Album Review: Superfónicos’ Renaceré
Colombian funk septet marks a decade with debut long-player
Reviewed by Raoul Hernandez, Fri., July 19, 2024
Millennial mash-up of Laredoans in the Blimp and Blue Noise Band, Grupo Fantasma birthed a progressive Latin roots movement previously unmanifested in Austin. Texans here ground out the brown in myriad genres and permutations before them, of course – Ruben Ramos, Beto y los Fairlanes, Jazzmanian Devil Tomás Ramirez. None of them net a Grammy, however, and certainly not as an indie big band with brass but sans the Recording Academy assets normally required to snag a 24-karat-gold-plated gramophone.
Brandishing debut long-player Renaceré, Colombian funk septet Superfónicos now crowns an ATX Latin music renaissance a quarter-century in the making.
A decade and one pandemic spent gestating, Superfónicos’ full-length bow spikes a precious clutch of local firsts in roots and rock en español. El Combo Oscuro tractor beam La Danza de las Sirenas and Como Las Movies’ best-of Como Las Singles christened initial cumbia LPs in the last year, while fellow Colombians Nemegata unleashed their second post-roots scorcher. Renaceré follows six-song 2018 spin Suelta – which, though branded an EP, delivers 30 thick minutes of Afrodelic spellcasting.
Renaceré soars past Suelta into a stratosphere all its own: ascension essential.
Superfónicos began recording in 2020 prior to lockdown and concluded this year. During that time, most band members had children, Jaime Ospina (vocals and gaita) founded nonprofit Feeding Souls, and Nick Tozzo (congas, timbales, and alegre) and guitarist Mauro Lopez (El Combo Oscuro) spun off a new act called Hotel de Nova.
Along with Ospina, Tozzo, and Lopez, the players pounding through this post-lockdown firebird rebirth include Nicolás Sanchez Castro on bass; Daniel Andres Sanchez on drums, sharing vocal duties with Castro; Chris “Zumbi” Richards on trombone and bombardino; and Evan Hegarty on keyboards.
That’s Superfónicos today, whereas departed axe tandem Erick Bohorquez and Andres Villegas crystallize spidery lines throughout the new disc, which paves the jungle throb of its predecessor into a far creamier urban fluidity. Like contemporary greats in the genre, a number of whom now reside in Austin apparently, Renaceré converts Seventies fission to clean 21st-century energy – solar, spiritual, tribal. A gold-chain playlist of party dominoes, its groove and beat and bleat and bounce hypnotize instantaneously.
Clattering percussion and underbelly bass feeding the deep blue pool of Ospina and crew’s sonorous Spanish – deep, resonant, otherworldly – the soundscaping herein begins with the opening title track. A fuzzing funk riff into Afro-Latin rhythms instantly powers the whole grid, with Ospina blowing flute hotter than Jethro Tull. Rhyme time ensues: “Renaceré/ fuerte seré/ construiré/ nueva vida seré” (“I will be reborn/ I will be strong/ I will build/ New life I will be”).
If a chomp of lime and snort of salt accompany any cumbia, then a top-shelf shot of “La Verdad” kicks this hood hoedown into a rager just like that, horns blowing hotter than the Fourth of July. That clears the stage for “Bogotá Boogaloo,” begging for a 7-inch vinyl pressing so DJs far and wide can hook up future couples. Its bristling boogie sizzles and buzzes like a jukebox smash.
Universal theme in music millennia before Cody Chesnutt and the Roots, Sanchez-penned side-two opener “La Semilla” represents Latin music in distinct tracts. Musically, a rich bed of percussion – drums, timbales, congas, hand shakers – lays down a rushing river of movement through which pulses the bandleader’s bass and over which ping and zing guitars. Lyrically, it echoes Nemegata’s retro-futuristic Voces:
“Siembra la semilla/ sabiduría ancestral/ Recuerdos del pasado/ en el futuro vivirán.”
(“Plant the seed/ ancestral wisdom/ Memories of the past/ will live in the future.”)
Apply that intrinsic knowledge to follow-up “Si Se Muere,” an extinction event warning doubling as a rollicking discharge of chant down Babylon:
“Si se muere el río/ tú mueres con el/ Si envenena el monte/ nada de comer.”
(“If the river dies/ you die with it/ If you poison the land/ nothing to eat.”)
Renaceré. (I Will Be Reborn.)
Castro told the Chronicle in month four of COVID that this decade would become the band’s most crucial. Someone get these 39 minutes to the Recording Academy.
Superfónicos
Renaceré (Spaceflight)
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