I am not a huge fan of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and the first time I was invited to see Palenke Soultribe, it was at a concert celebrating the release of their album, Mar and I had my reservations about them.
The venue where they were playing was probably not the most appropriate place for what I had heard about this band and their audiovisual performances. When I saw the set up on stage, there were the usual EDM gear, lap tops and some keyboards, but I also saw a drum set, percussion instruments and a bass guitar, and I thought, “this will be interesting”. Within seconds after Palenke Soultribe took the stage, they blew me away with their live energy and pulsating rhythms that would make a dead person dance.
The next time I saw Palenke Soultribe was at the Mayan Theater and they were even more impressive as they were able to better showcase their audiovisual attack which included a combination of live video shots of the band on stage and other images that moved along with the rhythm of their music and there was no doubt why they have become favorites in music festivals all over Europe.
Palenke Soultribe is made up by producer/bassist Juan Diego Borda and keyboardist/producer Andres “Popa” Erazo who are joined on stage by drummer Argel Cota and percussionist Clodomiro Montes Jr.
We had the opportunity to chat with Juan Diego Borda and Andres “Popa” Erazo and here is an excerpt of our conversation.
Al Borde – You have just finished another successful tour through Europe and Canada, tell us about your experience.
Palenke Soultribe – It was an incredible experience, great shows, we learned a lot, there were so many different cultures and they were all digging our music so it gives us hope for the future.
You had been to Europe before but not at this grand scale.
Yes, we had been there before, but this time we there for about a month and a half, and it was basically one show after another and often we would be in a different country from one show to the next. We would normally play live from Thursday through Sunday and the rest of the time we would be doing promotion and rehearsing. One thing about doing this long tours is that it gives you the chance to experiment on stage, we would try out new songs, often times we would change things around on the songs we would normally play and you can only do that when you are in that touring mode and although it was a grueling schedule, it was great fun playing and experimenting.
Are you working on any new music at this time?
We are actually working on the third part of a trilogy of yellow, blue and red which represents the Colombian flag, our first album back in 2009, was yellow, “Mar” or “Pulpo” was the blue one and now we are working on the red, but we are still trying to figure out which direction we want to go with this new album, but we definitely want to have more of a live sound because after this experience through Europe, we definitely want to incorporate what Argel on drums and Clodomiro on percussion bring into the mix and it would be a sin not to have that energy and sound on a good recording. Our previous albums were created with an electronic perspective but we want to capture that rawness of a live performance and we want that blood, sweat and passion that we feel on stage and we hope to have the album out by spring of next year.
If you haven’t experienced the magic of Palenke Soultribe on stage, I highly recommend you see them this Saturday November 1st at the Dia De Los Muertos concert at Grand Park in downtown L.A. If you are already a fan, then you know what to expect and can’t miss this opportunity to bask in the energy and passion Palenke Soultribe once again.
