Las Malas Amistades - Patio Bonito - World / Reggae - CD

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 Casio tone, 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.