Los Amigos Invisibles

Arepa 3000

(Luaka Bop)

Is this global groove fusion or just a case of globalized groove? It’s a tough call really. Following up on their American debut (The New Sound Of The Venezuelan Gozadera), Los Amigos Invisibles ditch their rambunctious melange of Latin-tinged disco and funk, and instead set up a neo-jet-set front, co-opting every imaginable sound from dance destinations from here to Goa. In some instances it works, in others, it’s detestable. At its best, Arepa 3000 comes across with a string of silly yet sexy mid-tempo wonders, mellowed and accentuated by layers of bossa-flavored beats and more coochie-coochies than Charo at the Playboy Mansion. It’s almost like having Arling and Cameron consolidate the entire back catalogue of Brazil ‘66 into a small handful of well-crafted songs. But on the other side of the coin, for every delightfully breezy gem on this album, the Amigos deliver half-baked, white-bread numbers, that deliberately play on Americans’ ongoing fetish for homogenized, limp "Latin" music. Almost like having Smashmouth cutting a track for the next Santana album.

—Collin Keefe