Peru Boom: Bass, Bleeps and Bumps from Peru's Electronic Underground

Peru's capital Lima now hosts an edgy, fresh dance music scene, which draws on a wide range of influences: pan-South American cumbia, the local chicha and abstract techno, all the while remaining cognisant of the electro sound of Miami bass. This CD, the first UK compilation of this fusion, prefers to use the term ‘tropical bass’, although it is too soon to call it a coherent genre.

What is clear across the CD's 16 tracks is the wide range of styles and approaches crammed under the ‘tropical’ rubric. Although many of the tracks have ‘cumbia’ in the title, they don’t seem to refer overtly to the initially Colombian genre, itself undergoing a resurgence. However, if we take the view that good electronica often deconstructs its sources, then the moody, undulating fizzes and broken beats of tracks such as Chakruna's ‘Cumbia Achorada’ and Dengue Dengue Dengue's ‘Como Bailar Cumbia’ could offer an intriguing, if slightly dystopian, vision of sounds to come.

It is the pieces towards the end of the CD that come across best. Chakruna's ‘Sonido Chichero’ is itchy and catchy, with a distinct yard-cry vocal from Chapilitta, and standout track ‘Marcha del Chullachaqui’ by Los Chapillacs excels, with a hauntingly clean guitar line over an upbeat, chugging rhythm.