Tiger’s Milk Records delivers another long cool draft of classic South American vibes here in the shape of Peru Bravo or more accurately, Peru Bravo: Funk, Soul & Psych From Peru’s Radical Decade – to give it its snappy full title. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Peru’s ‘radical decade’ was more or less the rest of the planet’s radical decade too – i.e. the ten or so years with 1969 at its epicentre that came to an end when a very unfunky military junta cracked down on turning on, tuning in and dropping out.
In the decade up until 1974 however, it seems that Peru’s capital Lima was a hotbed of funk, soul and psych fusioneering which gave rise to the gems on here – which include such delights as Jeriko’s frantic psych-rock latin shuffle version of Hey Joe, Los Texao’s Spanish language guitar wig-out version of Don Covay’s Sookie Sookie and Los Holys’ organ and all-over-the-place-drums take on The Meters’ Cissy Strut. Far out man…
(Out now on Tiger’s Milk Records)