Los Bitchos’ Label, City Slang describes them as, “London’s answer to Khruangbin if Khruangbin spent all weekend getting slammed on cheap tequila at a dive bar.” Here in Texas, we do love our Khruangbin and tequila, and Los Bitchos’s debut, Let the Festivities Begin! is a summer soundtrack made for Austinites. With production help from Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, the record feels like a twilight dive on a hot summer night into the community pool at your friend’s apartment complex. We don’t want to encourage getting day drunk near large bodies of water, especially when it’s this hot (it’s very easy to become dehydrated!), but you’d be hardpressed to find a better companion than Los Bitchos’ debut for such activities.
The Khruanbgin comparison is apt insofar as Los Bitchos is a psyche-tinted instrumental affair, but it doesn’t really tell the whole story. What both groups really share is for love for and deep digging into the world’s psychedelic music archive. Although they’ve lately begun exploring different psyche soils, Khruangbin’s sound coalesced around their understandable worship of Thailand’s psychedelic scene. On the other hand, Los Bitchos’ international influences come from their own unique upbringing, “I wanted to sound like Van Halen and Cocteau Twins – but from Turkey,” says multi-instrumentalist Serra Petale, who was born herself in Western Australia and takes a lot of inspiration from her mother’s 70s Anatolian rock records. Synth player Agustina Ruiz, who was born in Uruguay, introduced her bandmates to her Latin-American music collection and the intoxicating flavors of Columbia’s cumbia and Peru’s chicha. Swedish bass player Josefine Jonsson brings her home country’s uncanny pop sensibilities, and this oddly delicious cocktail all comes together with the punk rock attitude and energy courtesy of South London drummer Nic Crawshaw. Speaking of which, cheap tequila doesn’t taste cheap when it’s in a cocktail; may we recommend a Paloma or Margarita to pair with the video below?
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Set List:
“The Link is About to Die”
“Lindsay goes to Mykonos”
“Change of Heart”
Musicians:
Serra Petale (Guitar); Josefine Jonsson (Bass Guitar); Agustina Ruiz: Synth; Nic Crawshaw: Drums; Ryan Fitzgibbon: Guitar
Host: Ryan Wen
Producer: Deidre Gott
Cameras: Michael Minasi, Patricia Lim; Edit: Patricia Lim
Audio Engineers: Jake Perlman; Rene Chavez
Audio Mix: Rene Chavez
