Chancha Via Circuito/Rio Arriba

On his sophomore album, Chancha melds local South American rhythms with contemporary production techniques, and borrows from global dance music sounds, then applies his own delicate senibilities with gentle good humor. Rio Arriba bubbles up from the Andes like percussive lava, seething as it is soothing.

Chancha has forged a path from a little town outside the urban sprawl of Buenos Aires in the East of Argentina, up across the border with Bolivia, and into the Northern hemisphere where he's bringing new fans to native drum traditions. In his first release, Rodante, Chancha took cumbia into uncharted territory retrofitting the Latin rhythm for a worldly audience. With Rio Arriba, South American folklore takes the reins and, under Chanchas steady hand, obscure backwoods rhythms take on a top shelf lifestyle, as folklore hits the club.

Chancha developed his singular craft playing for crowds at Zizek Club in Buenos Aires and on tour, DJing his own tracks in live sets, and fans from Chile to St. Petersburg Mexico City to Brooklyn to Los Angeles to Montreal have found love for his music.

Whereas cumbia made Chanchas first album Rodante stand out, Rio Arriba takes his sound primal, rooted in rhythm, but worldwide in scope. With production for National Geographic TV, winning a remix contest of Angolan kuduro put on by Mad Decent, and remixes of The Ruby Suns (Sub Pop) and Gotan Project (Ya Basta/XL Recordings), Chancha has proven his sound can cross continents and pollinate globally.

Rio Arriba annihilates the obvious - it's a fresh breeze from the city of good air.

Includes Vinyl only bonus track




Rio Arriba sounds like a futurists version of what South America looked like 60 million years ago, all swampy and instinctual, its haunting rhythms stripped down to only the necessities. The Fader

The name of the album, Canale says, refers to "a trip upstream in a search for something essential"an appropriate metaphor for both the man and his neo-primordial music. XLR8R

Rio Arriba sounds like a ride on a ghost train through Latin America. Canale's heavy, dragging beats chug along, stopping occasionally at cosmopolitan clubs but mostly connecting the arid, ghastly musical landscapes of the Andes with the thick heartbeat of the Amazon. - NPR

This album is pure genius: It seamlessly pieces together indigenous sounds and songs from Northern Argentina and Bolivia with eerie electronic beats. The result, as witnessed in "Pintar El Sol" (Paint the Sun), is an intensely melancholy march, both industrial and ethnic, relaxing yet haunting, and just breathtaking. - NPR

The source material that Canale digs up is self-consciously beautifulnative music touched by dub, straightened out for the sole purpose of being able to play it on a soundsystem that deserves it. Resident Advisor