If you were enlightened and fortunate enough to have picked up the first volume of this collection of Peruvian underground sweetmeats from 1964-1974, you’ll know the kind of unfettered – often unhinged – delights to expect from Volume II. This compilation mines pure gold straight from the off with Los Juniors’ Tercera Piedra En El Sol – a brilliantly weird, clunky and stoically offhand version of Hendrix’s Third Stone From The Sun, which sounds as though it was recorded in Rod Serling’s drains – and the literally barking Guau Guau A Go-Go by Los Shain’s, which makes full and bewildering use of a session dog.
And the hits just keep on coming. Sueño Sicodélico by Los Holy’s is a demented reading of The Sandals’ Scrambler, casually inventing the “space surf” genre, while Rock Of All Ages by the terrific We All Together boasts an inimitably lusty drive.
Top honours go to the astounding Onstá La Yerbita by Los Destellos – like a Costcutters Santana fronted by a hallucinating itinerant – and Everything Is Gonna Change by the deathlessly-named Jean Paul “El Troglodita”, whose gusset-rending, over-recorded falsetto must have fused the studio’s VU meters. Oh, and Concordancia by El Polen is Sienna Miller-grade pretty.
