Perhaps one of the first major Western collections of the genre, 1989's Cumbia Cumbia: Cumbias de oro de Colombia is supremely entertaining, in the way only cumbia and related genres can be. It's weird how among white folks in the US, cumbia is definitely a specialty, even elitist-only, genre, but is total top 40 in its countries of origin and throughout Latin America but hey I'm not knowledgeable enough on any of those subjects to do anything but idly speculate. Anyway, highlights include the flutes on Gabriel Romero's "La Subienda" and the bouzouki/mandolin-esque string instrument on La Sonora Dinanita's "Se me perdió la cadenita." Also, it is bad that I want to learn Spanish simply so that I can download more music only available through Spanish websites? Yeah, prolly.

Rovo's Imago is pretty close to the album I wanted VCN to be - it has a similar shiny over-processed production to the two big Boredom albums and anything OOIOO, but in this context, if not a boon, it's negligible - the album has some pastiches of krautrock and drum & bass, but a lot of it, such as the entirety of "N'dam" and "Numa" and the bell-heavy first half of "Larva" are virtually genreless. I really did have a lot more to say about this, but I forgot it all, fuck. Anyway, it's quite good and better than the Boredoms LPs from around the same time.     

The Malefice by Pentagram Chile is perfectly adequate death metal, even with the coherent vox, but I can definitely see people considering it a disappointment after their demos, which are really quite excellent, especially the first one. Their sole single reprises the first two songs on their debut demo with pretty much identical (yet somehow worse?) performances and fidelity. At the very least, they're way better than those rape rock goons in the more famous Pentagram.      

It's amazing what the presence of non-saxophone instruments can do for a sax quartet - WSQ's Selim Sivad is so much better than W.S.Q. pretty much entirely do to the presence of percussion and (some) piano. The kalimba and voice especially add so much to the music compared to the quartet-only recordings - only "Tutu" with its stilted pseudo-funk groove is a real misstep and whenever the African percussion really gets going, its almost a minor miracle. I'd wager this is better than any actual Miles album, or at least better than any of 'em other than On the Corner. Also I learned yesterday my only real meatspace friends don't know who Miles Davis is (and like fedoras) and I almost cried into my Sprite.