Niebla

From Medellín to Montréal… Multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Alexander Betancur moved from his native Colombia to Canada in 2005. Since then, as Ramon Chicharron, he has now released four albums, two scooping Latin Awards Canada gongs for ‘Album of the Year’. It’s no coincidence that Jean Massicotte produced the new album: one of his clients is Alex Cuba (the late Lhasa de Sela another), and Chicharron’s sunny if ephemeral melodies are pitched somewhere between the Cuban-Canadian’s acoustic music and, say, the more crowd-pleasing fare of Cuban star, Cimafunk. Like its popular predecessor, Pescador de Sueños, Niebla offers up another dozen songs influenced by the rhythms of Colombia in particular and the Caribbean in general. Strong vocals buoyed by jaunty electronic beats with occasional reggae and Central African tropes could easily be described as tropical pop, so just don’t expect this agreeable album to offer anything startlingly original.