Chancha Via Circuito is an Argentinian folk artist and hip-hop producer who I would have considered the tip of the cumbia music revival spear back when I first discovered him in 2018. I couldn't tell you if his stuff is still considered cutting edge in those spaces anymore, as I lost the pulse of where Latin folk meets contemporary electronic music about three years ago. However, I'm glad that I'm revisiting his work, as it's introducing me to his second collab with British-born, Latin-beat empresario El Búho, a bright and atmospherically dense EP titled, Tenalach. Chancha Via Circuito's music integrates a number of pan-South American influences into his compositions, including dancehall, Andean folk, and southern hemisphere house, all of which blend wonderfully with El Búho's skill for smoothing out rhythms and heightening the aura of a mix in order to embellish it's layered, furtive secrets. For Tenalach the duo leads the listener deep into the green hearth at the center of a cathedral made of lush living walls- the gate to a digital wilderness and sandbox of sorts where your body can become as weightless as a dancing leaf or as settled and firm as the trunk of a great tree- where the possibilities of adventure and etching one's own radical form of semiotics are limitless, but not as myriad as the furrows for acquiescence into the mossy, aboding logic of the lavishly and iconically abundant glade of this emaculatly cultivated environ. In short, it is what the soundtrack to EarthBound might have sounded like if it had taken a detour through the Serranía de Chiribiquete before hitting a sidequest in the Andes. There might not be any place like home, but there is truly no other place quite like Tenalach.
