“En el caribe también pasa esto”, the second album by Álvaro Buendía as solois, constantly undulates between the alternative folk ballad and the psychedelia of the champeta, mixing poetic lyrics, philosophical reflections and personal experiences to give us a deep and charming album, ideal to sit and watch the afternoon fall.
♪♫ Listen: “Desde Dentro” + album stream
Raw and intimate, that’s the Ruzto’s latest album, another one of Bogotá’s rap figures today. In “Efecto Espectador”, you feel the liberation, the pain, the frustration and the desperation that emerged every day as an immigrant in the United States. A compilation of his stories, but also what could well be the strory of any Latino feeling himself as a intrusive in foreign lands.
♪♫ Listen: “Historia de tren” + album stream
This trío of ambient rock, stoner, post-rock and psychedelic experimentation, is one of the jewels of the emerging Bogota scene.
Its sound goes from the contemplative to the frenetic, a cozy noise that embraces and becomes a perfect soundtrack to walk through the chaotic city, or meditate on a mountain.
♪♫ Listen: “El alma y las nubes son formas” + album stream
Las Áñez are the most charming rarity in Bogotá. Their music is kind of indescribable folklore and their voices have the gift of turning the environment into a kind of fable.
Suffice it with a sampler, minor percussions and their voices that overlap one another, to create something simply magical.
♪♫ Listen: “Pensar y Pensar” + album stream
Another one of the big surprises that 2017 left us in regards to new projects, was Moügli, one of the acts that without a doubt we have to have on the radar.
“Lado B”, his last release it’s an EP of four minimalist songs with tropical forest sounds and sensations that make us trip in a wet and cool atmospheres, and also is inserted in the growing wave of Andean electronics to give us absolutely dreamy songs.
♪♫ Listen: “Manglar” + album stream
A drum ritual reverberates in the middle of a futuristic jungle. The machines and the electronic details enhance the trance of Caribbean folklore and serve as an excuse to warm the blood even more.
Ghetto Kumbé’s “Soy Selva” EP, it reflects that power of joining traditional ancestral rhythms with the electronic avant-garde and to take from it something absolutely amazing.
♪♫ Listen: “Soy Selva” + album stream
N.Hardem is part of the new blood in Colombian hip hop and is perhaps one of the strongest MC in the Bogota scene.
His latest album “Lo que me eleva” is a portrait of his childhood and adolescence, as well as a look at what surrounds him in the midst of routine.
An album that in addition to the precise lyric of Hardem, also comes with El Arkeologo on the beats, one of the best beatmakers in Colombia.
♪♫ Listen: “Otro Agosto” + album stream
The always restless and unstoppable creative mind of Ela Minus, surprised us again in 2017 with an EP that somehow closes what she started with “First Words” in 2015.
“Adapt.”, her most recent work is an excuse to abstract from the chaos. With only four songs she manages to make a charming introspection in which she also presents his fears, emotional detachment and the impatience of constantly wanting to escape.
A dark but charming album with an impeccable and minimalist production that achieves a liberating trance.
♪♫ Listen: “a.r.p.” + album stream
MULA is noise, distortion and frenzy and the new album “Resiliente” is a faithful example of that spirit that does not allow itself to be pigeonholed and that can not be defined within a single genre. What he does feel with this album is a kind of despair, a longing and a redeeming agony.
If noise is your thing, MULA will blow your head.
♪♫ Listen: “Petricor” + album stream
Magallanes is one of the most amazing projects that showed up in the Colombian scene in 2017. Between vaporwave and electronic experimentation, the band brings their sound to the sensory field giving us an LP inspired by the history of apparitions and prophecies of the Virgin of Fatima, accompanied by a visual work that bears some relation to Catholic aesthetics and all the mysticism it comprises.
Eight enveloping and mystical songs that invite you to float in extraterrestrial dimensions.
♪♫ Listen: “El idioma de las cosas” + album stream
Nihilist and melancholic. Punk and pop at the same time.
With his debut album “Me cansé de llorar voy a vomitar” Las Yumbeñas, one of the new faces in the emerging Bogota scene, managed to take us to existentialism with extremely honest songs that explore the cruelty of love from his insolence and with a punk depressive attitude, but at the same time fun.
Listening to them is a pain that strangely feels good.
♪♫ Listen: “Melancólica” + album stream
Granuja’s debut album is a truth machine, a notebook of the mundane, a detailed, playful and ironic narrative where the Medellín streets and social dinamics, is the source of inspiration. An album that covers much of what happens in the capital paisa, seen from the eyes of an ingenious rapper whose ironic rhymes demonstrate the power behind a hoarse voice, direct and full of poison.
♪♫ Listen: “Granuggio 2200” + album stream
After getting us sweaty on the dancefloor with “Moni Moni”, his 2016 album that was part of this juicy selection, Cero 39 returned in 2017 with “Mis Tierras Calientes”.
On this EP of five songs, the slowly dembow meets the experimental electronics to create a sensual trance that forces you to indulge in dance.
It’s a night of celebration in the tropics of the future.
♪♫ Listen: “Mucura” + album stream
The carranga is perhaps one of the traditional Colombian rhythms with less exposure worldwide, however Los Rolling Ruanas, managed to make this one of the most frenetic genres making a combination with the powerful bases of rock in different formats.
Just listen to their covers of “A hard day’s night” by The Beatles, “Paint it black” by The Rolling Stones and “Toxicity” by System Of a Down or “Crazy Little Thing…” by Queen, to realize the band genius emerging with desire to devour the whole world with his carranga rock.
♪♫ Listen: “Hoy Para Siempre” + album stream
The great beats of El Arkeologo, the pungent lyrics of Kaztro and Gambeta, and a list of songs whose spirit seeks to extol some of the most representative figures of hip hop in Colombia, make of “Servicios Ambulatorioz”, a mandatory disc to understand the past and present of the genre in the country.
This is a letter of thanks from Alcolirykoz to those who helped to build hip hop in Colombia, to pay tribute to artists such as La Etnnia, Rocca and Rulaz Plazco.
♪♫ Listen: “Tararea” + album stream
Elkin Robinson is one of the great jewels of Colombian island music.
His mix of sounds that includes mento, calypso, soca, roots reggae and Caribbean folklore, has as a result in “Sun a Shine”, a cathartic, minimalist and dreamy album that also turns out to be a Caribbean songbook where they are portrayed, as photographs for the memory, songs that speak of sunsets, cultural revolutions, odes to love and keep the tradition alive.
An absolutely beautiful album.
♪♫ Listen: “Sun a Shine” + album stream
Meridian Brothers is a band that never disappoints and “¿Dónde estás María?” is not anexception. In this album the genius of Eblis Álvarez is not only in the musical and instrumental, but also in the lyrical.
With a delirious and acidic humor, with a full and empowering rebellion, with some criticisms of the current industry and with a totally anachronistic sound, this is an exquisite album that explores the tropical Latin American music of yesteryear and deconstructs it to offer it to us as an exotic and wonderful jewel.
♪♫ Listen: “¿Dónde Estás María?” + album stream
Nidia Góngora and Quantic are like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, a dream couple whose music manages to create an atmosphere where everything is sublime.
In 18 songs, the Colombian cantaora and the English producer achieved the perfect synchronization between subtle electronic and chameleonic power of the sound of the Colombian Pacific music, portraying day-to-day stories and transforming them into narrations worthy of that magical realism that García Márquez spoke.
♪♫ Listen: “Que me duele?” + album stream
Quantic on Bandcamp, Facebook, Twitter. Nidia Góngora on Facebook, Twitter.
Listening to Mitú, the bogota based duo formed by Julián Salazar and Franklin Tejedor a.k.a Lamparita, is to enter on a trance of electronic jungle, a ritual dance that goes from the minimalist to the frenetic.
Cosmus is an injection of adrenaline that makes you feel alive in a universe where only matters the movement of bodies that are attracted and seduce so then they can separate freely and move at will.
Techno of the jungle, digital cumbia and a tropical spirit runs through your veins through these 11 tracks.
♪♫ Listen: “Fiebre” + album stream
After 5 years since his first album Ondatrópica Vol 1, the dream team of contemporary classical sound that brings together figures of the old school with new representatives of Colombian music, is back.
Baile Bucanero, commanded by William Holland aka Quantic and Mario Galeano aka Frente Cumbiero, is a journey of 15 contemplative and carnal songs where the mystic dub, the ritual of the cumbia, the magic of the Pacific music, the ragga and the Caribbean calypso, are the vehicle to completely immerse yourself in landscapes where there are no borders, and where we all are brothers.
♪♫ Listen: “Hummingbird” + album stream