Los Bravos – Rudi’s In Love
Los Kifers – El Sol Es Una Droga
Los Roberts – El Saltamontes
This second volume builds on the deep sounds from vol. 1 and, for my money, exceeds the original volume, a feat fairly rare in the reissue game. Vampi Soul has for years been digging up obscured artists from Spain and Latin America, but they’ve really out done themselves with this series, with extensive notes on each of the artists on the comp and pictures of each of the LPs / 45s. That in itself will be a great help to collectors, crate diggers and DJs who love to play soul sounds from around the world.
In truth, not all of these artists can or should be considered, “soul music,” some of it is more along the lines of freak-beat or psych, but they are some very fine groovers on here and it’s such a revelation to hear these sounds from a scene that we don’t get to hear too much from out here in the states. Much of this music made it’s way onto the bootleg series from a few years back, El Soul Es Una Droga, but this is the first time they’ve had a legitimate release in the states.
One of the best tracks is from one of the most well-known bands on this compilation. Los Bravos scored a major hit with their 1966 song “Black is Black,” but largely faded after that. Their song “Rudi’s In Love” shows a taste for Jamaican rock-steady sounds, but envisions, with rather endearing lyrics, Rude boys’ rowdiness as simply acting out because they haven’t found the right woman (interesting side note, at this time, the group featured Andy Anderson on vocals, who was the brother of Jon Anderson from Yes).
By far, my favorite track on here is from Los Kifers, “El Sol Es Una Droga,” a blistering uptempo dance-floor burner built for the summer. Another strong track is from Los Roberts, “El Saltamontes,” which is basically in a beat style, continually punctuated with shouts of “Hey!” though also featuring strings and strangely sounding drums in the opening minutes and has a massive change of rhythm in the middle, everything just slows down with some seriously heavy drums.
Other standouts include a couple of instrumentals, “Soul 2” a really solid groover and “Darkness” which has some appropriately strange effects early on before settling into an absolutely soul stomper, and a mostly wordless singing track “Limon y Sal,” from La Nueva Banda de Santisteban (who have had their work recently reissued by Vampi Soul too).
With 32 tracks, many of them from groups that were virtually unknown outside of Spain and also including some familiar covers of Jimi Hendrix, Jackie Wilson, the Four Tops and even Bob Seger, there’s a lot to digest here, but for fans of internacional soul, this collection really is quite sensacional.