ABOUT THE NEW ALBUM “RAZA QUIMERA”

In June, 2011, La Mano Ajena returned to the studio, three years after releasing its album “Radio Galena”. Since then, too many things had happened in the crazy life of this restless bunch, things that included unforgettable trips to Denmark, Serbia and Chile. Charged with new sounds, influences, stories and experiences, the band started to record more than a dozen of songs that reflect the long and exciting way traveled so far.

The prestigious studio Triana would be the place and the great Gonzalo “Chalo” González would be musical producer in charge of this new work called “Raza Quimera”. “With this album, La Mano Ajena explores a new sonority, of course from their original Gypsy sound, but this time the band adds rock, reggae, cumbia, ska, rockabilly and a much more powerful attitude. The themes of the lyrics go with flying colors with this new and strong energy, which achieves a mixture of styles that creates performing force, besides social and poetic content”, says Chalo González about the third studio album of the band.

All the process of creation, recording and mixing was made with the complicity of old and new friends from Chile and from abroad, that helped with their voices, their instruments or their advices. “I like your new songs very much. They’re joyful, well played and mixed. And they have a good tie between Balkan music and Latin rock”, was the comment of the Serbian musician Stribor Kusturica after listening to part of the new repertoire of the band.

“This is an album full of smells and flavors, it’s a dish of ‘Spaghetti Klezmer’ that is served cold, like the bullets of Italian western. It’s a third album that shows what we are as a project, a bunch of stubborn guys that prefers to to keep on its own color palette, with a strong speech before what we must assume in our role as social catalysts”, says Rodrigo Latorre, musical director of La Mano Ajena.

The third work of the band —that will be released by the end of this year— will show a new side of the group, as its bassist Cristian Aqueveque explains: “We took great delight to create a more powerful base, with more presence of electric guitar, but without forgetting our own band colors”. Gabriel Moyla, the accordion player of the group, adds: “I am glad to say that this new mutant and rocker ‘son’ confirms our compromise with the music that we want to make and with the speech we want to live, and not with that it’s cool nowadays. So many things are happening and there’s so much to say; a new world order is coming and there’s no time to waste... iluminati loco, iluminati".

The internationalizacion of La Mano Ajena has also came along with some of the musical friendships the band has built over the years around the world. One of them is Nelle Karajlic, leader and singer of the group Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra, who has enthusiastically supported the project of the band. “We travel around the world and we know people from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America; and wherever we go, we’re looking for people who has enthusiasm for life. And when we heard for the first time La Mano Ajena, we understood that they are ready to give their lives for the music. Why we love them? Because this fucking world doesn’t have a utopian picture of the world and La Mano Ajena has it. That’s why they’re so exciting and I believe in them, as they believe in something that doesn’t exist”, says the world famous Serbian musician.