PREMIÈRE: NYC’s Los Cumpleaños’ tropical sound flow in new video, ‘Agua’
03 March, 2020Los Cumpleaños are a NYC-based quartet who mix tropical rhythms and experimental sounds into energetic, danceable, free-form musical experiences. They cite influences as diverse as Colombian accordion legend Lisandro Meza, free jazz iconoclast Sun Ra, and genre-defying tastemakers like Flying Lotus and Tame Impala.
“Agua” is the the lead single and title track from their forthcoming debut EP of the same name, out the 22nd of May. The song’s music video (which clocks in at a little more than four minutes as opposed to the glorious track’s nearly 10-minute version on Bandcamp!) was shot on a macro camera lens, and shows a body becoming a landscape as water flows over it, while lines between skin pigmentation and gender are blurred.
The band will play a single and video release party on Tuesday, the 10th of March, at The Sultan Room in Brooklyn.
Los Cumpleaños are comprised of percussionist/vocalist Nestor Gomez, Jr., from Barranquilla, who roots the group with a deep cultural knowledge of music from Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Drummer Lautaro Burgos, who hails from Chaco, Argentina, fluidly mixes his pan-South American musical knowledge with his love of digital percussion sounds & music production.
Americans Eric Lane on keyboards and Alex Asher on trombone have played together since meeting as students at a notable free-jazz music conservatory in 2005. They share a love of avant-garde, experimental music, contemporary music production aesthetics as well as music from West Africa & Latin America.
Members of the band have played with a variety of notable artists including: Beyoncé, Joan as Police Woman, Anibal Velazquez, Lizandro Meza, Porfi Baloa y sus Adolescentes and MAKU Soundsystem. In addition to musical influences, the group credits the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alejandro Jodorovsky, Terence Mckenna and Nobuhiko Obayashi as essential to their sound.
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