Colombia’s BALTHVS bring their psychedelic cumbia to recordBar this Sunday

BALTHVS. // photo by Santi Pulecio

BALTHVS, the Colombian trio of guitarist/vocalist Balthazar Aguirre, bassist/vocalist Johanna Mercuriana, and drummer Santiago Lizcano, have only been making music together for four years, but in that time, they’ve released a slew of singles, and their fourth full-length, Harvest, came out last month.

Their music is “a fusion of surf rock and Middle Eastern melodies laid over the cumbia from their hometown of Bogota,” but that really only scratches the surface of just how big the sonic output of these three musicians can be.

BALTHVS brings their music to the recordBar this Sunday, August 18. We took the opportunity to hop on Zoom with Balthazar Aguirre to discuss with the musician just how far they’ve come in such a short time.

The Pitch: For a band that has only been together for four years, you’ve put out so much material in that time. What’s the key to your prolific work?

Balthazar Aguirre: Well, we started during the pandemic and back in those days, we figured that our job was going to be happening digitally because we weren’t able to gig at that time. So I just asked myself like, “Okay, I want to make this my profession.” That was very clear from the start. I didn’t want to have another job. I didn’t want to have something else. I really just wanted to pursue music as my full-time thing. I just asked myself, like, “How much time would it take me to make a song?” and I was just like, “I can do it in a month.”

I self-imposed myself on a schedule where I could make a song per month and we started doing that. I guess at this point now we’re just used to it. So, for example, Harvest, our fourth album comes out tomorrow, but we already have a song for August, late August, actually. That’s what we’ve been doing. We feel very comfortable with just releasing one song per month, pretty much.

What did you do before this that made you want to make music your career?

Well, back when I was in high school, I dabbled with a lot of psychedelics and not in a party way. That’s very important–I wasn’t partying with drugs or something like that. I was rather just using these things on my own in a very conscious manner to really expand my consciousness. I was reading a lot about the Beat Generation, the hippies, Kerouac, and all that stuff. I really took it kind of seriously. It wasn’t like a party thing for me and that completely changed everything.

What changed the most was the music. My music tastes changed completely. Suddenly, I was into Santana and jazz fusion and Miles Davis–but the psychedelic Miles Davis, not the Kind of Blue Miles Davis–and that was really cool, but obviously I was a teenager, so I just went into law school because that’s what my family and peers wanted.

I just was thinking of ways of trying to be a musician and my first attempt failed. That was my first band with Santiago, the drummer. Our first band was called Cosmico and it was essentially like a Colombian Grateful Dead, kind of a five-piece improvisational jazz rock psychedelic band, but it was too big and we weren’t making a buck. We weren’t making money.

Then I finished high law school. I’m a lawyer now. Hooray. Then I started working as a tour guide on the side while I was doing the band and that didn’t work, but then we met Johanna and she started playing bass. We immediately connected. We were like living together within a month time of knowing each other so fast.

The soundtrack of those days that was 2018 was Khruangbin and we saw Khruangbin and I was like, “Wow, this is amazing,” and the most amazing thing about them was that it was just three people. We’re like, “We could do something like that,” and then Johanna says like, “Hey, I could play bass.” Johanna, you don’t play bass. “Yeah, but I can learn,” and we got into this whole thing.

One thing led to another, and one song led to another, and suddenly, we were making original music. One year after BALTHVS started, we started getting money from Spotify and from concerts because the pandemic was over and we’ve been living off the band ever since.

Now, I would have to assume that being a lawyer makes signing contracts and determining how you’re going to release your music, you have some insight that your average musician might not have.

Yes, I am very thankful about my academic and college background and university background. Effectively, I draft all my contracts. I am essentially the band’s lawyer, pretty much. The way we’ve made this happen was by doing everything ourselves. I mix the music myself. I do the artwork. I do the own contracts. I design the merch and I do the tour logistics.

Well, not anymore. Now we have a team. Now we’re playing the big boys game with the adult game. Now we have a manager, an agent, a tour manager, blah, blah, blah, but for the first three and a half years, four years, pretty much, we were just a DIY operation and obviously having skills in other non-musical backgrounds definitely helped a lot.

It been interesting to see the evolution of BALTHVS as it’s gone along. I think that In Tribute EP that you put out a little less than three years ago, the choices of covers on there give a really clear picture of where you all were coming from when you were starting.

Oh, totally. I mean, I thought you were gonna like name them because essentially, yeah, it’s the surf, Dick Dale; all of the Grateful Dead, obviously. Jerry Garcia is my spirit animal, pretty much, and the reason why I’m doing this, for the most part, he was the idol I wanted to become, sort of, or aspire to become. Still is.

And obviously there’s the funky thing. We did a little “Hotline Bling” cover because we’re from our generation. Obviously, we listen to hip hop and funk samples, modern reutilizations of these music. I think it speaks for itself. I feel that music should always speak for itself.

You’ve also had folks remix your music, which feels like, in addition to doing your interpretations of other things that you’re open to having folks interpret your music.

Oh, totally. And we love the collaborations with the DJs and with other more electronic oriented artists, because it allows our music to maybe, hopefully going to the dance floor, which is something I’ve always strived for as a musician–to also make music that makes people dance to an extent.

Recording Harvest, it was very hot for you all. Can you talk a little bit more about the process of making this in a literal hothouse environment and what that contributed to the music?

We’re in Colombia, but we live in Bogota, which is like the only temperate weather place for Colombians. A 60 Fahrenheit, 16 Celsius weather is cold. So it’s a cold city, so to speak. But then we moved to La Mesa for a month. We rented a house there and the whole band, we just took our our recording gear and our stuff and just made a makeshift studio in that house. We stayed there for a month and it’s like, “Nobody’s leaving until the record is made.”

Harvest was the first time that all three of us were actually involved in every single stage of the song craft, soundcrafting process. It was great because for the most part, for the beginning, I did and produced Macrocosm and Cause and Effect and Third Vibration, but Harvest was the first time all three of us were onboard on composition and I was super happy. It’s pretty much my favorite album because of that.

I’ve noticed that the pyramid and triangle are recurring images in many of your album covers, up to and including the V instead of the U in BALTHVS. What is the significance of that for you all?

The one leads to the two, and the two and the one lead to the three, and the sacred triad is formed. He who understands this understands.

The tripartite nature of power trio of a band is almost like a cosmic thing, then?

I mean, you see it everywhere. This will be talking something completely out of subject from the band or everything, but you see it in all major religions, like the father, the son and the holy spirit, or you see Isis, Osiris, and Horus, or you see Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. The three is such an important number and there is no limit if you start digging in into that kind of knowledge.

I love the fact that this band is both cosmic and sound, but also in philosophy.

I hope we don’t sound–like it’s not about pretentiousness. It’s really something that has really influenced my life in a very positive way, so I try to reflect it because it’s brought tremendous positive growth for me as a human, as a person. I’m very thankful for that knowledge, to be honest.

BALTHVS plays recordBar on Sunday, August 18, with Afrolicious. Details on that show here.