SALSA CON MONTE | VINYL RECORD (LP)

"Vampisoul present the latest volume in their Discos Fuentes reissue series, Salsa Con Monte, an instant tropical Latin dance party from Blas 'Michi' Sarmiento. Honestly, all Michi y Sus Bravos albums are all so good. However, a poll with fans and DJs, selected his sixth album Salsa Con Monte, from 1973, issued here for the first time. 'El Michi', as his grandmother nicknamed him, is the son of the famous reedman Clímaco Sarmiento, a bandleader who recorded with Fuentes for decades. Proficient in percussion and singing from an early age, Michi is most known for following in his father's footsteps with clarinet, saxophone, composition and musical arranging as his signature skills. By 17 Michi had his own band and by 1967 his Bravos were competing with local sound systems and radio stations that were playing salsa, descarga, charanga, and boogaloo. While Sarmiento has consistently maintained his love of traditional Afro-Colombian-rooted 'música costeña' to this day (porro, cumbia, cumbelé, gaita, paseo and merecumbé), Los Bravos always played it hard, loose and fast, because they had to compete with the DJs. Michi preferred recording "live" in the studio with the result being an accurate document of what a powerful outfit they must have been to experience in person. This album contains a number of excellent cover tunes, including the rather surprising choice of Gilberto Gil's "Viramundo". This opening cut is followed in quick succession by a dizzyingly diverse gaggle of genres, namely cumbelé, calypso, pasebol, cumbión and rumba. One could truly say Michi and his band of 'braves' bring us quite a heavy load of salsa 'mounted' on this record (Salsa Con Monte, referring to Michi's motorbike 'mount' on the cover), which is exactly what's happening by the look of the front and back jackets of this classic Discos Fuentes LP." -Pablo Yglesias, aka DJ Bongohead Issued with facsimile artwork and pressed on 180 gram vinyl.