More about: Los Bitchos

Los Bitchos (Serra Petale, Agustina Ruiz, Josefine Jonsson, and Nic Crawshaw) have been spreading their instrumental joy for a while now. From their slick riffs to their rhythmic, pan-global beats via the party atsmophere of their live shows, they are a band pushing the boundaries of genre in a way you can’t help but dance to.

Any band who can maintain such a tight, polished live sound while passing around a bottle of tequila are surely destined for greatness — and with their debut album, the aptly titled Let The Festivities Begin! on the way, they're more in-demand than ever. We met them to talk about the pan-contintental inspirations that came together on their debut. 

On humble beginnings...

Serra: We started out really by putting a few demos out — just throwing stuff at the wall, and not really knowing what was happening. We wanted like a sort of instrumental thing. I’d listened to this prolific Peruvian cumbia album which was super, super inspiring, and the production was really cool. The fact that it was mostly just focusing on instrumentalism was really cool.

On their creative process...

Serra: I often get a lot of ideas while I’m in the kitchen cooking. I love cooking! It’s my thing, it’s my happy place. It makes me feel really...I don’t know. It just clears my mind. So ideas will just pop in, or maybe one of the girls will send me something. I do like that as well because you do get a bit bored of your own ideas sometimes...but only sometimes!

So I’ll demo it, and then obviously that’s just like the basic structure, and then, of course, the real magic of the song is going to happen when we all come together in the rehearsal studio and we all put parts in. Everyone puts their own touches on it. It’s a really interesting progression for how these songs happened for the album because from how they were to how they are now, some of them really changed in the best possible way.

On Let The Festivities Begin!...

Josefine: I think it’s kind of been the result of what we’ve been working on since the beginning of the project really, I feel like it’s been a work in progress that now has finally kind of come together into this one piece which is really cool. We’re really proud of it, and we’re really excited for it to come out.

On working with Alex Kapranos...

Nic: We learned so much from him! It was hard work, and he really pushed us to be the best we could be on our instruments. He’s such a lovely guy, and we had such a fun time. Preparing to go into the studio he came into the rehearsal room with us and kind of listened to us playing the songs and, you know we’d spend hours on just like getting a groove absolutely perfect and just feeling really good to play.

Serra: I think my favourite thing about working with him was how much time and thought he put in. He was so thoughtful with everything he did. You know, people definitely have different styles of producing… but Alex, you could tell he was really thinking about stuff, he was actually going into it. He put so much of himself into it, as much as we all did, and I think that’s why for me personally the record is so fantastic. It’s the culmination of everyone’s dedication and time into making this product, which is really cool.

Josefine: For me, it really helped working with a producer who is a musician and band member as well, because he’s obviously been on the other side where we were, talking to a producer, having a producer coming in and feeding back on songs and suggesting changes. Having been on that side of the spectrum when you’re in a producer role, I think he really understood us and how we might be feeling going through the songs and working on them. So he was very easy to work with in that regard and had a lot of understanding on how the experience might be perceived by us.

Serra: I think on the album, which was kind of nice to compare to the demos, Alex helped to put a lot of Greek and Turkish elements on it. We ended up using quite a bit of bouzouki on a bunch of the tracks, which I think really transformed them. Like some of them were distinctly cumbia, but then when we got to the studio he’s got all these mad little instruments — he’s even got this really tiny bouzouki where I was like playing with my fingertips! I think a lot of those elements turned it around. I think a lot of the sound was really defined in the studio where we were just trying things out and putting sounds in, which was really cool. It was a really cool progression.

On keeping busy in lockdown...

Serra: We still cracked on with a lot of stuff! We did a radio show together for Worldwide FM which was pretty cool — Planet Bitchos! And yeah still writing stuff, still sharing ideas. We still kept ourselves as busy as we could I think. It was just nice, it was a nice sense of clinging on to whatever normality we had before this pandemic happened.

On the London music scene that united them...

Agustina: I’m from Uruguay, where the scene is basically really tiny, and I thought London was gonna be like bigger, and obviously it is bigger, but at the end we all know each other, and that’s something that really surprised me.

Nic: It’s like there are loads of little pockets of scenes with links between them. There are always connections there, and even between different scenes people kind of bridge across and you always cross paths with people. Yeah, it’s small and close and everyone knows everyone, but there’s always new things popping up and there’s so much to discover. It’s really nice — I love that feeling of just stumbling upon a new little scene or group of bands that you haven’t heard of who have just been working away and putting on these great shows!

On creating something fresh...

Agustina: I think it was at Levitation we played between Shame and Working Men’s Club, and we are basically the opposite. And it was fun, that combination of bands!

Nic: It is funny when like, I don’t know, every now and then you’re on a line-up where the crowd aren’t quite ready for Los Bitchos. But by the end of our set you can see people dancing and smiling! I think it says a lot about that scene though: that people’s minds are really open to hearing different things. I think that from the outside you could think that it seems like kind of an exclusive and insular kind of scene, but actually, people are really up for something different, and people are just so friendly and kind of welcoming of us, and I think that says a lot.

Serra: I think in the last few years more so than ever there’s been so much fantastic focus on bands coming in from all different corners of the world, and like more of a focus even on World music coming much more to the forefront, and I think that’s really, really cool! It’s such an exciting time in music, and now so more than ever because music is so accessible so you can always find bands from different corners of the world doing their own thing. But I think that the ever-changing notion of music is the most amazing thing about it.

On their merch...

Agustina: We’re really into merch! The T-shirt that Josie is wearing was made by our friend Elliott Lane the tattoo designer. We always get like different designers to do different stuff… We like doing different stuff and enjoy the process of it.

Nic: It’s one of the only ways you can really make money if you’re up and coming. It’s often the make or break of being able to fund a tour is merch.

On their inspirations...

Nic: There’s crossover stuff that we all listen to, but we’ve all kind of got our own interests as well and backgrounds in playing music, so everyone’s kind of brought something, whether consciously or subconsciously different into the sound.

Serra: I personally, for guitar sounds, am just very into any type of washy, chorus-y, Cocteau Twins-y like power Van Halen-y deep guitar sounds. I love that — and I’m obsessed with '80s productions. Even while I’ve been in Australia, I’ve been even more obsessed with it. I’ve just been delving into little documentaries about like Stock Aitken Waterman and all the stuff they’ve been doing, like the programming they were doing.

I love a wall of sound - I think that to me is the most amazing sound. That’s something I really try and emulate as well. We layer so much percussion — there’s always something going on in the background. Maybe on the first listen you won’t notice it, but maybe on the second or third or on the fourth listen you’ll be able to find...I don’t know, like a little shaker going or a little noise that you didn’t notice before. That’s the type of stuff that I really love, and it just gets me so, so excited.

On finally unleashing their debut...

Serra: Promoting this album is going to be so rewarding and so fun. We’re so proud of what we’ve done and it’s such a buzz to be able to go out. They’re our shows — we’re mainly doing our own headline shows — and for me, I’m still kind of getting used to that notion that people are coming and they’re there for us, they’ve listened to the album. I can’t wait for that!

Nic: It’s taken a long time to get this record out, especially with the pandemic. So you know, the title of the album is Let the Festivities Begin!, and that really is like the sentiment for all of us. We’re really excited about this year and just playing, people hearing the album, finally sharing it with everyone. Yeah, we just want people to listen to it and enjoy it! Come see us play, and drink!

Let The Festivities Begin! arrives 4 February via City Slang Records.

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More about: Los Bitchos