{"id":33143,"date":"2020-11-20T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/?post_type=interviews&p=33143"},"modified":"2020-11-19T11:59:31","modified_gmt":"2020-11-19T16:59:31","slug":"un-nuevo-capitulo-papi-chulo","status":"publish","type":"interviews","link":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/en\/interviews-panm360\/un-nuevo-capitulo-papi-chulo\/","title":{"rendered":"Un nuevo cap\u00edtulo\u2026 Papi Chulo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photos: Marie Belzil<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Occupied as a filmmaker and a sculptor of bizarre toys, and the oversight of his family\u2019s restaurant Ta Chido<\/strong><\/a> (try the tortas!), Mexican-born Montrealer Mariano Franco still finds time to make music. He\u2019s made a lot of it over the years, in fact. Installed in Montreal in the mid-\u201990s, he began with the metal band Mi Santa Sangre, followed by a series of bands and projects that kept pace with the cool new Latin music wave hitting the Americas. At each stage, Franco, his constant collaborator Fernando Pinz\u00f3n, and their recurring associates flew the flag for Latin counterculture in the north, while indulging in a surrealist, cinematic sensibility. Franco\u2019s latest concoction sees him adopting the moniker of Papi Chulo. Taking his introductory bow in 2017 with La tierra promitida<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, an electro-centric album of sexy, sinister tropical bass. Papi Chulo now returns with Ritmo de lo Habitual<\/em>, a follow-up album that\u2019s anything but habitual in its sci-fi mutations of mambo, champeta, cumbia, and more. PAN M 360 spoke with Franco to find out more, and to give some visibility to his Grupo Invisible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAN M 360: <\/strong>You handle most of the vocals on the record. For listeners with little comprehension of Spanish, how would you describe what you\u2019re doing lyrically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MF: <\/strong>Just like my music, the lyrics are also weird. They are images translated to words, like long haikus that talk about love, anger, passion, and metaphysical ideas in a surreal, satirical way. There\u2019s the song \u201cDisp\u00e1rame al coraz\u00f3n\u201d, for example, which is a love song about this guy asking his love to kill him very fast because his heart is not beating anymore. \u201cSat\u00e1nico\u201d is like a prayer, a song about passion, sweat, and cellular fusion if that makes sense, and \u201cEl Encuentro\u201d is a poem about two worlds colliding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAN M 360: <\/strong>There\u2019s a strong taste of Italian horror-movie music from the 1970s in a lot of the synthesizer parts. And the synth line in \u201cPa Que Lo Sepas\u201d totally reminds me of the ninja-Light theme from Shogun Assassin<\/em>. You\u2019re a filmmaker yourself \u2013 how much of an influence are film soundtracks on your sound?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MF: <\/strong>I really love films and their soundtracks, especially those from the \u201960s and \u201970s. I just bought the Plan\u00e8te Sauvage<\/em> soundtrack on vinyl because it drives me crazy with all its weirdness and psychedelic sound. I think that what I do is somehow a soundtrack, because when you make music for film, you\u2019re creating feelings, conveying images, and you\u2019re not constrained by structure or music formulas. You\u2019re just going on a trip to enhance the visuals, and Papi Chulo\u2019s music has some of this. I don\u2019t consider myself a musician, often I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing and, because of my musical ignorance, I rely on feelings and moods rather than structure, and it all results in this weird universe called Papi Chulo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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