PUNKU

In the last 12(ish) years Latin American folktronica has moved on from DJs syncing their beats to a cumbia rhythm, through bedroom producers lacing their productions with Amazonian and Andean samples and on to its latest iteration, producers working with vocalists and instrumentalists schooled in tradition. It’s folk music, but with extra low-end and squiggly synths.

It’s this terrain that walk Sylvia Falcón and Novalima’s Grimaldo del Solar, two Peruvians who worked together on Novalima’s last album Chu’say, Falcón providing guest vocals on the title-track. That track appears here, albeit in newly remixed form, and it’s the album’s only misstep as its dub bassline and fiery cameo from Quechua rapper Liberato Kani take us into global sound system territory, the rhythm leading the song rather than Falcon’s soprano, which is the case elsewhere, and it’s a beautiful instrument to take centre-stage. Falcon’s love of Yma Sumac is evident on the neo-exotica of ‘Chuncho’ and dancing around charango and panpipes on the beatific ‘Pukllay’. A speedy, bass-heavy reinterpretation of ‘El Condor Pasa’ (as ‘Kuntur Hina’) is a sprightly sensation, and the woozy huayno melody of ‘Arpa’ is just beautiful, with skipping beats that recall Balearic chill-out (in a good way). The lines between folktronica and folk are being blurred.