Overview

Consisting of Felipe Salmon and Rafael Pereira and formed in 2012, Dengue Dengue Dengue is a Peruvian duo of electronic music.

La Alianza Profana

Their debut album, La Alianza Profana, is a first approach to their now signature blend of cumbia and Latin American sounds, featuring promising and fresh ideas, but also a couple of caveats.

The album is sinister and ominous in tone, as depicted on its opening track, Don Marcial. Using a violent sub-bass, a microtonal main melody and agonizing vocals, the track uses black and grey colors on its depiction of a bleak background.

The album shines when it’s nearest its cumbia influences:

  • Rayos Catódicos’ neurotic synthetizers dominate the bare-bones percussion and thick, layered bass;
  • Chichón’s melody, borrowed from 70s peruvian cumbia, blends almost seamlessly with the vocal ad-libs, and together they intertwine violently with the drum / bass marriage, leaving the listener as a mere observer of this clash.

The album, as i mentioned, has some really fresh ideas:

  • Rastakauboi adds an eastern chord progression into the mix, which serves as the needed contrast to the dark tone of the album. The synthesis of the dialectics between a hopeful melody and an opaque background is a groovy, elegant track.
  • C_omo Bailar Cumbia_ is a derivation of Aphex Twin‘s Selected Ambient Works, with overlayed latin percussion, and ironic sampling of a cumbia class.
  • The closing track, La Alianza Profana, is a cathartic feast, a danse macabre, celebrating its roots, and features perhaps the biggest success of the self-titled album: an interesting take on electrocumbia.

These interesting ideas come with perhaps my biggest issue with the album, filler:

  • Alpha & Omega is a unexpected and unfitting throwback to 90s hip-hop. The most promising element of this song are the drowned, reverbed vocals, which appear in the middle of the song, but besides that offers nothing else.
  • Prende could be a sides-B of Simiolo: the formula of wavey, low

The core concept is there: serving peruvian cumbia (and a bit of chicha, too), and salting it with a wide mix of electronic influences. Alianza Profana is delicious, but could use a bit more salt.