BREAKING SOUNDS: Los Llamarada 'Exploding Now' LP

posted Friday Apr 20th, 2007

The debut album from Monterrey Mexico's premier primal noisesmiths, Los Llamarada has just been unleashed on SS Records. If you're even slightly intrigued by the possibility of weird sounds emanating from south of the border that could evoke the same curiosity as the Nao Wave compilations recently rendered, you should quickly seek out this album and drown yourself in it's murky noise-scapes that pull stringent and ominous tones out of the most mundane instruments available to these demented students. As a part of the colorful, yet underexposed Monterrey lo-fi psyche/punk movement, they are building a name for themselves alongside other regional curiosities like Taladro Supremo, Los Margaritos, Ruidos en el Techo, and Los Fancy Free. By creating their own style of demiurgically aberrant music distantly rooted in actual ancient mysticism cum-No Wave nihilism, it just seems so much more authentic than our domestic offerings. So much so, that it's easy to see why Mexico features so many ancient temples and ruins anticipating a divine arrival from the gods, whereas we're mainly stuck with sweaty televangelists driving gold-plated Cadillacs. Despite their lethargically submerged fidelity quotient, Los Llamarada bend their minds and instruments in such an evil, earthy fashion that your own sober mental state grows instantly muddled and disoriented with each passing track. Even as their inauspiciously barren and desolate songs lurk closer and closer to that brain-scrambling inevitable climax, you can feel your heartbeat flutter and pause with the unsettling anxiety of what comes next. While not everyone is capable of dreaming up this nightmarish crowning stroke of Mexadelic minimalism, the release of their debut album, The Exploding Now, will easily draw attention to their creative juices as they run all over the mountainous landscape of their homeland, seeping into the cracks and opening unseen doors. Is something going on here that's worth taking notice? You bet. Check out some songs HERE and pick up a copy of what's left of the silkscreened edition of 600 LPs while they last, right HERE.

check out a clip of Los Llamarada at this year's SXSW...