Nunca Tarde – a round-up of recent new albums (Haroldo Bontempo, Claudia Acuña, Louie El Ser, Afro-Cuban All Stars, Minyo Crusaders, Omar Sosa, Montoya and many more)

It’s August, the month when my fellow citizens traditionally go on their holidays. Two lots of Parisian neighbours are here for at least a fortnight, so what better excuse to stay indoors and listen to the best of Latin music from around the globe while they gallivant around the pool.

Lucas Felix: Todas as Canções (Self-released)

We’ll start with “all the songs” (all eight of them) by a Brazilian singer-songwriter since it came out back in the spring. It’s a gentle, contemplative affair that embraces songs about the family (“Em Casa”), resilience (“Cada Passo”) and mature love (“Lugar e Tempo”), but the high-spot of the album, in my ‘umble, is “Deleite”, a duet with Gabi Monteiro who stood out apparently in 2025’s The Voice Brasil. It’s modern-day MPB that would grace the genre’s golden age. Recorded over three days at Rio’s Nas Nuvens Studio, just across the bay from the artist’s native Niterói, and produced by the acclaimed musician Dadi Carvalho, who has collaborated with the likes of Tribalistas, Caetano Veloso and Marisa Monte, it’s a worthy album that speaks of more than a decade in the music business.

Haroldo Bontempo: Ao Vivo em Quarteto (Cantores del Mundo/YB Music)

Something in a not-too-dissimilar vein next by an artist who must be quite familiar to our readers by now. It was, as you can probably translate as well as any robot, recorded live with a quartet (of bass, drums, woodwinds and the leader’s guitar) – at Belo Horizonte’s Galeria Resistor Studio. It’s accompanied by a film of the concert and features some of the songs from Haroldo’s back catalogue that have established him as a force to be reckoned with on the contemporary Brazilian music scene. It has a lovely warm and spontaneous feel that marks this as the kind of album that Haroldo Bontempo was born to make.

Claudia Acuña: Ave de Luz (Delfin Records)

Let’s pop across to Chile for some very classy vocal jazz from a singer who has spent the last three decades plying her trade in New York. On this album, she goes back to the world of her childhood, weaving into its sonic texture the rhythms, instruments and songs that helped shape her artistry. “Viento del Sur” (“Wind from the South”), for example, reflects on belonging and displacement, and specifically the expatriate’s lifelong duo-cultural baggage. Singing in Spanish and English, it’s Claudia Acuña’s affecting voice that ultimately dominates an album rooted in a classic jazz instrumentation of piano, bass and drums, but coloured strikingly by traditional indigenous instruments: pandero, charango, trutruca, zampoña and the Chilean accordion.

Loma Suyo: Paloma (Earthly Measures)

I featured the single “Colibri” recently and this would probably be sufficient if I were trying to lighten my workload, but the album is too good to ignore – even if the beautiful songs created by these two residents of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, Liz Fullerton and Ish Quintero, occasionally take a turn for the twee. Quite apart from their coruscating vocals, the instrumentation is rich and varied, with Colombian gaitas, Afro-Colombian drums and West African ngonis, mbiras and other instruments combining to create a tapestry of glorious sonic technicolour.

Louie El Ser: Cerebral (Text Me Records)

The San Francisco-based Mexican-Salvadorian producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist’s debut album slots firmly into the “interesting” category. Sounding occasionally like a hopped-up Cocteau Twins, the nine numbers insinuate themselves like a half-remembered dream, sometimes pumping up the volume with electronic beats, sometimes twisting and turning in a kaleidoscope of emotionally suggestive sounds. It’s a beguiling combination of Latin rhythms, experimental electronic production and pure dreamy pop music. The opening “chikiBb” is a highlight, but there’s a whole lot to enjoy in an album that underlines why Louie El Ser has been making noises around the Bay Area.

Lido Pimienta: Caribenya (ANTI-Records)

Here, like a second cousin once or twice removed, is the Grammy-nominated singer who has been described as a Colombian Björk. The album title also gives a clue about its aesthetic, a composite of Caribbean and Enya (to whom she listens in order to concentrate when writing). And just to compound the clever coding at work, her last (and first) album was called La Belleza. Combined with Caribenya (and the singer will be releasing a double LP with both albums in gold-coloured vinyl), you get something approximating “The Caribbean Beauty” – all of which suggests a strong ambition at work, which might be just a little annoying if it weren’t backed up with the talent. Fortunately, it is. This is a singular artist, who alludes to her sophomore album as “the counterpart [to her orchestral debut] where I got to be less cerebral and have more fun” with “a sense of joy and collaboration that is very Caribbean”. She’s clearly having fun (with her son and daughter) on this “lead track”.

Afro-Cuban All Stars: A Toda Cuba Le Gusta (World Circuit)

Something else now involving coloured vinyl. As part of the marvellous World Circuit’s 40th anniversary, this classic is being re-released as a special edition. And what can I say about it that hasn’t already been said, other than to remind you that it was recorded back in 1996 in Havana’s EGREM Studios as part of the same sessions that produced Buena Vista Social Club. With the one and only Rubén González at the piano, it has achieved the kind of renown (if not quite the sales) of its counterpart. Recorded live and produced by label co-founder, Nick Gold, the project was led by Juan de Marcos González as a celebration of the golden age of Cuban music. Speaking of the reissue, he calls it “not just a celebration of the past, but a way to keep this music alive for new audiences, in the way it was meant to be experienced – warm, vibrant, and full of history.” Here’s one of the most enduring numbers.

Michael Eckroth: New Paths (Truth Revolution Recording Collective)

More Latin jazz, anyone? Oh yes please, vicar! Pianist and composer Michael Eckroth recorded New Paths in Belo Horizonte during a Fulbright Scholar residency with his ensemble, the Minas Messengers, a line-up of bass, guitar, drums and percussion augmented by the woodwinds of special guest, Toninho Horta. Eckroth has previously shown an affinity with Afro-Cuban and Puerto Rican traditions, and here he turns his attention to the Afro-Brazilian sounds of Minas Gerais in Brazil’s south-east. On “Congado Novo” here and elsewhere on this elegant nine-track album, he and his band draw on the Congado rhythmic, song and dance traditions he encountered during his travels through the regions, melding them to his own jazz compositional voice.

Minyo Crusaders: From Japan With Love (Blue Note Records)

Minyo Crusaders are one of the more extraordinary outfits I’ve witnessed live during my lifetime. I saw them at the 41st edition of Rennes’ Transmusicales festival in December, 2019, just before Covid threw everything into disarray. There they were on stage, this 10-piece band dressed mainly in traditional Japanese costumes, crowded together on an undersized stage and playing a mind-bending blend of salsa, cumbia, Afrobeat and Japanese folk music with swing and singular style. Don Was of Blue Note knows a thing or two when it comes to signing new acts for the legendary label, and Minyo Crusaders have certainly repaid his faith with their latest offering. Comparing it to their Echoes of Japan debut, it’s possibly a little lighter on the minyo tradition and a bit more pronounced – and assured – on the African and Latin rhythms. If you’ve never heard them, be prepared to be enchanted. The album’s a joy and you can read Frank Kinsey’s report for Sounds and Colours on meeting them in 2019. Frank, where are you?

Omar Sosa Quarteto Americanos: We Are Not The Headliners (OTA Records)

I’ve been fortunate enough to see this fine Cuban pianist twice – in quite different contexts. But then, his whole career has been lived like a globe-trotting chameleon. This summer, for example, he’s touring Europe in solo, duet, trio and group formats, either side of concerts in the U.S. to introduce the new album and the new quartet (of Sheldon Brown on reeds and flute, Josh Jones on drums and Cuban baby-bass player – note the importance of the hyphen lest you think he’s some kind of infant prodigy – Ernesto Mazar Kindelán). The album was recorded in front of a live audience in North Adams, Massachusetts, and features the now obligatory guest contributions over the course of 11 tracks ranging from ethereal, meditative numbers like this one and heavier-hitting stuff like “Hella Changui”. As always, the leader’s piano playing transports you to the nearest astral plane.

Kemuel Roig: 3Discovery (Life In Music)

In a somewhat similar vein – at least because Kemuel Roig is a jazz pianist and it’s an album of 11 tracks – is this product of three days in Miami with leader plus two Cuban musicians who settled in the area, bass player Samuel Burgos and drummer Armando Diaz. For a piano trio, it’s a punchy, dynamic affair, with an emphasis on a whole range of Cuban rhythms, from mambo and tumbao to danzón and cha-cha-cha. As the leader states, “I wanted to record an album with a lot of improvisation, a lot of jazz, a lot of virtuosic ideas, and a lot of arrangements. But I also wanted it to be somehow easy enough for people to dance, tap their feet, and have fun.” The eight originals are leavened by three arrangements of Cuban numbers like that splendid old chestnut, “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás”. Here’s Kemuel Roig with his two cohorts, exploring his inner Chucho Valdés.

Orquestra Pacífico Tropical: El Poder (Self-released)

“We want to show people what dance music is and that it is for everyone.” Thus spoke David “Papi” Fimbres, who drums for this “psychedelic cumbia collective” from Oregon. The album of eight intense dance-oriented numbers was apparently written in a beachside cabin and recorded in the state capital of Portland. You heard it here first! Here’s the opener and title track to give you a vibrant flavour of what to expect.

Rizomagic: Cumbión Planetario (Soundway Records)

If you need an antidote to El Poder‘s brand of horny, rambunctious, “psychedelic” cumbia, look no further than this duo’s third album. Diego Manrique and Edgar Marún joined forces in 2020 and style their brand of lo-fi ambient, electronic cumbia grooves “psychotropicolombian futurism”. Far Out Magazine dubs it “Sci-fi cumbia straight from the heart of Colombia“. “Las Esferas” was featured in our recent round-up of new singles, so I don’t need to go into too much depth about the album that it typifies. But you should know this: Recorded in Switzerland, Cumbión Planetario the album plays with tuning systems developed by the group that build on the cosmic tuning principles (based on cosmic vibrations) of Swiss mathematician Hans Cousto. Diego and Edgar have” found that this system induces really calm and trance-like peaceful states of mind, while still rooted in rhythm and dance”. Lest you need any further elaboration… “Through the lens of rhizomatic thinking, we weave Colombian tropical traditions with soundscape textures and electronic processes, creating a Pangean-futurist sound where diverse knowledge and cultures coexist without hierarchy.” Don’t worry; be happy – and enjoy a mesmeric album.

Montoya: Tayta (ZZK Records)

Not a million astral miles away from Rizomagic comes this new album by the Colombian artist Montoya, described as “an inner journey towards deep listening”. Gosh, we’re getting very esoteric this month. And yet it grew out of a fairly mundane experience: a 15-hour bus journey over mountains and through jungles from Bogotá to Mocoa in southern Colombia. Well, OK, maybe not so mundane – as the resulting music would testify. The final track, “Mocoa”, for example, is a reflective piece at journey’s end built around a synthesized melody fleshed out by swirling strings. For an album built around electronics, the sounds are as varied as the landscape crossed by that bus undoubtedly was.

Litto Nebbia: Fuero del Cielo (Vampisoul)

There’s always time for another reissue before I search out the binoculars to spy on the neighbours splashing around their pool. It’s off to Madrid to see what those Vampisouls have brought us this month. My pick of the bunch is this extraordinary eclectic mix of spacy jazz, art rock and prog by the renowned Argentine singer-songwriter, musician, producer and general doyen of the country’s nascent rock scene. It was originally released in 1975, the year before the dictatorship came to power and started to harass the “dangerous” musical maverick and force him to seek refuge in Mexico. The five long numbers that include a 17-minute title track are hard to classify (“Arcano del loco”, for example, sounds like something by Astor Piazzolla after dropping acid) and perhaps demand a little patience, but this is never less than rewarding.

Andrés Cepeda: Andrés Cepeda Big Band 2 (Andrés Cepeda Música)

One more? Well, it’s a big band and it’s hot off the press, and while I haven’t had a chance to listen to the entire album, what I’ve heard suggests that I sure would like to listen to its predecessor, (which earned him a Latin Grammy in 2019 for “Best Traditional Tropical Album”). The second installment was recorded live during a series of 12 concerts in June last year at Bogotá’s Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo that assembled more than 30 musicians each time on stage. The dozen numbers include classics like “Y Hoy Como Ayer” and feature guests such as Lila Downs and the ghosts of Beny Moré and Celia Cruz past.

And there I shall bid you adieu for another month. Happy listening!

(Cover photo of Montoya courtesy of Vladimir Encina.)

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