Chuquimamani-Condori, the experimental electronic artist formerly known as Elysia Crampton, blew a lot of minds with 2023's DJ E. The follow-up is eliciting a similar reaction, and for good reason. The Bolivian-American artist has teamed up with their brother, Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, under the name Los Thuthanaka for a staggering self-titled LP.
Los Thuthanaka dropped by surprise on Bandcamp over the weekend, but I'm just getting to it this morning. After one listen, I'm ready to call it an easy shortlist contender for 2025's best album. The project comprises eight propulsive instrumentals that get the most out of repetition but never feel like they're spinning their wheels. In the same way that Darkside merge club music with live-band instrumentation, Los Thuthanaka's album feels like it was created in a room by an overwhelmingly powerful unit, yet there are also hallmarks of a killer DJ mix. It's pounding, throbbing, wonderfully tactile music that will jolt you to life and send you back into the world inspired.
The album strikes me as almost universal in its appeal, but it comes from a very specific place with a clear purpose in mind, as Chuquimamani-Condori explained in a statement to Pitchfork:
This record is a milestone for me & my brother, bringing prayers for rain & gratitude. The music is part of our ayni to the relatives & our queer guardian, Chuqi Chinchay. My friend Juan Vargas Rollano reminds us of a saying in our maternal language, told to him by Elizabeth Yana, that goes: “Don’t pity q’iwa (queer) people because they walk looking at the stars”
[ Janiwa llaqisañaqiti q’iwanakata jupanakaxa warawaranakana uñxatata sarnaqaphiwa ].
For us, the star is also called Chuqi Chinchay, who the great Aymara chronicler Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti wrote was “muy pintado, de todos los colores, dizen que era apo de los Otorongos, en cuya guarda da a los ermafroditas, yndios de dos naturas”.
We should recall the earliest known carbon-dated depiction of God in the Americas is a gourd etched with an image of Chuqi Chinchay as the “staff god”— Chuqi Chinchay’s iconic fusion with what we call Viracocha. A key attribute of Chuqi Chinchay’s qillqa (iconography or language) throughout millennia has been their hominid, simian, avian, reptilian, amphibian, & insectile transformations, among others.
Now you have a lot to think about as you dive into Los Thuthanaka below.
