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4x7" BOX
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VAMPI 45080EP
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The music of Grupo La Droga is an unabashedly oddball concoction, a potent witches' brew featuring leftfield South American flavored tropical instrumentals with funky cumbia beats, slinky and distorted acid-funk guitars drenched in wah-wah, crazy synth bass lines and bizarre squelchy Moog riffs. The tunes are played in a deliciously sinister minor register that lends a dark, mournful, spooky vibe to the melodies. The music is cinematic as well, leading the listener on a journey from the depths of the Amazon jungle to the heights of the Andean mountains. On first listen, you may be reminded of the 1970s Colombian band Afrosound, but there is a more simple, raw quality to their records that makes the music feel somehow twice as primitive and elemental. Yet at the same time the grooves and instrumentation are refreshingly modern and underground. The initial experience of listening to the band's first single, "El Maromero" ("The Acrobat") and "La Chicharra" ("The Cicada") is like taking some sort of jungle medicine with a shaman and getting up from the campfire to dance your way across the universe and back. All it takes is one listen and you're hooked... This release comprises four replica 45s of the obscure, amazing '70s studio band Grupo La Droga, Codiscos' answer to Discos Fuentes' Afrosound, which in turn was inspired by the exotic, psychedelic cumbias coming from Peru at the time. First time reissue.
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