The exhibition additionally made clear that every one listening has the capability to transcend time—that any given sound is a results of historic growth. Lots of the observe titles on Los Thuthanaka word the musical model a music is constructed on: “Phuju,” for instance, is labeled because the festive Andean dance huayño. Such songs function syncopated rhythms strummed on guitars, and “Phuju” sounds a lot the identical—it’s simply that it’s additionally spammed with DJ tags and bit-crushed synth presets. To call the style explicitly asserts that these tracks are conventional; like their forebears, Los Thuthanaka are passing down sounds to the following technology. However in bridging these older and newer kinds, the duo appears additionally to be correcting the colonialist file.
“Apnaqkaya Titi” takes the type of a caporal, a Bolivian dance outlined by its excessive power and double-kick drum sample. It’s brasher than normal caporal, although, with jagged guitar chords that render the music a snotty, beguiling dance-punk scorcher. “Awila” is a kullawada, one other Bolivian dance, and its 12 minutes are outlined by immense, teeth-gritting persistence. Guitars and drums thrash without end, however alongside them are insistent piano chords that recall Steve Reich’s minimalism. The piano’s high-pitched tones finally dissolve into the remainder of the observe, at which level the drums are so riotous that their audio clipping hints at an imminent explosion. There isn’t any flashy catharsis, although; simply hovering guitars guiding towards timeless ecstasy.
Greater than a easy mixture of the siblings’ latest albums, DJ E and Estrella Por Estrella, Los Thuthanaka is notably invested in longform trance. A majority of tracks run over eight minutes, and even shorter ones, just like the percussion-driven “Jallalla Ayllu Pahaza Marka Qalaqutu Pakaxa,” are swept up within the sound of stampeding drums. “Jallalla” is very intriguing due to its lo-fi manufacturing, as if it’s taking part in from one other room or by way of crummy laptop computer audio system. Crucially, it doesn’t sound dreamlike or hyperreal, as Chuquimamani-Condori’s music typically does; the voices amid its sonic rubble floor it in actuality. It’s one other polemic, aided partially by an artist’s word that these songs are “unmastered”: a name to unlearn modern notions of sonic perfection and give up to music in all its kinds.
That these tracks aren’t polished factors to a different concept animating Los Thuthanaka: mutability. At a time when anti-trans laws is accelerating in the US, this imaginative album is devoted to Chuqi Chinchay, the Aymara deity that protects queer individuals, described as an animal painted with “all the colours.” You possibly can hear a observe like “Sariri Tunupa” and really feel the uncertainty in its anachronistic, Oneohtrix Level By no means-like atmosphere, but in addition an undercurrent of expectant celebration. The titular Aymara god symbolizes these precise emotions—Tunupa’s imprisonment led to the eventual creation of the Desaguadero River. Los Thuthanaka ends with the uplifting “Titi Ch’iri Siqititi,” like a reminder of pleasure but to come back. It brings to thoughts what Chuquimamani-Condori as soon as mentioned about their observe: “My life is a strategy of producing hope.”
