Ricarda Cometa Combines Latin, African and Asian Influences With Noise, Math Rock on ‘Ricarda Cometa 2’ (album stream)

Argentine-Peruvian unit Ricarda Cometa issues its new album, Ricarda Cometa 2, on June 1 via Nefarious Industries just ahead of the duo’s upcoming European tour.

The 11-song collection takes listeners on a wild, noisy ride that involves that never loses its focus on Latin-inspired rhythms but which ultimately sends them through the musical grinder a few dozen times along the way. If listeners found the herky-jerky twists and turns of math rock or Mr. Bungle challenging, Ricarda Cometa take these musical complexities to new heights here. But these compositions are about more than impressing the audience with freakish time changes or tempo shifts or melodic maneuvers that seem to contradict all we know about melody.

In the end, there’s always a focal point and a purpose, a statement at hand and not once does the duo overstay its welcome, whether issuing some of its most primal tendencies (“Bancá, Tu Tranquilo”), re-configuring the soul and structure of Latin funk (“Soltá El Bambú”) or championing the strange (“Cerrajero Sin Talento”). The most remarkable feat is how often we’re taken to the logical extremes of noise and rhythm, then brought back to the center, all while ingesting therapeutic doses of no-wave, African, Latin and Asian ritual music in these grooves.

Formed in 2009, Ricarda Cometa consists of Tatiana Heuman and Jorge Espinal. With an audience that is growing across the vast reaches of Europe, the avant-garde unit returns to that continent this summer for a series of dates that seem guaranteed to win over a new generation of fans.

Ricarda Cometa 2 was recoded by Sam Nacht at Estudio Libres in Buenos Aires, Argentina, mixed and mastered by Jorge Espinal, and completed with appropriately vibrant cover art by Hideyuki Katsumata.The album may be ordered here or here with a cassette version to follow later this year on Vestibular Records.

About the impending release and tour, the band offers this: “It’s funny how this album, the first one as a duo, was recorded soon after coming back from our first European tour last year and it’s being released a week before starting our second one. These Ricarda Cometa 2 vibes will be brought to Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, and Poland during June. And we are all worked up for that.”

TOUR DATES

6/09/2018 Kafe Haerverk – Oslo, NO
6/11/2018 Galleri 21 – Malmö, SE
6/13/2018 KoncertKirken – Copenhagen, DK
6/15/2018 Grandhotel Cosmopolis – Augsburg, DE
6/16/2018 Import-Export – Munich, DE
6/18/2018 Celeste – Vienna, AT
6/20/2018 Der Bloede Dritte Mittwoch – Vienna, AT
6/22-23/2018 noise party vol. x (Noise Assault Agency) – Dobřejice, CZ
6/25/2018 Czech Music Information Centre – Prague, CZ
6/27/2018 6 Dzielnica – Łódź, PL
6/28/2018 Chlodna-25 – Warsaw, PL
6/29/2018 Kulturhauz – Torun, PL
6/30/2018 CKN Centrala – Gorzów, PL
7/02/2018 Kühlspot – Berlin, DE