Imagine 60’s Woodstock Santana if he had started playing music in the year 3050: that’s the music of Los Cumpleaños. The experimental electro Bullerengue group from NYC have announced their debut EP, Agua, will be out May 22 via Clandestine.
The four-piece of Nestor Gomez, Lautaro Burgos, Alex Asher, and Eric Lane, came together in an eclectic way that have to make you believe this band was meant to be: playing as a blues band at a show together for a corporate bourbon event for which they were hired and realizing that their audience was drunk, they livened things up with Cumbia and other tropical rhythms.
A month later, they got a gig at a birthday part and on the way to the show were asked what they were called. Los Cumpleaños. It was a joke, and then it wasn’t and the band never looked back.
Nestor being from Baranquilla, Colombia, Laura being from Chaco, Argentina, and Alex and Eric being from the U.S. is a huge reason for the large clash and diversity and range that the band shows in their music.
The different members of the band have played with different large profile artists ranging from Beyoncé, Joan as Police Woman, Anibal Velazquez, Lizandro Meza, Porfi Baloa y sus Adolescentes and MAKU Soundsystem.
They list the influences of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alejandro Jodorovsky, Terence Mckenna and Nobuhiko Obayashi as essential to their sound.
Agua Track Listing:
- Camarones
- Agua
- Sonrisa
- Baila La Cumbia
By Antonio Villaseñor-Baca