Adrian Quesada - Boleros Psicodelicos (Vinyl)

About 20 years ago, guitarist, producer and Black Pumas co-founder Adrian Quesada was driving in his home base of Austin, Texas when the 1975 balada classic “Esclavo y Amo” by Peruvian band Los Pasteles Verdes played on a local AM station. Quesada was mesmerized by the song’s dark, baroque melodrama.“I swear to God, I had to pull over because I had never heard anything like it,” he recalls with a laugh. “I was like, what the hell is this? Sounds like a romantic breakup on LSD. It completely, literally blew my mind. I then went to a record store that sold mostly Regional Mexican, got a Greatest Hits compilation and listened to it for many nights in a row. The music was sinister, so overly dramatic in a super funky way that sounded like a hip-hop sample. I almost expected Wu-Tang Clan to come on and start rapping.”What Quesada had discovered was the sophisticated – and slightly delirious – cultural movement of balada music that blossomed throughout Latin America between the late