Folk & World
Kuervos del Sur is a Chilean rock band from Curicó. It is made up of Diego Contreras (bass), Pedro Durán (guitars), Gabriel Fierro (drums), Jorge Ortiz (charango and quena), Nicolás Quinteros (keyboards) and Jaime Sepúlveda (vocals).
This time they bring us a rock record with touches of the Andean music they grew up on, making what they call rock de raíz (roots rock). A hugely interesting proposal that, for ears unaccustomed to these sounds, will feel very creative and original, and for audiences already familiar with them, will feel refreshing and tight.
We open with the title track: “De la luz”. It shows us a fairly fundamental trait that will repeat throughout the record: the dominance of triple metre. Beneath the appearance of standard rock, the first two verses and choruses unfold, until the arrival of a calmer, more Andean-flavoured section that, in crescendo, leads us to the guitar solo and a conclusion that repeats the opening verse as a final chorus. A magnificent opener.
The powerful riff of “Ascender” contrasts with the subtlety of the charango’s rhythm, an instrument that provides an interesting counterpoint to the voice, which offers long, epic verses. The fundamental idea here is that we are looking at a folk song given a fully rock treatment, creating an extraordinary fusion.
And under the same principles we also find “El indio”. A track dealing with the genocide carried out by the Castilian conquistadors during the first centuries of their occupation. A drum introduction in fade-in mode ushers in the main riff and the following verses; those drums reappear in the instrumental bridge. The composition builds powerfully until the start of the spoken-word section, which serves as a pause before the following passages, carried by electric-guitar melodies, and a repeated final verse that closes things out in a very “live” fashion.
The lovely melodies built on Arabic scales draw us into the relaxed “Únete a mi ser”. Here the harmonisations serve the vocals, which act as the track’s connecting thread. The opening melodies are interwoven, with a solo added at the end to close the track out.
Even more melancholic and unhurried is “Regreso”. In a gentle 3/4 metre, the story unfolds until the arrival of the interlude, where the roots they are championing move to the foreground with the familiar sounds of charangos and quenas. The same goes for “Caracol”, though it explores ideas much closer to rock, drawing on that same fusion between these two worlds.
“La gruesa piel” opens in a more ambient fashion, before settling into an unhurried tempo and progressively (which is what slightly proggy songs do) building in intensity as various ideas and instruments are layered in, making for a more complex composition than the previous ones. Also quite interesting are the chord progressions offered on “Rastros”, giving the track a powerful harmonic drive and letting all the melodic lines stretch out sinuously throughout its length.
Once again we get a track with softer, more relaxed ideas, once more championing the band’s musical roots, with the now-familiar traditional instruments and the ever-present triple metre. By this point our ears are perhaps a bit too used to these ideas, and they no longer feel quite as surprising as before, so the stop-and-restart trick used on “Los sentidos” proves thoroughly gratifying.
Moving away from everything mentioned so far, they play us “Caí del Sol”, with powerful riffs, arrangements close to progressive rock, and very winding structures. And we close with “Endless Eyes”, which features a collaboration from the record’s own producer, Alain Johannes, and should be understood as a track designed with the band’s international reach in mind — and so it is a considerably more standard rock composition, with just a taste of Kuervos del Sur’s own sound.
Writer: David Sàez