SPIN Magazine
October 2000

Los Amigos Invisibles
Arepa 3000: A Venezuelan Journey Into Space
8 out of 10

On their 1998 U.S. debut, New Sound of the Venezuelan Gozadera, South American swingers Los Amigos Invisibles came off as hipster dorks in serious heat. Sounding as stylized as their terry-cloth pool wear and chest-flashing polyester shirts, the sextet spun slobbering funk and disco flashbacks into anal sex-obsessed valentines. Theirs was an Esquivel-at-Studio 54 dream of come-hither pelvis pumps where awkwardly droppin an English sexy into a Spanish sentence counted as pancultural foreplay.

Arepa 3000 couldn't be a more surprising follow-up, a post-testosterone cold shower that–save for the adolescent elecro groan-a-thon "Masturbation Session" and the hot-neighbor peep show "La Vecina" – replaces slimy sexcapades with dreamy love hangovers, doggie-style decrees with swooning pleas. Just to prove it, they cover "Amor," an obscure '70s Venezuelan mirror-ball hit from Jorge Spiteri, which leaves lead Amigo Julio Brice–o crooning, "Amor for the Spanish / Amor for the French / Love in any language always means the same."

There's been a musical evolution too. No longer in denial of Venezuela's tropical tendencies, the Amigos merge their jones for has-been dance-floor hustles and bachelor-pad swank with bootified ¡ay mami! Merengue ("El Sobon"), old-school Caracas salsa ("Llegastes Tarde"), and Xavier Cugat–inspired easy Latin listening ("Arepa 3000"). They even dig up the hand-clapping, conga-slapping ghost of Nuyorican boogaloo on the kitschy throwback "Cuchi-Cuchi," which evokes Joe Cuba and John Travolta riffing on Charo. But as the bubble-gum bliss of "El Barro" and the chirpy jungle slo-mo of "Pi Pi Ri" prove, Arepa is an internation pop record at heart, a glossy style-swallowing Latin American addition to the same party circuit that connects Shibuyakei chic to Paris house hedonism. On here, the Vocoders speak Spanish. – Josh Kun