01. El nuevo Prometeo (04:33)
02. El aguazo de Javier Felipe (05:46)
03. Despectiva caridad (04:56)
04. Educados por Condorito (Y Don Ramón) (03:09)
05. Con mi burrito sabanero voy directo al matadero (04:08)
06. Pateando culos (03:48)
07. Bájenle a la matrícula (03:23)
08. Los pendencieros del Latin (05:13)

A veritable supergroup consisting of Eblis Alvarez (Meridian Brothers), Mario Galeano (Frente Cumbiero) and Pedro Ojeda (Romperayo), Los Pirañas, the Colombian Avant-Latin experimentalists, return with their most formidable and forward-looking album yet. Improvised live in the studio, with each member contributing ideas and interpretive strategies, the result is a masterclass in spontaneous, collective composition.

Daring, imaginative, eclectic and always deeply groovy, Una Oportunidad más de triunfar en la vida is an infectious trip into the dark, pulsating heart of Bogota’s thrilling underground music scene.

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The album title translates as One more chance to succeed in life. Not that they need it. The trio of guitarist Eblis Alvarez, bassist Mario Galeano and drummer Pedro Ojeda has been successfully carving out a wildly idiosyncratic musical world since the release of their debut album in 2010, pushing the boundaries of instrumental Latin tropical music with bold infusions of psychedelia, dub, minimalism and more.

But their journey started a long time before that. All three attended the same high school and have been playing together for three decades, since they were around 15 years old. “We started with punk and heavy metal,” Ojeda recalls. “Then we were very interested in Colombian tropical music and traditional music from Colombia and Latin America, and that led us to focus on African music. It’s been a long road.”

Along the way, the unfettered, spontaneous improvisation of jazz has been a crucial touchstone. “When we started playing in an improvised setting, we were very influenced by free jazz from the ‘60s,” says Ojeda. “But now we are more into making music for the dance floor and music that has a beat and a strong feeling to dance to – especially in this latest album.”

The music on Una Oportunidad… stems from the venerable tradition of the groove-based jam session. “All of the tunes 100% come from improvisation sessions,” says Galeano. “With this album,” Ojeda elaborates, “we went to the studio in the morning every day for a week. Each of us would bring one or two ideas and we would start jamming, experimenting with those ideas. By lunchtime, we had one or two pieces based on those ideas and then, after lunch, we would record them. By the end of the week, we had the eight tracks that are on the record.”

Recording for the first time in the relaxed surroundings of Galeano’s studio, with Alvarez once again mixing and producing, Una Oportunidad… luxuriates in a relaxed intimacy. And, more than any other album they’ve released so far, it captures the immediacy of a live performance, with no overdubs or studio magic, just raw, in-the-moment invention. “Everything is happening live,” says Alvarez. “There are no tricks in there.”

That’s no mean feat given Los Pirañas’ unusual modus operandi. While Galeano and Ojeda lay down tight grooves informed by Colombian cumbia, Latin American rhythms, and West African highlife, Alvarez feeds his electric guitar through a laptop, layering circular loops in real time to build dense, complex arrangements. “All the loops are synchronised, and we try to fit over them. That was the challenge of this record,” says Alvarez. “Also, we are not recording to a click track,” Ojeda adds. “The loops are always moving because the tempo is always moving depending on the spirit of the moment. We have to make it groove, to make the loops groove with the band.”

It’s a method that adds a certain unpredictability to Los Pirañas’ jams. On tracks like “El nuevo Promoteo” you can hear these unmoored, living loops phasing in and out of sync like a Steve Reich minimalist composition. “El aguazo de Javier Felipe” slots together like a jerky Captain Beefheart tune. “Despectiva caridad” is laid back tropical dub. “Educados por Condorito (Y Don Ramón)” could almost be Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” fed through a punk rock filter. “Con mi burrito sabanero voy directo al matadero” is buoyant, party-starting highlife. “Los pendencieros del Latin” slithers and slides in trippy backwards guitar effects.

No matter what they’re doing, the three members of Los Pirañas do it from a place of freedom and joy. Each is well known for playing in popular Colombian bands outside of the trio – Alvarez with Meridian Brothers and Chúpame el dedo, Galeano with Frente Cumbiero and Ondatropica, Ojeda with Chúpame el dedo and Romperayo. “We are the main composers in each of those other bands,” says Galeano. “Los Pirañas is a place where we can just let go of this other way of doing music. We just start playing and then say ‘yeah, let’s go this way!’”

With their avant-garde twist on Latin tradition, Los Pirañas have built a strong fanbase among more adventurous and discerning listeners in the clubs of Bogota and on the stages of international festivals. “To the people who are into the traditional way of listening to tropical sounds, to salsa, to cumbia, this is super alien,” says Galeano. “Then for the people who are into rock, they hear these Latin sounds we play and it’s alien to them too.” But make no mistake, Los Pirañas are right at the vanguard of new possibilities in Latin music. “I think the times are changing,” says Alvarez. “Latin music is evolving. It’s going towards noise and electronics. The Latin community is growing, the generations have changed.”

Los Pirañas’ new album isn’t just One more chance to succeed in life. It’s a chance to hear the sound of tomorrow’s Latin music, today, in all its wild, joyful splendour.

01. Llanero soledeño 3:43
02. Infame Golpazo 3:09
03. Puerta del Sol 4:30
04. Espíritu de los seres humanos 3:44
05. Todos tenemos hogar 3:43
06. Palermo’s Grunch 5:05
07. El venado triste 3:42
08. Te regalo una licuadora 2:48
09. Quedar bien con el oyente 3:44
10. Rechazados por el mundo (Pompeya) 4:12

A celebrated instrumental supergroup featuring three of Bogotá’s most visionary musicians: Eblis Alvarez (Meridian Brothers, Chúpame el dedo), Mario Galeano (Frente Cumbiero, Ondatropica) and Pedro Ojeda (Romperayo, Chúpame el dedo). Fusing the experimental possibilities of South American rhythms and sonics (cumbia, champeta, tropicalia, salsa & more) with avant psych rock, dub minimalism and spiked jazz, Los Pirañas are retro-futurism at its finest.

Shapeshifted. Absurdist. Rooted. Prescient. A transmission from the outerzones.

The three members of Los Pirañas can all remember when they were in high school together in Bogotá, Colombia and just beginning to play music. Back then, the joy of a riff, the heavy beat and a ripple of guitar noise were all they needed to make life worthwhile. Twenty-five years on and they’ve become internationally well-known musicians, spread across different bands, traversing multiple continents. But together as Los Pirañas they’re about to release Historia Natural, their third album, recapturing the spirit that moved them as teenagers. Yet it’s a record that’s anything but basic. That youthful desire has been filtered through the prism of knowledge and time. Now it’s fuelled by a wily sophistication in the sound, and a deep, ingrained understanding of the rhythms that power their homeland. It’s innocence plus experience.

“To me, this album is going back to where we were in high school,” says drummer Pedro Ojeda, also known for his work in Romperayo. “We didn’t have so many goals back then. We wanted to play riffs, to express ourselves, to find that rough spirit.”

“We’re looking back, but with all this experience,” agrees guitarist Eblis Alvarez, who’s been part of the Meridian Brothers for two decades. “We were too much in a comfort zone, we were getting lazy about what to do next. So we talked and came up with some concepts. The three of us have a soul bond and a long history together.”

Although they’d played music together when young, Los Pirañas only came into being as a band 10 years ago. It gave them the chance to explore the complex vitality of Colombian rhythms mixed with Alvarez’s unique blend of computer and guitar. A combination of past and future, and a power trio unlike any other.

“There’s a huge Colombia repertoire of recordings that have influenced us,” Ojeda explains. “As a drummer, those rhythms have been my main inspiration. I try to get the feeling and the energy of those discs from the 1950s to the ‘70s in what I do with the band.”

Their debut release as Los Pirañas showcased the joys of “the trio format that was new to us,” while the band’s second release La Diversión Que Hacía Falta En Mi País came after a few years of touring. By then, Alvarez says, “we were confident in what we were doing, and more sophisticated.”

For a third outing they needed something to push them. They went searching for a nuanced naïveté and they found it, with Ojeda’s adroit drumming and the muscular bass work of Mario Galeano of Frente Cumbiero fame, providing a solid anchor for the music.

“Mario is always very clear in his playing,” Ojeda points out. “He’s never trying to show off. He doesn’t need to do that.”

Together, the pair create a mighty tropical noise that frees up Alvarez for his guitar experiments.

He’s been working with computers and music for two decades, feeding his guitar through a laptop. But there’s absolutely nothing mechanical or detached about the outcome.

“For me the emotional aspect of the music is the most important,” he insists. “We don’t use the computer the way most people do; we take the opposite approach. We don’t build from a computer track. It’s physical, it’s based on what I do, and the computer jumps in. It’s designed to go off in different directions and sounds.”

What makes all this even more impressive is that Historia Natural was recorded live in the studio, just like their previous releases; working that way has become an article of faith for Los Pirañas since they formed.

“The trio energy is unique,” Galeano says. “Every sound you hear on the album is us playing live. In the studio we jam and develop different takes on ideas. Much of what we do is improvised. We know each other so well that we’re very connected, the communication between us is completely natural. It’s why we don’t have to rehearse that much.”

And all through the album, Alvarez’s guitar is a shapeshifter, constantly mutating sound and texture. It rarely sounds straight up, but there’s never a doubt that someone is plucking the strings and bending the notes. Alvarez darts around and through the lines created by Ojeda and Galeano, leading or snapping at their heels. This is a band bristling with ideas, where the unspoken communication is so acute that all three of them can swerve together or turn on a dime. “Palermo’s Grunch,” for instance, is a surf trip along Colombia’s Caribbean coast powered by a vallenato rhythm that suddenly dives into deep, rippling dub, while “Rechazados Por El Mundo” carries the listener to an interstellar cumbia party zipping between the planets.

“Really, we’re just expressing ourselves the way we did when we were young,” Alvarez insists. “The difference is that we use computers and contemporary forms to fit into modern culture.”

And their particular culture revolves very much around Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, where they live and where they’ve always made music.

“The scene here is very important to us,” Alvarez says. “We’re very local guys, still doing what we love. We work with small, communal labels. We tour globally, but our hearts are very much here.”

A swirling, electric universe of music, created right in their own neighbourhood. That’s the real Historia Natural of Los Pirañas.

Eblis Alvarez: electric guitar, computer / Mario Galeano: bass / Pedro Ojeda: drums, percussion