Humo del Cairo: Dónde Hay Humo, Hay Fuego
Posted in Reviews on April 19th, 2010 by JJ KoczanTo be perfectly honest, I’ve been putting off reviewing the self-titled MeteorCity debut from Buenos Aires desert-style rockers Humo del Cairo for about a week now because I’ve wanted to try and glean some better sense of the album’s structure, form and methodology. I don’t know if I got all that for having taken the extra time, but with a record like this, which alternates between longer and shorter cuts and puts to use a ranging sonic approach, repeat listens can’t hurt.
Humo del Cairo does go back and forth between extended cuts and shorter pieces, at least for the first four of the total six tracks – the last two, “Errantes” and “Cauce” being about eight and seven minutes, respectively – opening with the 11-minute rocker “A Tiempo,” on which the trio waste no time earning a Los Natas comparison with driving rock rhythms. But soon the song opens up into a jam and the reasoning behind the longer track times is revealed. To the credit of the players — guitarist Juan Manuel Diaz, drummer Javier Murillo Gorchs and bassist Gustavo Bianchi – it doesn’t get boring, but the divisions between tracks become almost arbitrary by the end of this first 11 minutes, which is going to drastically change how you experience the album.
The upshot? That Humo del Cairo are best kept to full sessions rather than track-by-track listening. If you’re going to dig into the record, be aware that what you’re getting is a total-album flow. Each song has its grooves, but slower-tempo second track “Nimbo” is undoubtedly best experienced coming out of “A Tiempo,” and ditto for “Panorama,” which shows off Diaz’s nimble hand in another extended stoner jam. Among the usual suspects of ‘70s influences (your Floyds of Pink, Cheers of Blue and Crimson Kings), the band especially cites Pappo’s Blues as a point of particularly Argentine inspiration, and if that’s heard anywhere on Humo del Cairo, it’s heard on “Fuego de San Antonio,” which instead of opening into the by-now expected jam, keeps things straightforward and rocking for its shorter duration and ends as raucously as it begins before giving a kind of drone tone to lead into “Errantes.”