Pixvae

Unbelievably, the same musicians responsible for the sublime recent album by Nilamayé are involved in this hard-to-digest release. If your worst nightmare is another album by Muse, then imagine what it would be like if Muse got a chorus of Afro-Colombian singers to join the band and seemingly set out on a mission to reconstruct Colombian music in their own bloated rock'n'roll fashion. Opening track ‘La Fuga’ is a weird mash-up between Chemical Brothers synth attacks and math-rock guitars with a traditional Colombian chorus lost somewhere in the middle. This theme continues on further tracks, each one featuring Afro-Colombian vocals supplemented by aggressive guitar, bass, keyboards and drums, serving only in diffusing the power of the original, dressing up these beautiful harmonies in rock clothing to invert an old idiom. These tracks are a mixture of traditionals and originals written in a style redolent of Colombia's Pacific coast, but it requires respect to create an experimental version of traditional music – especially music whose original purpose was to celebrate life and death, to tell simple stories or to speak to God and nature. Sadly, in these overly stylised and misplaced recreations on this self-titled release that respect is sadly absent.