After last year’s stunner, the critically lauded self-titled Los Thuthanaka album which served as a culmination of his musical relationship with sibling Chuquimamani-Condori, now the guitarist Joshua Chuquimia Crampton once more scales those Andean peaks, dedicating his new record to:
Anata, the Andean ceremony where we celebrate the Pachamama (Mother Earth) before the rainy season, giving thanks for harvest with offerings & the principle of reciprocity (Ayni) between humans/nature.
Getting right to the heart of the matter on an album which stretches just over twenty-five minutes, if anything ‘Chakana Head-Bang!’ the opening song on Anata sounds even more raucous than anything on Los Thuthanaka as Chuquimia Crampton flays and shreds over the Andean bass drum the bombo italaque, a powerful force in its own right whose crunchy pulse burrows and blackens here, soon getting lost in the cosmic, high-density mix.
Unmastered and so deep into the red that the meter surely turns crimson, Crampton follows up ‘Chakana Head-Bang!’ – whose title refers to the Andean stepped cross motif – with ‘Taqini (Juntxs)’ an appeal for togetherness which is more woozily melodic, a surging and lurching, blissed-out trance.
On Los Thuthanka huayno rhythms were more pronounced then ever before in Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton’s oeuvre, the combination of rural folk and urban dance music characterised by its signature pattern where a long downbeat is followed by two shorter beats while often featuring two voices playing in the hocket, as they share a melodic line, alternately dropping in and out of the mix to create a staggered yet interlocking effect. Crampton returns to those interlocking rhythms across Anata as he fortifies his electric guitar distortions, not only through the bombo italaque but at times doubling, tripling or quadrupling his strings through the charango, ronroco and bass.
On the third track ‘Ch’uwanchaƱa ~El Golpe Final~’ the metallic brightness and close harmonies of the charango and its queasier baritone cousin the ronroco imbue the piece with a phantasmal quality at least before the thick crudding beats blow the cobwebs away. Celebrated by the Aymara and Quechua of Bolivia and southern Peru, the Anata festival commences with the return of the ancestral spirits and is conducted to the sounds of high-pitched tarka and pinkillu flutes plus pututos, a type of ceremonial trumpet made from conch shells. Crampton then uses the charango and even the ronroco to mirror some of the shrillness and the bass guitar and bombo drum to match the lower frequencies of the festivity.
Auguring the growing season, the festival typically takes place in February which explains the time and haste of this release. ‘ConvocaciĆ³n “Banger/Diffusion”‘ takes a sheer ascent until Crampton breaks through the clouds into a celestial revery. While drawing from Andean cosmology, ‘Mallku DiablĆ³n’ proves a real barnstormer with a pyromaniac’s flourish as Crampton wields all of his instruments like bottle and rag with a flick of the wrist. ‘Jallu’ staggers and reels in ode to the wet season before AnataĀ draws to a close through whooshing static and the pealing tones of the title piece.
