Huelepega Sound System has no real home, but could easily find themselves smoking out with them fellers from Sublime Frequencies. Because this music is so unique and peculiar, I’m going to be incredibly lazy and appropriate their own words from their Myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/huelepegasoundsystem):

Huelepega Sound System pega Sound System would like to introduce you to “doombia” – cumbia’s dissolute cousin. This might not get you on the dancefloor, but it just might get you off the couch. This music starts with chopped and screwed Colombia-via-Mexican cumbia, with beats slowed down to a spooky, unsettling tempo. Live congas and timbales reinforce the rhythms, while droning keyboards and ricocheting vocal samples open up the sound. Everything gets mixed down in extreme dub. Tempos are subdivided and multiplied – folding the grooves inward and outward, messing with your expectations. The flow rambles and lurches, with dissonance buzzing throughout. To paraphrase the motto of Putumayo Records, doombia is “music guaranteed to make you feel stoned”. There are many different tangents in contemporary Latin music, but few explore such dark territory. Huelepega (named after the glue huffers of Monterrey and Caracas) bring an aggressive lack of polish to their sound. But don’t think that the Huelepegistas don’t know how to play – all four have channelled decades of DJing and performing into creating this startling new sound. Their forthcoming CDR “En Los Ojos De Dios, Todos Somos Ilegales” will be released in March 2009 on Toronto’s acclaimed noise label, Inyrdisk. It’s a natural partnership – Huelepega takes its place alongside such Toronto experimentalists as Women In Tragedy and Disguises to build a greater overstanding of just how alternative Latin music can get. Huelepega Sound System is a reflection and abstraction of the many sonic forces at work in the Latin diaspora in North America. Huelepega isn’t the music you heard in the resort on your last vacation, on the contrary, Huelepega is music from the gutter, inspired by the dark places of Latin America that the consulate warned you about. Huelepega is for ‘los desplazados, los olvidados y los desaparecidos’.

Okay, now that I totally plagiarized their shit, this is one of the most amazingly strange recordings I’ve heard in some time. And I live for weird. I’ve been working on an article about records I’ve listened to for 20 or more years, and this young’un will be there….20 years from now. This is an ineffable experience. 10/10 -- P. Somniferum (17 June, 2009)