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2LP
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HJR 057LP
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Gatefold double LP version. Las Malas Amistades -- "the bad influences" -- are from Bogota, in Colombia; Maleza is their third album for Honest Jon's. Lovingly assembled, it presents 28 exquisite variations of saudade (a Portuguese term associated with poetic notions of love and nostalgia), in an acoustic, post‐punk take on Tropicalismo -- knockabout, impromptu, snapshot and sublime. Vice Magazine describes Las Malas Amistades' music as "kind of like if the Young Marble Giants sang in Spanish and didn't fully know how to play." Maleza was recorded over a period of four years at member Humberto Junca's house in the middle of a busy and chaotic neighborhood. One member illustrates, however, the record "sounds as peaceful and quiet as if it were recorded in some cave in the hills...
If you read the lyrics for the songs in Maleza, you may think that these four years were especially eventful in the sentimental department. There is a lot of despair and anger and distrust, as if each one of us had looked for and found an especially ill‐suited person to go out with so we could write a couple of sad songs about the whole experience. But if you don't read the lyrics and just listen to the music, both vocal and instrumental, you might get a different idea. It all sounds very peaceful and fragile, as if beneath that layer of anger there was always a melancholic yet hopeful stream."
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CD
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HJR 057CD
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Las Malas Amistades -- "the bad influences" -- are from Bogota, in Colombia; Maleza is their third album for Honest Jon's. Lovingly assembled, it presents 28 exquisite variations of saudade (a Portuguese term associated with poetic notions of love and nostalgia), in an acoustic, post‐punk take on Tropicalismo -- knockabout, impromptu, snapshot and sublime. Vice Magazine describes Las Malas Amistades' music as "kind of like if the Young Marble Giants sang in Spanish and didn't fully know how to play." Maleza was recorded over a period of four years at member Humberto Junca's house in the middle of a busy and chaotic neighborhood. One member illustrates, however, the record "sounds as peaceful and quiet as if it were recorded in some cave in the hills...
If you read the lyrics for the songs in Maleza, you may think that these four years were especially eventful in the sentimental department. There is a lot of despair and anger and distrust, as if each one of us had looked for and found an especially ill‐suited person to go out with so we could write a couple of sad songs about the whole experience. But if you don't read the lyrics and just listen to the music, both vocal and instrumental, you might get a different idea. It all sounds very peaceful and fragile, as if beneath that layer of anger there was always a melancholic yet hopeful stream."
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CD
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HJR 029CD
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Patio Bonito is the second Las Malas Amistades release on Honest Jon's. Las Malas Amistades -- "the bad friends" -- formed in 1994, when several art students in Bogota, Colombia, began meeting up to play music together (though none of them were musicians). From the start, their method has been to make up songs there at the session, sometimes while their four-track is already running, moving straight on when something is caught on the tape. Six members use a hulking charity-shop synth and a Casiotone, electronic drums, an acoustic guitar, a cuatro and various small percussion gadgets. Sometimes songs are acoustic, sometimes electronic, usually mixed. The music is spontaneous, intimate, spare. It's lovely, heartfelt, full of poppy wit and beauty, about to fall apart. Patio Bonito was recorded with the natural percussion of the raindrops hitting the tiles on the roof. In Bogota, when it rains so much, people tend to stay indoors and probably that spirit of confinement can also be heard on the record (although less clearly than the rain). As one member illustrates, the record "sounds like that brief and pineapple-y interval when the rain stops, the clouds open up, the light shines and people realize that the sun hasn't gone anywhere, that it was always up there, waiting to shine again."
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