Bandcamp The allicanto is a creature from Chilean folklore, a glowing bird that leads miners to veins of gold and silver, and it is a fitting name for Taihr’s second album: a record that follows the music wherever it glints. The Cologne seven-piece, five locals plus two Chilean members, build their songs from funk, math-rock, jazz and electronics as much as from rock, and the seven tracks for seven players give everyone room to shine. With Génesis Trinidad Gálvez Jaramillo’s voice out front, switching between rhythmic near-rap and clean melody, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes English, this is crossover in the genuine sense, not a genre so much as a refusal to pick one.
When it locks in it is a lot of fun. Opener “Kiss” rides a growling, pick-attack bass and a dry, springy guitar crunch into call-and-response verses and dense choruses, the band tight and the dynamics breathing. “Playing Cards” is the other highlight, an atmospheric, bilingual slow-build that melts electronic beats into the organic band and keeps its dynamics intact all the way to a wall-of-sound outro. The playing throughout is genuinely sharp, the arrangements clever, and the female-fronted, polyglot prog-crossover gives Taihr a voice that stands apart from the German rock pack.
The drag is the master, and it is the modern one. Several tracks, “Paperbirds,” “Heavy Rain,” “Skeleton Hoofs,” are squeezed for radio loudness until the dynamics flatten, the drums sound triggered and quantized, and the whole thing turns a touch sterile, short on the dirt and analog warmth that would let these songs swing as hard live as they clearly do. The quiet verses are beautifully balanced; it is the big choruses, pinned to the limiter, where the air gets sucked out. It is a production choice rather than a writing flaw, but across the record it costs the band some of their bite.
Allicanto is an ambitious, characterful, genuinely original record, the sound of seven players chasing a sound that is entirely their own, and for anyone who likes their rock restless and genre-fluid there is a lot here to dig into. A warmer, more dynamic master, one that let the choruses hit instead of just getting loud, would close the gap between a clever record and a knockout one. The glow is real; it just needs to be let off the leash.
Allicanto is funky, genre-fluid prog-crossover with clean female vocals out front, moving between rhythmic near-rap and melody, Spanish and English, over jazz, math-rock and electronic textures. The mix is clean, transparent and modern, and on its best tracks the dynamics breathe: “Kiss” rides a growling pick-attack bass with real push-pull, and “Playing Cards” keeps its dynamics intact through a long atmospheric build. The recurring weakness is the master: several tracks (“Paperbirds”, “Heavy Rain”, “Skeleton Hoofs”) are over-compressed for radio loudness until the dynamics flatten, the drums sound triggered and the sound turns sterile, short on analog warmth. The playing and arrangements are excellent; the loudness-war master is what holds it back.
Standout tracks: Kiss, Playing Cards
