La Gigantona is a strikingly strange bit of Afro-Latin psychedelia from Alfonso Lovo, an ambitious young Nicaraguan guitarist who came of age just as countercultural trappings were gaining popularity among Central American youth. Hendrix, Santana, and the adventurous early-‘70s jazz-funk of Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock were definite touchstones for Lovo, and the freewheeling fusion of these Western influences with more traditionally Latin melodies and rhythms may remind listeners of the experimentation of Brazilian artists like Tim Maia and Caetano Veloso. The album opens with a spare flamenco workout on a nylon-stringed guitar, but this peaceful prelude does little to prepare listeners for the lysergic madness that follows. The menacing “La Bomba de Neutron” serves up delirious Cold War paranoia over a creeping bass line, while the expansive jazz fusion of “Sinfonia del Espacio en do Menor” is crowded with outré synthesizer overdubs and a host of bizarre studio effects that make for the album’s most disorienting moment of full-fledged psychedelia.