Las Malas Amistades

Las Malas Amistades were born in Bogotá, Colombia (South America), in 1994. None of its members were musicians (or intended to become one) but they all liked music. They had met in college, some were art students, the others studied film, so music seemed to be a good meeting point. The idea was just to make music. No dreams of stardom or commercial success or plans to rule the world. The adoring fans would have to come from other activities. Since the first session a routine was stablished: they would make a song, record it and, once they were happy with it, make another one. No repeats, no playing live, no future: music made in a vacuum, created for its own sake, captured on a tape and listened to whenever the desire arose. “What kind of music do Las Malas Amistades play?”, people ask. Impossible to say. “What instruments do you play, then?”, people ask next, irritated and assuming that the lack of description is a far-fetched manerism to leave people intrigued, or, worse, to keep the music to themselves. Well, that is not the idea. The impossibility of description is a fact, anyone that listens to any song can confirm that. The instruments, though, can be listed: there are two keyboards (one a casiotone, the other a massive pawnshop-found synthesizer), an electronic drumset, an acoustic guitar, a four string guitar (traditionally used for música llanera and called ‘cuatro’) and several small percussion gadgets. In some songs the sound is all electronic, in others all acoustic but in most they just mix. Las malas amistades have released two records. The first one, ‘la música de las malas amistades’, compiled songs from the first five or six years of the band. The second one, ‘Jardín Interior’, was recorded in Bogotá in march 2005 and released the same year by the independent label psych-o-path records. Las malas amistades have played live 1.5 times. The half was a preparation for the one, that occurred in a Performance Festival in Cali. Due to the extreme shyness of some of the members, there are serious doubts about the possibility of ever playing live again. One of the members of las malas lives in New York City (not the super-shy one, another one) so they don’t make music as often as they would like to. On top of playing music, in 2001 Las Malas Amistades curated the show ‘un mundo de malas’ in the Galería Planetario, composed of videos made by friends of some of the songs in the first album. http://www.malasamistades.com/ Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.