LOS PIRAÑAS - Una Oportunidad más de triunfar en la vida

The first single from the album is "El Nuevo Prometeo“ (The New Prometheus), a spontaneous composition built upon unmoored, "living" guitar loops that phase in and out of sync like a Steve Reich minimalist composition.

Drummer Pedro Ojeda tells us this about the track: "like all the other pieces on the album, this is a hybrid creation where the ideas of all three musicians are merged. The rhythms of the drums and bass are a nod to the African Música Picotera from Cartagena and Barranquilla and also to the Palenquero rhythm from San Basilio de Palenque. The harmonies and melodies also look towards African music, perhaps music which comes from Benin or Nigeria. These are harmonies and melodies of hypnotic tranquility. Harmonies and melodies that are also a little melancholic.“

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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.