Visión del Ayahuasca

The international hype around Peruvian cumbia over the past ten years has resulted in many reissues and chicha bands cropping up around the world, but curiously there have been few bands from Peru itself returning to the style. Los Wembler's de Iquitos, infamous for their fiery Amazonian variant of the style that unites electric guitar with the cumbia rhythm, are back together to put that right. All brothers, they enchanted Peruvian audiences from the late 60s until the style fell out of favour in the mid-80s, but recent interest has resulted in a revival, with the group heading into a French studio to put this album down in just a few days. And boy do they still have the energy.

Tracks like ‘El Puente de Aguaytia’ pass along at breakneck pace, the guitars as piercing and vibrant as ever, vocals gruffer but no less emotive and with a rollicking bass-heavy rhythm. On ‘Los Wembler's Para El Mundo’ they pump it up even more, with a punishing gallop and crackling guitars, but it's on the opening tracks, intermittent with excited hollers and imitations of birdsong, that we get that classic cumbia shuffle and expressive guitar work. They've still got it.