Busco Paraíso

We don’t hear enough music from Chile. Many nueva canción singers are dead or retired. Survivors such as Inti-Illimani and Quilapayún sometimes seem old-fashioned – both socio-politically and sonically. Born in Valparaiso in 1985, Pascuala Ilabaca belongs to the post-Pinochet generation of musicians that has moved out of the Andean sphere to forge a style that's more open, more self-consciously global, more nuanced. A singer-songwriter and skilled accordionist, she studied in India and an earlier project of hers, Perfume o Veneno, heard her self-consciously pruning her South American roots.

Busco Paraíso (I’m Searching for Paradise) is a more hybrid affair, with jazz, indie and rock elements. It's quite an album, bursting with variety. Ilabaca's voice is by turns sweet and fragile, sensuous and sleepy, and she can deliver a whip-lash of a cackle. Her musicians display a wonderful bagginess, exchanging plenty of ribald musical banter in the bridges. ‘En el Tren a Kanyakumari’ – a reference to a cape in India – is a psychedelic mantra with echoes of Värttinä. ‘Carnaval de San Lorenzo de Tarapacá’ is a sultry cumbia that transforms into a Gypsy fiesta. Huge in Chile – the number one download for a while – Ilabaca now deserves serious attention on this side of the Andes.