Echo en Mexico, Money Chicha’s 2016 debut long-player, jolts immediately – as if someone plugged in a hotplate at some interior pueblito, where any electrical socket can spark or shock. Live-wire guitar, a Farfisa bleat, and percussive layering straight off the last century of Mexican music pulse potently through this ATX fivepiece. 2020 follow-up En Vivo liquidated their Latin current – Peruvian psych, South American soul, bordertown cumbias – while the next year’s Chicha Summit hosted local Colombian crier Kiko Villamizar. Third full-length Onda Esotérica snaps back all-instrumentally and upgrades the group’s fusebox with electrical wiring fit for a Texan metropolis. Mastered for vinyl via Madrid’s Vampisoul Records, four songs each side, these 32 minutes by guitarist Beto Martinez, bassist Greg Gonzalez, keys necromancer Peter Stopschinski, drummer John Speice IV, and conguero Matthew Holmes lock in and never let go. Opener “Ojos Rojos” begins with a Daft Punk touch before trilling Afro-Latin axes and Santana organ breakdowns. “Carnaval de Jujuy” clip-clops chicha music like a horse on cobblestones, timbales matching bell-tone keyboards. “Chicha Justice” adjudicates at the intersection of Ennio Morricone (Stopschinski) and Martinez’s razor shred. “Toe Jam” finally pours us into a cocktail shaker, sound flanging metallically, before “Pepper” signs off the mixologists of Money Chicha with a lyrical, Mezcal-dosed, alt-Latin “Sleepwalk.”
This article appears in December 12 • 2025.
