on cherry red vinyl - It all began with the psychedelic weirdness of Los Pasteles Verdes.
About 20 years ago, guitarist, producer and Black Pumas co-founder Adrian Quesada was driving in his home base of Austin, Texas when the 1975 balada classic “Esclavo y Amo” by Peruvian band Los Pasteles Verdes played on a local AM station. Quesada was mesmerized by the song’s dark, baroque melodrama.
“I swear to God, I had to pull over because I had never heard anything like it,” he recalls with a laugh. “I was like, what the hell is this? Sounds like a romantic breakup on LSD. It completely, literally blew my mind. I then went to a record store that sold mostly Regional Mexican, got a Greatest Hits compilation and listened to it for many nights in a row. The music was sinister, so overly dramatic in a super funky way that sounded like a hip-hop sample. I almost expected Wu-Tang Clan to come on and start rapping.”
What Quesada had discovered was the sophisticated – and slightly delirious – cultural movement of balada music that blossomed throughout Latin America between the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. A refined collision of bossa nova smoothness, Beatlesque psychedelia and torrid boleropathos, balada used art-pop instrumentation (mostly strings and harpsichords) and the warmth of analogue recording to maximum effect. It employed songs about heartbreak and longing as a means to transport the listener to an opulent, cinematic fantasy world.
Now, Quesada has penned a love letter to that golden era through Boleros Psicodélicos, a stunning album that lovingly recreates the specificity of the balada sound, adding a stellar list of guest vocalists, intriguing contemporary touches and just a hint of irony.
