Meridian Brothers

Eblis Álvarez is no stranger to Berlin. He performed with his Meridian Brothers at the 2011 Worldtronics Festival, and at last year’s Wassermusik, his fun-band Los Pirañas gnawed the cumbia down to the bone. The brothers, who also have a sister in the multi-instrumentalist Maria Valencia, recently generated a buzz with the album Desesperanza (Soundway) featuring extraordinary salsa abstractions that torpedoed it onto a number of “best of 2012” lists. The band had one more trick up its sleeve: the seven-inch single “Niebla Morada,” a thinly disguised version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” This year they are dedicating their performance to the Peruvian style of cumbia, also known as chicha, dominated by psychedelically tinged surf guitar – an irresistible challenge for the guitar connoisseur and experimental musician Álvarez.