Lluvia

Carmelo Torres & Los Toscos - En Tu Puerto Soñé

Los espiritus  Jesus rima con cruz

Canibalismo

La Plata (En Mi Carrito De Lata)

01 La Plata (en mi carrito de lata)

Danza Del Millonario

La Danza del Millonario

Muchachita Del Oriente

04 Muchachita del Oriente

Depresión Tropical

05 Depresión Tropical

L’Age d’Or

08 L'Age d'Or

LOS UMBANDA - Suelta La Piedra Remix (PRE MASTER) feat. Sara Hebe y Che sudaka

Bogota’s Meridian Brothers release their delightfully surreal and playful album ‘Deseperanza’ on 24th September on Soundway Records. Traditional instruments, electronics and distorted vocals are dragged through an array of influences to create a world that is as original as it is unclassifiable. 

Straddling the line between new and old, Meridian Brothers’ mischievous blend of Latin rhythms and psychedelic grooves is the creation of Eblis Álvarez, one of the key figures of the experimental music scene in Bogota. As with all of the Meridian Brother’s releases, every instrument on ‘Deseperanza’ was played and recorded by Eblis himself.

A true avant-garde guitar player and composer he also plays in Mario Galeano’s band Frente Cumbiero and was one of the 42 musicians involved in the recording of Ondatrópica, released this summer through Soundway Records.

Meridian Brothers started back in 1998 with Eblis experimenting with alternative ways of playing instruments and electronic media. Heavily influenced by Latin rock (Argentinian in particular) these early recordings were distributed by cassette on the underground music market in Bogota. It was in 1999, after joining Mario Galeano’s Ensamble Polifónico Vallenato that Eblis first became interested in the tropical music of Colombia and began working these new influences it in to the Meridian Brothers. 

Another key period is his development was his time spent in Denmark at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and the DIEM (Danish Institute of Electronic Music). It was during this stage Eblis started using more sophisticated and intricate techniques in both electronics and signal processing. 

Eblis returned to Bogota in 2008, joining a burgeoning music scene with cumbia, salsa and currulao all being explored by a new generation of Colombian musicians. 2009’s "Meridian Brothers VI” goes deep into tropical sounds of the 60s and 70s in Colombia and integrates other influences such as highlife, Ethiopian music, surf and Peruvian and Colombian cumbia.

It was around this stage that Meridian Brothers made their first appearances as a live band with Damien Ponce (Percussion), Maria Valencia (clarinet, saxophone and synthesizers), Alejandro Forero (Keyboards), Cesar Quevedo (bass) and Eblis Alvarez (vocals, guitar and electronics). 

In 2011 "Meridian Brothers VII" was released. The sound of this album returns to Latin American rock influences as well as champeta experiments, jazz, cumbia and tropical. Distorted sounds, electronic changes in voice, obscure surf guitar and randomly changed sampled percussion all collide head on. Two tracks from this record were released on 7” by New York label Names You Can Trust in 2012. 

Which bring us to ‘Desesperanza’ (meaning hopelessness in English) Recorded in 2012 the album is dedicated exclusively to salsa and tropical music, twisting it through a dark and theatrical soundscape but never abandoning the traditional aesthetics. 

A real musical maverick, labelled a genius by his contemporaries in Colombia, Eblis Álvarez’s latest Meridian Brothers album finally gets a full, worldwide release. 


Meridian Brothers - Salsa Caliente (Versión Aumentada)

Linda Mañana

Chicha Libre plays a mixture of latin rhythms, surf  and psychedelic pop inspired by Peruvian music from Lima and the Amazon. The Brooklyn collective is made up of French, American, Venezuelan and Mexican musicians who mix up covers of Peruvian Chicha with original compositions in French, Spanish and English, re-interpretation of 70’s pop classics as well as cumbia versions of pieces by the likes of Satie, Love and Wagner.

Chicha is originally the name of a corn-based liquor favored by the Incas in pre-colombian days. Chicha is also the name of Peru's particular brand of cumbia first made popular in the late 60's by bands such as Los Destellos, Manzanita, Los Mirlos and Juaneco y su Combo.  While loosely inspired by Colombian accordion-driven cumbias, chicha incorporated the distinctive pentatonic scales of Andean melodies, some Cuban son, and the sounds of surf guitars, farfisa organs and moog synthesizers; an oddly post-modern combination of western psychedelia, Cuban and Colombian rhythms, national melodies and idiosyncratic inventions which were close in spirit to the Congolese rumba of Franco or the pop syncretism of Os Mutantes.

Chicha Libre started out in 2006 as a tribute to Peruvian pioneers but quickly evolved into an original project which MTV has cited as one of the world's preeminent Tropical Psychedelic band. Indeed, while they remain true to their Chicha roots, Chicha Libre's music has taken a definitely more psychedelic turn drawing more and more from its members' alternative background. 

Chicha Libre's sound and approach are completely indebted to the Peruvian bands it originally emulated. Like their mentors, they use surf guitar, organ sounds and latin percussion to play a mixture of borrowed and homegrown sounds. Their sound has become more processed, synth sounds and treated guitars and the borrowings are differ from that of Peruvian precursors   - classical music and pop debris from 3 continents in Chicha Libre's case – but the latin rhythms that form the basis of the music are both as inherent and as foreign to them as they were to the Shipibo Indians who first took up the electric guitar. 

.Chicha Libre has performed around the world, including Turkey, The UK, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil,  Mexico, the US, Canada and, of course, Peru. They have showcased at WOMEX, in Copenhagen, and Globalfest, in NYC. They have played in Los angeles with guitarist Jose Carballo, of Chacalon y la Nueva Crema fame, in Lima with Los Shapis and in Berlin with Ranil, the legendary cumbiero from Iquitos. They have toured with cambodian psych-band Dengue Fever and shared the stage with bands as varied as Brazilian Girls, The Skatalites, Frente Cumbiero and the Orchestre Poly-rythmo de Cotonou.

Chicha Libre's music has been featured on TV shows Weeds and Homeland as well as a Simpsons' 20th anniversary special in which they were asked to play the Simpsons' theme "chicha" style alongside the likes of Red Hot Chili Pepper and ZZ Top. They have also scored a Vaclav Havel play which was performed at Colombia's Miller theater in the author's presence and two Charlie Chaplin films which they performed at NY's prestigious Merkin Hall.  Their two albums, Sonido Amazonico and Canibalismo, are available from Barbès Records in North America, Crammed Disc in Europe and Random Records in South America, as is their EP Cuatro Tigres.

La Danza del Millonario

Chicha Libre

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