Tag: Camilo Lara

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Bold and Playful Visuals for El Dusty’s “La Chusa”

Olivera’s latest single “La Chusa” is a collaboration featuring Camilo Lara and Toy Selectah, which as Olivera explained to Univision in a recent interview, derives its title “from a South Texas Chicano folk story about this owl [in some Spanish speaking countries lechuza means owl] with the with the face of an old lady that stands on top of your house and scares kids into acting good. When I was a kid I was petrified of it!” Sonically though the song is comprised of a classic and beloved Columbian cumbia track, Los Hermanos Tuirán’s “La cumbia de la cordillera,” a track that’s not only about a bird on a mountain, and not even remotely related to El Dusty’s title, but it has also been used by sound systems and global bass DJs in Columbia and elsewhere. Interestingly, the track is a buoyant and swaggering track, full of tweeter and woofer rocking beats and bass paired with a joyous and mischievously anthemic hook that will make you get off your ass and move.

The recently released music video continues to cement Olivera’s burgeoning reputation for pairing his music with vivid and wild animation that takes after horror movies, cartoons and shows vatos hanging out and driving around town while blasting music before hitting up the club, dancing and trying to pick up some beautiful ladies — before discovering that the object of one’s desire is actually an anthropomorphic version of la chusa.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Orkesta Mendoza Returns with a Playfully Psychedelic Take on Cumbia

Now, as you may remember “Caramelos,” featuring Salvador Duran was the first single off the collective’s recently released album ¡Vamos A Guarachar!, and unsurprisingly the single managed to capture the act’s signature, genre mashing style –enormous tweeter and woofer rocking beats and synths, organ, twangy pedal steel guitar, a bit of mariachi, a bit of mambo, a bit of cumbia, a bit of flamenco, a bit of this and a bit of that are employed in a stomping dance floor-friendly song that manages to be familiar and alien and mischievously difficult to pigeonhole. And much like the work of a newer JOVM mainstay like El Dusty, this particular track should remind listeners and readers that arguably some of the most sonically inventive club banging music is coming from those who grew up in close proximity to the American-Mexican border.

The album’s latest single “Cumbia Volcadora” is a collaboration with renowned Mexican electronic music pioneer Camilo Lara is a swaggering, riotous and subtly modern take on the classic cumbia sound that kind of nods at Rob Base’s and DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two” thanks to a series of distorted vocal samples, El-Dusty’s “Cumbia Anthem” but with a psychedelic flair — and paired with a band playing one of the funkiest and tightest grooves I’ve heard in recent memory.

As for the recently released video is a wild visual collage of styles including animation, black and white footage of dancer dancing to the song, people wandering around and purchasing goods at a local market and of the band playing but superimposed with cartoon drawn masks, as well as homages to old movie posters and record art. And in some way it emphasizes the psychedelic nature of the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Mischievous, Genre Mashing Sounds of Orkestra Mendoza

“Caramelos,” featuring Salvador Duran is the first single off the band’s soon-to-be released album ¡Vamos A Guarachar! manages to possess a genre mashing style as you’ll hear the enormous tweeter and woofer rocking beats and synths of electronica, an impressive organ solo, the twangy pedal steel of country and western, a bit of mariachi here, a bit of mambo there, a bit of cumbia, a bit of of this and a bit of that in a playful and stomping song that doesn’t quite sound like anything you would have heard recently, and they do with a mischievous, swaggering, danceable song. It’s the sort of song that much like the work of El Dusty and others, should remind listeners that the music from the American/Mexican border may be some of the most sonically inventive and challenging music you’ll hear in contemporary music.

The recently released video was shot by Josh Harrison at Tuscon’s RBar and features the incredibly dapper dressed band performing the song in the bar behind an incredibly colorful backdrop.