De Pelicula! (Cultupra Productions, 2015)
Good music, mediocre music and sometimes very bad music flows across my desk, but I’m rarely ever stumped by a recording. And, that’s exactly what happened when Los Crema Paraiso’s De Pelicula!, out on May 5th on the Cultupra Productions label. I was stumped and a little stunned. Thinking it was just my reaction I stopped our editor and had him listen to several of the tracks. Afterwards I asked, “Are they just messing with me?” He seemed just as perplexed. That’s the thing about picking apart someone else’s artistic efforts you just have to take another listen and dig down deeper.
Indeed, at first listen to De Pelicula! the temptation is to wonder if Los Crema Paraiso is just messing with the listener because the tracks seem totally unrelated to each other and the flow a little disjointed. But electric bassist Alvaro Benavides of the Pedrito Martinez Group, guitarist and keyboardist Jose Luis Pardo of Los Amigos Invisibles and drummer and percussionist Neil Ochoa of Si Se and Chicha Libre, the masterminds behind Los Crema Paraiso, is apparently just what they had in mind. With their 2009 El Debut recording under their belt, this trio of Venezuelan musicians has made its mission to meld jazz, rock, electronica and popular music with the music of Venezuela.
Mr. Pardo explains, “We are all Venezuelans that grew up playing different kinds of music but felt challenged to play with our roots and also wanted to bring something else to the way people see music from our native country. Our music sounds like a combination of high speed bossa nova with jazzy modern waltz, and percussive atmospherics with a warmth and sweetness that only a mix of these elements can bring.”
While they might have attempted for a cinematic feel, capturing snippets from Venezuelan films from the 70s and 80s, De Pelicula!’s flow comes across more of something along the lines of turning from one radio station to another with those through threads of Venezuela and jazz.
Discovering De Pelicula!’s inner feel is what makes the music so satisfying. While a surface listen might leave one a little stunned, a deeper listen proves captivating, so my advice is to give it more than a single listen and listen close.
Mr. Pardo goes on to say, “We feel really confident with the sound we got and the identity of the album. The original idea was always to dig into Venezuelan traditional rhythms and find the sweet spot to mix them with well-known classic pop-rock songs and make fun covers into that style. This record is also about making a good song, original ones, with the sounds that we get when we play together. The Venezuelan heritage is already in our blood so it comes out when it needs to come out.”
Opening with a spoken-word into section, De Pelicula! launching into the music with the fiery “Un Disip en Nueva Yol” that opens with some spectacular drumming before interspersing snarling rock with dishy jazz. Los Crema Paraiso offers up a kicked up version of the Venezuelan folk song “El Currucha” with Andrea Echeverri before slipping into the sweetly cool jazzy “Bello e’Bola. Listeners get a version of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” with guest artist Carol C and a percussively ratcheted up Tears for Fears oldie “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” with guest artist Argenis Britto.
The track “Mas” might at first come across as a little lightweight, but it soon grows into something deliciously quirky and infectious in a tribute to the gaita rhythm of the Zulia region of Venezuela. “To Zing with Your Girlfriend” is pure plush jazzy delight. Fans get another makeover remake with closing track “Sleepwalk” and it kicked up percussion.
De Pelicula! is wildly fresh and well worth a stunned moment or two in order to crack open that inner Venezuelan spirit that lurks below the surface.
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
