In 1978 Mexican drummer Tino Contreras released a remarkable album called Musica Infinita, a disorienting blend of avant­garde psychedelia and waltzing swing, funk grooves, operatic vocals and pre-Colombian percussion. It was little known but prized by crate diggers, including the DJ Gilles Peterson who re-released it earlier this year on his reissues label, Arc, following a chance meeting with Contreras in Mexico.

Now 96, Contreras is still making music and this new record continues his musical experiments. La Noche de los Dioses doesn't match the energy, the scope or the radical edge of Musica Infinita, but it's still an intriguing listen.

On the one hand Contreras' new tunes sound utterly conventional, almost corny, with their jazz waltz feels, old-school swing grooves and text book solos, but there are all sorts of wonderfully strange sounds in the mix as well: the ghostly call of the conch shell, bird-like ocarina flutes and jangling atonal wires. It's a jarring collision, like listening to a high school swing band with a couple of unruly kids messing around on percussion at the back. I'm not always sure that I like it, but I've never heard anything quite like it before.