Chicha Libre Sonido Amazonico With Etched D Side Record Store Day 2019 Edition

- 2019 marks the album’s 10 year anniversary
and first time vinyl pressing
- Vinyl D Side features unique laser etched
artwork
DESCRIPTION
Barbès Records released Sonido Amazonico! -
Chicha Libre’s debut album - Ten years ago. The
label had already made a splash the year before with
the release of The Roots of Chicha - the very first
time Peruvian psychedelic cumbia was anthologized
for a foreign audience. The compilation quickly
became a cult album and contributed to popularize a
style of music that until then had been scorned by the
Peruvian middle class. While loosely inspired by
Colombian cumbia, chicha incorporated Andean
melodies, some Cuban son, and the sounds of surf
guitars, Farfisa organs and Moog synthesizers: an
oddly post-modern combination of western
psychedelia, Latin rhythms, regional music and
vintage rock.
Barbès owner and Roots of Chicha producer Olivier
Conan, not satisfied with the sole release of vintage
tracks, wanted to explore the music further. With the
help of keyboardist Joshua Camp and guitarist
Vincent Douglas, he created Chicha Libre as a means
to explore and transform a music that had fallen out
of favor with younger people.
Chicha Libre’s sound and approach were completely
indebted to the Peruvian bands it originally emulated.
Like their mentors, they used surf guitar, organ
sounds and Latin percussion to play a mixture of
borrowed and homegrown sounds - but they had no
qualms in adding their own foreign and personal
touches. Their borrowings differed from that of their
Peruvian precursors – with bits of classical music and
pop debris from three continents - and, with little
desire to remain authentic, they quickly started
experimenting. After all, the Latin rhythms that
formed the basis of the music were almost as foreign
to them as they were to the Shipibo Indians who first
took up the electric guitar