Bomba Estéreo Blow Up

• Words: Shawn Reynaldo
• Label: Nacional
• XLR8R Rating: 7/10

When it comes to musical melting pots, it's hard to top Colombia. With an ethnically diverse population equally influenced by both Caribbean and Andean culture, not to mention a history steeped in a rich brew of Afro-Latin sounds, the genre-bending efforts of groups like Bomba Estéreo come as little surprise. Blow Up is their second full-length, and it finds the Bogota-based outfit still tossing traditional Latin sounds into a blender alongside hip-hop and electronic dance-pop. While their laptop-clutching labelmates from Argentina's Zizek crew use classic Latin rhythms as a framework for electronic experimentation, Bomba Estéreo is far less rigid in their approach—Blow Up is undoubtedly the work of a band, one that can fluidly weave champeta rhythms and cumbia percussion into bouncy Spanglish hip-hop and sunny, singalong dance-pop.