues to suffer terribly. Mi Latinoamerica Sufre is wildly, almost unimaginably creative, filled with unexpected musical surprises and delights at nearly every turn. It is very near the top of Alvarezs catalog for its limitless musical exploration, quality, philosophical insight, and seamless execution. ~ Thom Jurek