A Colombian, Madrid-based poet, singer-songwriter and surrealist, Julián Mayorga returns on January 15th, 2027, via Glitterbeat, with his tenth album, Chispeaba la sangre en el hierbal (Blood was spattering on the grass). The description, “dreamlike visions and avant-cumbia experimentation”, is totally apt; just listen to and watch the accompanying video for his lead single, Mi Mama.
Both the video and music are strangely intoxicating, drawing you in to his vivid reimagining of South American music and folklore. “If traditional Colombian or Latin American music is a river, I am not outside that river,” he says. “It’s just that where I swim there is a whirlpool of leaves and branches and old clothes and blood and bones and other filth.”
He fashions his own idiosyncratic sound from self-made instruments, Mayorga notes, “I have a percussion set that includes dinner plates, knives, saucepan lids, bakery trays, a petrol can, a set of cowbells I bought from a farming shop, metal rods I’ve found in the street, wooden boxes, and so on. A scrap-metal gamelan.”
Pre-Order via Bandcamp (DL/CD/LP): https://julianmayorga.bandcamp.com/album/chispeaba-la-sangre-en-el-hierbal