Ese Puerto Existe

With their second album, Paris-based Venezuelan trio Insólito UniVerso continue their dream-laden dialogue between adopted city and longed-for homeland, as first aired on 2018's La Candela del Río. ’Twas always thus in the French capital, the default residence of artistic exiles – but this conversation is utterly contemporary and daringly creative. The album opens with the title-track, featuring a trilling cuatro and loose percussion, and the rhythm of the gaita de tambora, associated with Lake Maracaibo – the port of the title. Maria Fernanda Ruette's vocals evoke a melancholy Caribbean seashore.

The journey continues inland with the trance of the joropo ‘Pajarillo con Chipola’, followed by the Afro-diasporic devotional number ‘Tiento de Batalla’. Across the songs, electronic sounds challenge or chime with the ethnic, analogue music, partly suggesting old psychedelic cumbias, partly articulating deracination and dislocation. The eight-minute-plus ‘El Chivo’, takes the idea furthest, shifting from goat bleats to a funky, rocky merengue beat; Stereolab's Lætitia Sadier is name-checked for ‘additional vocals’ but words here are spoken or lost in swirling chants. A shimmering display of folkloric forms, Ese Puerto Existe also impresses for its experimental verve. Edgar Bonilla Jiménez's fingerwork on the keyboards is a highlight. Not so much a journey to the motherland as a trip to otherness.