Since issuing
EPI in 2014, experimental Puerto Rican duo
Buscabulla have been poster children for pop fusion. Their savvy, smooth meld of indie dance-pop and hooky electro with slick funk and Boricua beats also integrate bomba, plena, salsa, reggaeton, Cuban psych, and vintage Argentine rock.
Regresa is their debut long-player, recorded after
Buscabulla (married couple
Luis Alfredo Del Valle and
Raquel Berrios) left New York after a decade to return to their native country to raise their young daughter. They were greeted by the devastation left from Hurricanes Maria and Irma. On May 2, 2020, just six days before
Regresa's release, their nation was further wounded by an earthquake registering 5.4.
The tragedies are key; this set soundtracks the duo's bittersweet return home. While not as chaotically celebratory as earlier singles,
Buscabulla's beat-conscious fusions communicate deeper, more intimate truths as a result of living and working amid harsh realities and adverse conditions. Produced by
Patrick Wimberly at their home studio,
Regresa is not, despite its real-life issues, a downer. Opening track and first single "Vamono," with its martial bomba rhythm, opens things up on an uptempo note with crisscrossing chordal synths, organic and synthetic percussion and
Berrios' vocals coming across as a breezy chant that eventually opens wide to embrace the dancefloor. It's followed by the all-too-brief and funky Latin soul of "La Fiebre," that after a minute segues into "El Aprieto" with its Afro-Latin rhythms on stun while abrasive, zig-zagging synths thread their way through
Berrios' angelic soprano. Later, "N.T.E." weds bumping, humid samba to bomba and sensual funk. Key to this set are the ballads. The exotically structured "Club Tu y Yo" offers smooth-as-glass synths, hypnotic backbeats, and weary lyrics about the trials of repatriation. The exquisitely arranged "Manda Fuego," with its complex chord progression, keyboard vamps, and thudding kick drums get burned off as elegant keyboards frame a dream sequence. "Nydia" is a midtempo atmospheric jam with sensual rhythms and luxuriously layered synth textures that embrace Brazilian MPB and bachata in melody and harmony amid breezy electro and folksy plena rhythms. The only non-original here is the short "Volta," composed by
Nick Hakim; it's a woozy downtempo jam that fuses house and salsa to reggaeton and bomba with a billowy, humid electro bassline (that would have been right at home on
Shriekback's
Big Night Music) before it segues into the spacy, nighttime soul-Latin-electro of closer "Ta Que Tiembla."
Throughout the album,
Berrios' eerily calm voice and hypnotic yet often-jarring rhythms, juxtaposed with glossy metallic synths, emphasize her narratives of hardship, stress, and existential questions about return, and serve to make
Regresa a particularly poignant recording for the present turbulent pandemic COVID-19. While some fans may prefer the more escapist dancefloor jams that introduced them,
Regresa showcases
Buscabulla as a band who can work in virtually any situation and deliver a truly original sound that inspires the listener. We need more records like this. ~ Thom Jurek
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