Pocualeíto by Susobrino

In “Pocualeíto” (an anagram for “eucalipto”) , “Suso”, as he is affectively known, fuses his extensive practice in Afro-Latin percussion with a penchant for cinematic strings that oscillate between eerily quiet and fractally intense. An electronic music artist that resorts to his mouse only when strictly necessary, Susobrino crafts his ‘soundtrack music’ -referring to the soundtrack of life itself- by executing a wide variety of instruments. In Pocualeíto, Suso fills- or rather creates the spaces of his groundbreaking productions with enigmatic instruments such as Guitalele, Zampoña, Quenacho and Tbilat. Partly a debt to his Bolivian heritage but mainly the result of a continuous quest to grasp the complexity of African rhythms, Susobrino pinpoints the sources of his music inspiration not to a specific country but rather to the Afrolatin experience as a whole.
Structurally, each track in Pocualeíto poses a challenge to the rigidness of the 4-to-the-floor grid defaults of digital audio workstations and opts for harvesting its rewards instead from unconventional time-signatures and tempo shifts- evidenced at best in “Jill/Tio” Carbón, a 2-for-1 piece that begins with an oddly emphasised 4/4 clap pattern and later disintegrates into a pitched-down Mexican Cumbia.
Musically the album takes us on a tour through imagined landscapes of Andean futurism in search for a common African past. In El Aguante, a heavenly synthetic choir paves the way for a snare-oriented percussion line reminiscent of Bolivian “carnaval” festivities. In “Wasos” featuring the collaboration of Dengue Dengue Dengue, a worn-out guitar appears to eject vocal lamentations from time to time in a staccato manner and here again the percussion takes us to a strange triangle between Peru, Bolivia and West Africa.
It is hard to summarise Susobrino’s music in words, for no words have been yet invented to describe the groundbreaking work we hear in “Pocualeíto”, an unequivocal sign that Kebrada records is set to continue writing contemporary music history with each release.

representando y honrando la música latina

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