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CD review: Ocote Soul Sounds and Adrian Quesada
Ocote Soul Sounds and Adrian Quesada
‘The Alchemist Manifesto’
(ESL Music)
Grupo Fantasma’s Adrian Quesada and Antibalas’ Martin Perna first joined forces on “El Niño y el Sol,” Ocote Soul Sounds’ 2004 full-length debut. Their atmospheric “soundtrack” for an imaginary movie was picked up by ESL Music, Thievery Corporation’s label, for wider release in 2005.
The live incarnation of Ocote Soul at the Austin City Limits Music Festival last year was an ecstatic, sweaty, polyrhythmic dance party, but Quesada and Perna’s second album is more in the cinematic vein of “El Niño.” The polyrhythms of Afrobeat and Latin styles propel the tracks forward, while Quesada’s guitars and keyboards and Perna’s flutes and baritone saxophone seem to hover in the air, setting moods that subtly shade from pensive (“The Grand Elixir”) to trippy (the title track) to ominous (“Gunpowder”) to dark (“One Hundred Years”). Individual tracks might not stand out as much as one of Grupo Fantasma’s or Antibalas’ crowd-pleasers, but the album as a whole creates a fascinating little world, and it will be interesting to hear how the compositions evolve when the project takes full band form again this summer.
(Ocote Soul Sounds opens for Thievery Corporation at Stubb’s on June 24).
Recommended: “Grand Elixir” and “Gunpowder”
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