by Mauro Ferreiro
'Cool as a cucumber'. Those were the first words that came to mind when I first saw them; when I met Paulo Olarte Toro and Andrea Olarte Toro, creative heads of the Colombian musical think-tank Acid Coco, I was knee-deep into a few merengue back-catalogues from back in the day, when Billo Frómeta's Caracas Boys first sailed to the shores of Antioquia to spread the gospel across the mother continent. Those days of yore have taught us a lot, more so that us Latinos are a kaleidoscope of attitudes, ideas and emotions, all of which transcend geographical barriers and coalesce into everlasting collective identities. Weird how strangers can become friends, weird how when I saw these two, I saw a bit of myself in them, which is why I agreed to do this piece in the first place. Are they siblings, cousins? I don't know, but their vibe is high and their sound is crisp. Delve with me into this quirky, live conversation with these two dreamers, explorers, music-makers, and overall extravagant human beings...
Mauro: Hi guys!
Paulo: Hey what's up.
Andrea: Hey there!
M: For some reason I thought you guys would call me from the same place.
P: Well today we decided to give ourselves a little break from each other [laughs] so...
M: Both of you live in Berlin?
A: I live in Berlin and Paulo lives in Geneva.
M: Oh ok sick, are you guys brother and sister?
P: We'll let you unravel that mystery on your own!
M: Hahaha well fair enough, [opens can] I like to drink some Coke when having a chat is that ok?
A: As they say in Colombia, Coke is the spark of life.
M: It's such a big thing over there, there's nothing more satisfying than going over to your grandma's house and having some rice and beans with platanitos, steak and a can of Coke.
A: Rice and beans with a can of Coke, next level stuff.
P: Yeah! And it's so bad for you too [everyone laughs] but it's such a good revitalising drink when you need one, I guess you'd never expect that from something that is so bad for you.
M: I know right... I was really intrigued with your music when Justin got in contact with me to interview you guys, I've always been super interested in that marriage of traditional, folkloric elements with electronic music, especially when coming out of Latin America. I wanted to ask you both, where did you grow up?
A: We lived most of our childhood between Bogotá and Cali. We never really grew up somewhere 'fixed', and it was also a way for us to experience our homeland.
M: What impact did home have on your sound?
P: It's incredible that in Colombia you have all these different sounds depending on the coastline you're in. Some of these styles such as bullerengue are still very very pure to their origin... tons of percussions just hitting hard, the chants and rhythms, those parties really feel like being in Africa 500 years ago, you feel that ancestral energy in the playing, even when it has received some contemporary influence in the vocal aspect from hip-hop and R&B and all that stuff. There's also porro which is very close to cumbia sonically speaking, but it has some elements which make it a bit different. And there's champeta, which involved this massive cultural exchange between the Caribbean coast of Colombia and West Africa, with all the soukous and Congolese rumba coming into our country in the early '80s via the stores that stocked those records way back when. So musicians in Barranquilla and Cartagena started to make their own interpretations of that sound by recording vocals on top of the tracks like backing tapes, making different versions of key songs and this whole new genre came about. Champeta really means machete, more specifically what you use to cut plantains from the trees, so in those parties you would usually have a few people dancing with machetes in the crowd, add on top of that these new Yamaha and Casio keyboards from the era, which were used to give the sound a modern 'edge' alongside all these electric guitars, bass patterns, quirky samples in the keyboards, and you have a crazy mixture in your hands. Colombia is a melting pot of everything you can imagine, and all that influence was very important for us in starting to create our music.
M: That's crazy.
P: We also have the indigenous influence which is precisely where we get the melodies of porro and cumbia, through that fusion between Africa and America, but we also have the Pacific coastline which is almost exclusively Afrodescendant demographically, so there is this richness in our culture which is more informed by these people rather than by our Spanish ancestors, in my opinion.
M: Also think Spain was part of various Arab caliphates for much of its histor—
P: Exactly!
M: Yeah, so it's all very interconnected, even at that level. When I think of cumbia and that guitar influence, I feel that it definitely has some origin in Andalusia and the Arab world...
P: I agree!
M: Andrea I love this guy.
A: Well, he's really freaky with all this stuff, but that's how he comes up with all those sounds.
M: What kind of stuff did you guys listen to at home?
A: Alright well, I would say that we had a very diverse musical upbringing from the beginning, not only listening to a lot of local music but also tons of stuff from abroad. Think jazz, krautrock, reggae, and anything in between, we were always listening to music from all over the world.
M: I can tell, talk to me a bit about your ventures outside of Acid Coco, you were part of various bands along the years including this reggae one in Colombi—
A: You mean DonKey Records?
M: Yes indeed.
A: Right so, when we were still in Bogotá, I was really into the local reggae scene, and DonKey Records was a venture I founded with a few close friends to compose some songs through our own personal project. I was one of the vocalists, obviously [smirks], and we made a few songs, played a bit around the city, but it was very short-lived... soon thereafter I moved to Miami.
M: I see, so it was just a small chapter in your life?
A: Yes of course, but it was such an enlightening part of my trajectory, we had a lot of support from our scene and we were very involved in press and things like that, we were featured in a few local mags and newspapers and such, this was all back in 2007 something like that.
M: It definitely influences you 'til this day.
A: Exactly... plus reggae is such an important part of my life, it literally oozes out of me, every fibre of my being is made of reggae!
M: I know I know, reminds me of all this music I find, I mean, reggae is so malleable and I see it's always being crossed over with some other geographical influence. Do you guys plan on doing something similar for this next album?
A: We have some stuff recorded along those lines... but the album explores many other aesthetics that were very new for us.
M: Paulo, what was your time like in the world of club music? Moreover, how did these experiences influence Acid Coco?
P: Well, I would say that it was a really exciting time in my life, I got to tour a lot and meet a lot of people, it was an era that really helped me hone my skills as producer, and it allowed me to get to that point where I could polish the sounds I was imagining in my head into something tangible. It was never my 'passion' per se, it wasn't the same as for example, when I was mid-set and I got that impulse of playing some salsa, I don't know some Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz let's say, and the love that made me feel. I always did it as a way to harken back to that electricity you have in Cali, which is a ciudad salsera at its core, salsa is for me what reggae is to Andrea. So yeah, I think with Acid Coco and all those skills I learnt through fine-tuning our productions, we are now more where we want to be sound-wise.
M: You felt you had that necessity of going back to your roots.
P: That urge was always there from the beginning. There is a lot of individualism in the electronic music world and I think as Latinos, we approach our creativity through a collective lens, music creation is a social affair you know? So I think that 'something' was always missing during all my years playing and living abroad.
M: I feel the same way, I also asked because, when I hear you guys' music, you can hear that 'artisanal' touch in each song, you know like, a clean mix, bold sound design, things that are quite distinctive of well produced music.
P: Absolutely.
M: You can really hear that work put in during the production stage. Which brings me to the songwriting, how do you guys approach your storytelling?
P: Both us are always writing and coming up with new ideas, Sometimes it's either Andrea by herself or us both, I also write some lines here and there but usually Andrea comes up with something, she sings it back to me, we change it up, get it on paper, or we get in the studio and record whatever comes to mind, there's that connection so we go off the fly most of the time.
M: How did you guys come up with "El Amor De Mis Amores"?
A: This was a funny one 'cause we were sitting around the coffee table one day, and Paulo had his acoustic guitar and he was just jamming there sitting down, just playing this groove and I just started singing... you know trying to get the lyrics I had in mind out of my head and into the chords right? And it came out really fast and sort of uneasy, so I told Paulo 'naaah I don't like it' and he was like 'nonono it's great keep going!' so I literally just went with it and it ended up sounding awesome.
M: It sounds incredible and it's something really hard to pull off, that fast rapping articulation.
A: The thing is, when I get on a groove and I start feeling it, and then I start improvising on the track, words just start dribbling inside my head, little do I know I get all crazy and my tongue just starts falling out of my mouth! [grimace]
M: Hahaha!
P: Jesus...
M: It also sounds completely organic, like not quantised at all.
P: It's not quantised, we have some loops that are triggered but even our drum machines I will play by hand, we try to keep it as raw and true to the performance as possible.
M: I'd love to know a bit more about your upcoming LP and more importantly, what's the vision for Acid Coco in the following years? When I came to the UK I realised how popular your country's music is over here, but how repetitive its interpretations have become. Do you guys have any plans for reinventing your country's sound and taking, for example cumbia, out of its current echo chamber?
P: Well, what you are saying is actually not that off because for example, sometimes when we are making music the guys 'on top' always tell us 'we need to make more reguetón' or whatever I mean... I agree reguetón is super cool but there's like, 300 million reguetón tracks out there and we're not trying to make the same music as everyone. We're trying to compose what comes naturally out of our hearts, we don't even wanna think about it, we just wanna do it. When we go into the studio, we don't come in with a perfect blueprint of a hit track, we go in there to create a cosmos, and when you create that cosmos with fellow musicians, you reach new dimensions and that's the beauty of it, not making what will 'sell' or what is 'hot'. So what's been cooking for the album has developed sort of how El Chavo del Ocho used to say, 'sin querer queriendo'. (Editor's note: Wanting something without pushing it, doing so seamlessly.)
M: When is it coming out?
A: Pretty sure it's the first week of October right?
P: Yes.
A: It's coming out on vinyl and we had the cover art made by our lovely Daria Mechkat which is just, wow... unbelievable really. She's really helped us out in guiding us in like, the aesthetic that we wanted as artists and the colours we wanted to use. Because sometimes you need that outside input.
Mucho Gusto by Acid Coco, art direction, illustration, and graphic design by Daria Mechkat.
M: I feel the same way. As a musician, sometimes you need to let your designer friends take the reins in that particular aspect.
P: She co-directed the music video for "El Amor de Mis Amores" and she also did all the creative direction for that, and well, that cover illustration, amazing... the plan with the record was always to leave a physical token of our work in the world, and we have received so much positive feedback on our project thus far, and going back to what you were saying, we've had some talks with the label regarding the direction of the duo and such, but we don't budge, 'cause we know what we want, so yeah.
M: Especially with a project such as this one, which has massive potential for the mainstream market, but so much more opportunity for risk-taking and experimentation.
P: Totally agree.
M: I completely understand, sometimes bureaucracy stifles creativity. Any collabs on the new record?
A: Not at the moment no.
M: So purely you guys' stuff? That's brilliant.
P: Yup, so it's a total of 10 tracks, 5 on each side, around 42 minutes in total, we're really proud of being able to create all that material.
M: You should! I wanted to ask you guys if you have any future plans of touring in Colombia or even moving back there?
P: Right now with the whole pandemic things have become a bit complicated, you can't even tour here in Europe, everything's closed... our music is doing amazing but, we can't play it out or promote the record at shows, it is what it is though. So absolutely, one of the first things we have in mind after all this blows over is doing a nice tour around Colombia and Latin America, moving back there is in the plans but not for now, we still have a lot of moving around to do, next stop for me at least is Cape Verde, I'll be moving slowly down the African continent with no end in sight...
M: And I also feel there's this beautiful mystery in the vinyl market of getting your record into small shops and not knowing who bought it or who gifted it to someone else, and with the whole industry in Latin America growing so much right now, there's so much room for that to happen. I mean, if you could see your record in one country, where would you like it to be?
A: I'd love for our album to reach the hands of many people in Mexico, Peru, Colombia since we always make music with our homeland in mind, there's also so much music going on over there musically right now.
P: I'd also love to see it in places like Senegal, Japan, Haiti, and some other countries where El Dragón Criollo was really popular. But obviously I wanna see it in Colombia because it will be a sort of return to home, where most of our family and friends are still. And as Andrea said, it's important to take it into broader Latin America where people will capture the feeling and nuance behind the tracks, how you for example interpret our lyrics and identify certain hidden meanings, when you do that I tell myself like 'yeah he gets it'... and that familiarity is so important for people to identify with our music at a deeper level. But music has no frontiers, music is for everyone, no need to understand the language, because you will understand the colours of the music...
M: In the Caribbean we always tend to look at South America as this big developed continent with this big music industry, and before the pandemic there were a lot of bookings happening between each region... but in Latin America we always tend to project ourselves outward, to the US or Europe, when we could literally just thrive off of touring inside our own region.
P: Yes exactly, that's why I was telling you that I really want Acid Coco to go over there because I do it for our people, and I think it's time for our people to work together as a community.
M: Of course.
P: And something along those lines which is a delicate topic but is something close to me is the subject of cultural appropriation, which is very prevalent these days with people using our rhythms, our language, our culture in general without even understanding it, and no one says anything about it. That's why it's important to support this massive independent Latino movement happening right now so we can finally start representing our own culture ourselves. Also the fact that our people are starting to actually be proud of their heritage, before it was always about American culture, nowadays the new generation wants to represent their origins and music and be who they have always been.
A: The thing is, if we don't make our music ourselves. it will always be lacking that spark, and it will always fall flat compared to the real thing. There's this flavour in us, an affinity to what makes us so unique, that we can only do this ourselves, and we can only look to the future with our people. It's the only way, and thankfully, it's our way.
If you thought that was fun, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Paulo and Andrea are a much needed breath of fresh air in our overly serious society, adapting their roots without much exotic fluff, and letting their energy speak for themselves. After we were done with the interview, we kept our little call going on for a while, reminiscing about the homeland and letting our radiators do the rest of the work for us. Leaving formalities aside, these two have some outstanding potential, so keep them on your radar if you can. Mucho Gusto is out October 2nd on all streaming platforms and select digital stores, so if you can cop that make sure you do, maybe let your inner vertebrate break free. It sure makes me wanna dance, and maybe you Brits could learn how to dance our stuff too!
Mauro Ferreiro is an electronic producer and musician from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He is one half of experimental jazz duo Error Subcutáneo and collaborator for Truth & Lies Magazine.
Follow @mauroferreiro on Instagram