Empanadas Ilegales - Creepy Mambo: Rooftop Sessions
We Are Time
Released on April 5th, 2024
Along with a just truly delightful moniker, the Vancouver-based psych/Salsa/Cumbia ensemble Empanadas Ilegales boasts one of the most energetic and engaging live performances you’re likely to experience. Having had the pleasure of catching the group at last year’s Sled Island festival, I can personally attest that their infectious grooves are near-guaranteed to get even the stiffest back-of-the-room lurkers up onto the dance floor, hips a-swaying, heads a-bobbin’, and both left feet shuffling.
While their recorded sound is fantastic, Empanadas Ilegales' most special magic is in their live show, which is a true party. So it is our good fortune that the outfit’s latest release, Creepy Mambo: Rooftop Sessions captures some of this magic as a recording of a live performance of six tracks from 2022’s Creepy Mambo. As the name implies, Rooftop Sessions was recorded live from the roof of the Warrington Art Collective in Vancouver, back in August 2022. The live energy and improvisational quality of the album helps transport the listener to the sweaty, swelling, unfiltered experience of being there - just being a part of the fun.
The septet that play on Rooftop Sessions range from Columbia, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, and Canada, and take a collaborative, fluid approach to serving up their own psychedelic twist on Afro-Colombian/Latin styles, infusing traditional genres with jazzy experimentation, wailing horns, and surf-heavy guitar tones. On top of the seesawing polyrhythms, pulsating techno effects and Ricardo Jose Perez’s madman vocalizations - reverb-y shouts, calls, groans, and frequent bursts of laughter - provide the “creepy” in the Creepy Mambo. With these infusions, the album takes on sort of a fun-house atmosphere, a bit wild and unpredictable, while remaining lively, catchy, and rhythmic. The album is insistent and pulsating, dynamic and evolving through songs that range from six and half to eleven minutes. It is a bit like getting to sit in on a jam session while masters in their craft just play for the joy of it. The fun they are having is palpable and contagious.
Admittedly, my white-bread anglo-saxon upbringing means I’m at best a visitor to the nuances and complexity of the genres, cultures, and influences on display on Rooftop Sessions (I have to confess that I needed to google Cumbia music while writing this review). But despite being an uneducated interloper, the group has an invitational, warm approach that means no one is an outsider. Do you know Spanish? Doesn’t matter. Do you want to dance? Then come on in. Not many shows get everyone in the room moving and even fewer get everyone smiling - but that’s the kind of energy Empanadas Ilegales brings. If you can’t find your way to a show, then at least Creepy Mambo: Rooftop Sessions can bring the show to you.
- Chris Lammiman