Rural

Dressed in a beige 70s suit and dark, orange-tinted sunglasses, Kaifo (aka Carlos Asimbaya) stares out intensely from a background of lush tropical vegetation, inviting us to guess the contents of his enigmatic album. In case you haven’t already figured it out, Rural is a blend of Afro-Andean bomba percussion with synth keyboard and other electronic sounds, which form what Kaifo’s press release describes as a ‘a fully matured vision of Ecuadorian keyboard tradition.’ It’s a dancefloor LP full of polyrhythmic joy, pounding bass, catchy melodic hooks and the unmistakable sound of the high Andes.

As if calling us to action, a snare drum opens the album but gives way to undulating synth weirdly reminiscent of the intro to Stranger Things. This juxtaposition of acoustic and electric is a hallmark of the record and puts us in seemingly different times and locations at once. Yet, perhaps because they are organically combined, rather than being simply samples with beats, the traditional sounds of bandolin, bandoneón and percussion with the hyper-processed timbre of Kaifo’s synths create a believable single entity: a tableau of jungle, mountain and nightclub.