2:00 am
Capitol K—Andean Dub (2008)
An empty wine bottle smashes in the street. Invisible feet stagger in a zig-zag pattern down the sidewalk. Brick buildings spin around him. A hard gust of wind lifts a tattered old plastic bag into the air and slams it into him. He looks down in disgust and is somewhat fascinated by the way the bag appears to hover in mid air as it flutters in a U-shape against his invisible chest.
Out of the corner of his bleary eye he spies movement: a square foot disappearing into the alley next to an industrial building of some kind. He stumbles off in pursuit, making his way awkwardly past piles of rusting scrap metal, down the alley and around to the back of the building. For a second he thinks he hears music but a moment later he isn't so sure. There is a door back here, a rusty old thing slightly ajar and squeaking on its hinges. He pulls it open and charges in, running down a hallway and pushing his way through another door. It's pitch black on the other side but he can sense that it's a vast space with a high ceiling. Around him, as far as he can tell, are rows upon rows of machinery. High above, a speaker erupts with the noise of an electronic cowbell counting off a beat with metronome-like precision. Then the music kicks in and row upon row of robots—hundreds of them—spring to life around him, their eyes ablaze like pairs of small headlights in the dark. They begin to dance with extreme precision. Like some incredibly complex country line dance, they form and reform in elaborate patterns, the stomping of their steel feet shaking the floor.
This is the nature of Maltese/British electronic music maker Capitol K's album
Andean Dub. He's taken the Andean strain of cumbia—a style of music dating back to the slavery era of Colombia and Panama—and turned it into IDM. The beats retain the classic infectiousness of straight cumbia that just makes you want to hop up and dance, albeit robotically, while also delivering a level of quirkiness heretofore unknown in the word of cumbia. There's a good amount of variety here as well. The opening track, "Celestial", for example, starts with ambient analog-sounding keyboard and forest noises before segueing into the next song, the eminently danceable "Yo Tarzán, tú Jane". The album runs through a few more fantastic variations of typical cumbia—"Cumbiatronic", "Zokkor u Popcorn" and "Huayno"— before smacking you upside the head with the more aggressive, somewhat industrial "White Steal". "Cumbia Esqueletos" brings the quirk back for a few minutes, then the guitar and pan flutes of "7th Charango" and "Andean Dub" kick in to remind you this isn't just cumbia, it's
Andean cumbia. At last, the album signs off with the brief "Diamond Skys" which strips away all semblance of electronica and simply ends up with Andean pan flute and guitar music that sounds like it's being played in a train station.
The invisible man tries his best to remain undetected throughout all of this but he inadvertently bumps a robot and they all begin to get wise. In a short span of time, all of their eyes turn red as they snap into infrared mode. Once that happens, there's no hiding for him. Dozens of metal heads jerk abruptly in his direction and metal arms seize him, passing him overhead from one robot to the next before tossing him out the door and locking it behind him.