INTERVIEW: Psychedelic disco cumbia — it’s a thing. And Locobeach is leading the way.
Photo: Locobeach offer music with psychedelic vibes, disco beats and cumbia sounds. Photo courtesy of the band / Provided by Press Junkie PR with permission.
Locobeach, a quintet out of Brooklyn, melds together cumbia pop, Latin disco and psychedelia, all for a unique combination that is wholly original and yet also influenced by many cultures and traditions. The band consists of José Luis Pardo on guitar/vocals, Neil Ochoa on conga/percussions/vocals, Joshua Camp on accordion/keyboard/vocals, Edward Marshall on bass and Fernando Valladares on timbales and drums.
On Saturday, Dec. 7, Locobeach are bringing their musical talents to the New City Brewery in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
They call themselves a supergroup because their origins can be found in other bands and shared connections. For example, according to press notes, Pardo and Ochoa are alumni of Los Crema Paraiso. Camp and Ochoa are also in Chicha Libre. All of them were in the same musical scene, and then they started to see value in their combined creativity.
“It was an organic process,” Camp said of the early days. “So myself and Neil Ochoa, the conga player, are still currently in a band called Chicha Libre, and that band about five years ago went on hiatus. And Neil and I definitely wanted to continue with the psychedelic cumbia sound we were doing in Chicha Libre.”
They hooked up with Pardo, also known as Cheo, who would sometimes come in and sub on guitar for Chicha Libre. They hit it off and realized they each complemented one another’s style, and some of them had shared roots, going back to Caracas, Venezuela.
“So that was the beginning of us, and the wheels started turning,” Camp said. “And around that time I released a solo record called C.A.M.P.O.S., which is just an acronym for ‘Cumbias and More Psychedelic Original Sounds’ and also a play on my last name, and because I had put that record out, I got a couple festival dates. And I put together this band very quickly with Cheo and Neil, and immediately realized this is a totally new thing. We need a new name. That was really how it all clicked.”
They continued playing under the name C.A.M.P.O.S. for a couple more shows, and then they started promoting themselves under the moniker Locobeach.
“We had a couple different names, which I won’t go into,” Camp said with a laugh. “A friend of his [Cheo], an older gentleman I think he’s an architect, he was telling us about the good old days in Caracas in the ’70s and mentioned that there was some kind of designer drug similar to I guess Love Boat, or something from that era, called Locobeach. We thought that’s perfect. That’s the name because it’s got Spanish and English. It translates and is easy to remember, and it’s a drug reference. It’s perfect.”
After they formed, the band didn’t immediately spend all of its time in the studio because the members of Locobeach needed to find their sound first, and they decided to conduct this musical exploration on the road with live gigs.
“We had the skills to record and document, and we did a little in the beginning,” Camp said. “But I really feel like the band developed live more than in the studio. … It really changed the whole vibe and feel when we started playing regular shows here in Brooklyn. That was a good way to do it because at first we were all bringing our previous projects’ attitude, and I think it needed a little time to marinate with the five of us to come up with our own sound. That’s what you’re hearing on the record, about a year of workshopping stuff live before we went back in and put an album together.”
That record is their new release, appropriately dubbed Psychedelic Disco Cumbia, which speaks to their journey of finding that unique sound amidst many talents and many lived experiences.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Locobeach’s new album is called Psychedelic Disco Cumbia. They play Saturday, Dec. 7 at the New City Brewery in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Click here for more information and tickets.
