Los Natas

Corsario Negro (Small Stone)
by Brian Varney

Roaming atop the same misty bit of land occupied by Los Natas‘ previous full-length, Ciudad de Brahman (one of a large handful of worthwhile records lost in the collapse of Man’s Ruin), Corsario Negro is more a collection of soundscapes than songs; a group of sound paintings done with the same brush Kyuss used for the noodlier parts of Sky Valley.

How you will feel about this album depends on how you feel about the afore-mentioned bits of Kyuss, as well as albums like Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, albums where the individual tracks are more about the evocation of textures and colors than, say, actual songcraft. The druggy nature of such excursions, combined with the trippy artwork and the fact that the lyrics and song titles are in Spanish, lends the whole affair a heavily psychedelic, almost otherworldly vibe. And lest the previous sentences lead to you to believe otherwise, this ain’t no hippy shit.

Produced by Billy Anderson (knob-twirler for Buzzov*en, Neurosis, Mr. Bungle and a bunch of stoner bands), this is punishing in a zoned-out, baking-in-the-desert-sun kind of way, but it manages to remain organic: There is none of the faux-artsy ambience of, say, Earth or the recent release by Teeth of Lions Rule The Divine. It is, rather, a warm and loving salute to altered consciousness, something to throw in the CD changer along with Brant Bjork’s Jalamanta on that next summer day when you have nothing better to do than take liquid acid and stare at the sun for an hour or two.
(PO Box 02007 Detroit, MI 48202)