Zemog El Gallo Bueno

THE YOYOUMETÚ TRILOGY

Abraham Gomez-Delgado, the songwriter who leads Zemog El Gallo Bueno, is one of Latin music’s truest oddballs. His rhythm section, his voice and his sense of melody often draw on his Puerto Rican and Peruvian heritage, along with the rest of the Caribbean. But elsewhere, electric guitars aren’t shy about distortion and horns bring the angularity of jazz, sometimes turning the songs polytonal. And his lyrics free-associate with thoughts of family, love, politics, science and cyberspace. Since Zemog’s previous album, in 2009, Mr. Gomez-Delgado has battled depression, invented an instrument — the eje, which lets one player simulate an entire Latin rhythm section — and thought he lost an entire album to a malfunctioning hard drive. “The YoYouMeTú Trilogy” (Afinque) couples the lost album, which was digitally rescued (Vol. 1), with new band recordings that are considerably more skewed (Vol. 2: “Jugamos With Humanos”). “Sometimes the logical path is pathological,” one song observes.