Ritual

Right in the middle of the rock-jazz-Latin Venn diagram there's a sweet spot reserved for Santana. Many have tried to sidle their way in, though only a few have managed to get close to the brim of Carlos’ hat. Roberto López is one of them. His music smoulders in that Santana-esque fashion, with intricate percussive rhythms followed by staccato vocals on the chorus, that extra grit in the delivery letting us know this is blue-collar rock, and then almost indefinitely, a blazing guitar riff to rifle us off into more of the same.

López has been making music of this ilk since the mid-00s, though often diverging. A Colombian who lives in Canada, his sound has sometimes tried to bridge a gap with his Québécois surrounds, has sometimes gone deep into Colombian folklore, yet on Ritual we find six tracks that are rather generically all about the groove, which they have in abundance. ‘Solo Tu Vibra’ fizzes with sly cumbia inflections, while ‘La Vida (A Su Manera)’ has the balls to marry a Nile Rodgers-style guitar, Level 42 bass and sultry backing vocals. It is not ground-breaking, nor particularly memorable, but it's masterfully done, and for those who like their grooves seasoned with over-driven guitar, it's bound to go down well.