Las Cobras – Selva

As with all FC titles this is Indies only. Emerging out of the small Uruguayan city of Canelones, in 2017 a new band named Las Cobras released their debut recordings – a 9-track album called ¶emporal’ – and instantly became a name on the tongues of those tapped into the trans-Atlantic psychedelic underground. A couple of years on and the duo comprised of Leandro Rebellato and Sofía Aguerre are now gearing up to release their highly-anticipated sophomore album elva’ (translating from Spanish to ungle’.) Released once again on London-based label Fuzz Club. On their debut Las Cobras magnificently fused together a cocktail of proto-punk and murky shoegaze with traces of afrobeat and Tropicalia, but throughout elva’ the band can be found taking all of those elements and cranking them up to 11. Nestled in-between the swirling, ethereal noise of the closing tracks (oices’ and ¶he Color Of Dawn’), there are far darker and distorted moments like own Low’ with it’s mechanical drum-machine and gloomy neo-psych guitars, then the menacing vil In Your Eyes’ which is driven by a nasty fuzzed-out bassline and the dual vocals of Leandro and Sofia – both gravelly and entrancing, respectively. For all of those more sinister moments, though, that’s not to say the sounds of their native Latin America don’t still course through the record. o Hacemos Mal’ and lamarás Mi Nombre’ are meandering psychedelic jams dripping with the sounds of their homeland. And, charting a similar path to other globally-attuned psych-heads like Khruangbin and Goat, title-track elva’ – made in collaboration with Gioele Valenti of label-mates JuJu (and previously Lay Llamas) – is a lysergic treat on the senses combining dub-like rhythms, wah-wah guitars and organs that could have plucked off a long-lost Ethio-jazz deep cut. After the release of ¶emporal’ the pair took some time out of writing and got a live band together and started playing around Uruguay, Chile and Peru. Upon their return t