C.A.M.P.O.S. - Miracles & Criminals - 2xLP
NOTE: The SPLATTER version is the ONLY one available.
What if Brian Wilson, Arthur Lee, Elliott Smith, Ralf Hütter, Eliades Ochoa, Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone went on a vision quest to Peru and brought a 4-track with them? What if they hung out and jammed with Los Wembler's De Iquitos at an itinerant circus in the jungle, bumped into Alejandro Jodorowsky in the midst of filming a lost epic in the Temple of The Sun at Machu Picchu, and were abducted (along with their tapes) by a sexy alien piloting a glowing UFO? Curious? Then come with C.A.M.P.O.S. on an audio journey to find out what that could sound like.
C.A.M.P.O.S. is the new project from multi-talented multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer Joshua Camp, aka Juan Campos (Chicha Libre, One Ring Zero, Litvakus as well as sideman for Los Crema Paraiso and others). C.A.M.P.O.S. stands for: Cumbias And More Psychedelic Original Sounds; but you have to sit down and listen to these two records in their entirety to grasp its meaning fully. From lo-fi experiments to lush soundscapes, field recordings to dancefloor ditties, stories of love and war, slavery, revelation, redemption, temptation, ruin, rebirth, and through it all, the healing power of music seen through the steamy lens of magic-realism.
A mutual friend, pianist Marlysse Simmons (Bio Ritmo, Miramar), encouraged Peace & Rhythm to inquire with Mr. Camp about a cache of unreleased recordings in his archives. Amazingly, these tracks were tunes that had been shelved or left on the cutting room floor from past years. Recordings that either never got finished, came from other incomplete projects, were rejected demos for previous albums, or were slated for an upcoming but never recorded release. Once Joshua realized how excited Peace & Rhythm was by this pool of unreleased music, he tweaked and tinkered with some, fleshed out others that were mostly bare bones, revamped others that he had always wanted to get to but had not really had the validation, right context, or time to complete. A refugee group of orphaned, discarded and under-fed recordings, seen for what they could be: an imaginary travelogue, an accidental concept album of psychedelic tropical Americana. Join him in his magical tropidelic world of Miracles & Criminals.
"Wow.... CAMPOS is just unreal. Seriously one of the best records I've heard in a while. Great work!” -- Miles Cleret, Soundway Records
"Sounds like a lost night in the Amazon with a Moog, drum machine and leather jacket. Psychedelic, playful and authentic." --Will "Quantic" Holland.
"Pulsing psych grooves and electronically enhanced cumbia, as well as straightforward calls to the dance floor, plaintive folk vocals, and tropical indie rock...“Teosinte” might be one of the purest and most psychedelic songs of the year; it’s a heady track named for wild Mesoamerican corn and imbued with an almost ancient feeling somewhere among the electric guitars. A call of “Teosinte!” speaks to and from the soul while synths ramp up and launch the whole song into the stars." -- Adriane Pontecorvo, PopMatters
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