Camilo Lara and Eblis Alvarez release joint album Ruido Tovar, with a Beck cameo

Camilo Lara, who records as Mexican Institute of Sound, and Eblis Alvarez, of Meridian Brothers, have released a collaborative album, Ruido Tovar, via the historic Ansonia Records. Beck appears on two of its tracks, including "Cumbia Beckiana."

The album leans into the shared lineage of Colombian and Mexican cumbia, drawing on son, cha-cha-cha and psychedelic cumbia from the 1970s and 80s. It takes its name from Rigo Tovar, the eccentric Mexican tropical-pop icon who mixed cumbia and pop into a hugely popular sound. Lara describes him as "a rebel," comparing him to "Johnny Cash," and recalls that Tovar dressed as an astronaut during a phase when he claimed contact with UFOs. "Ruido" translates to "noise," a nod to the record's restless, genre-blurring approach.

Lara says he spent years trying to get Alvarez into a studio together before Alvarez finally called wanting to explore 1970s and 80s Mexican cumbia specifically. "He's the top musician in Latin America," Lara said of his collaborator. "I've been a big fan." The two split roles naturally, Lara says, with Alvarez's technical musicianship balancing his own more instinctive approach to playing keyboards.

Beck and Lara have worked together in the studio for roughly five years on a still-unreleased Beck project, and Lara says the "Cumbia Beckiana" session came together as a jam, turning into what he calls "melancholic cumbia infused with bagpipes." Alvarez, Lara notes, had been a fan of Beck's since his college years.

Ruido Tovar is filed under Latin and electronic, joining the rest of the year's releases in the release calendar.