Years ago, Chilean-American singer/songwriter and guitarist Chris Bowers Castillo moved to the Chilean port city of Valparaíso and became a walking tour guide. “I would dress up as Wally and give tours to families and kids,” he remembers with a laugh. “It was great, because I got to know the city incredibly well. I’d walk for hours, then spend the rest of the day partying and drinking, probably way too much. But I also wrote lots of new songs.”
When he got to to Denver, Bowers Castillo searched for a moniker that reflected the evocative and subtly rebellious musical concepts he had brewing and his head, and eventually settled on Kiltro. a Chilean slang word for a stray dog or a mutt. He then teamed up with Will Parkhill (bass) and Micheal Devincenzi (drums). He then recruited Fez García (percussion) to join the band for their live shows. “I wanted to do a project mixing different styles and aesthetics,” Castillo explains. “Valparaíso is my favorite city in the world and will always influence my music. There were street dogs everywhere, and I’m a mutt myself.”
Slated for a June 2, 2023 release, the Denver-based outfit’s forthcoming sophomore album Underbelly reportedly represents a bold, new chapter for the band, as they seamlessly fuse Latin roots music with American rock music. “When we first started the band, I was playing folk songs – focusing on my interior spaces and finding catharsis through melody,” Bowers Castillo says. “I’ve always been attracted to music that is melancholy and personal. Then we added the rhythmic component, and I realized that having a bit of noise and chaos can add emotional depth. Underbelly reflects everything that happens inside your soul when the world stops on its tracks.” “We tried a lot of new things on this record,” Kiltro’s Will Parkhill adds. “We were living through unprecedented times and coming to terms with all of it. The album is a reflection of that. At the end of the day, we wanted to create the kind of music that we didn’t hear anywhere else.”
The album’s first single “Guanaco” is built around a sinuous and propulsive groove paired with glistening guitars, Latin-influenced percussion, four-on-the-floor, Bowers Castillo’s gently cooed Spanish delivery and a sleek, almost dance floor friendly hook. Sonically, “Guanaco” sees the Denver-based outfit specializing in the sort of off-kilter funk reminiscent of Fear of Music–More Songs About Buildings and Food–Remain in Light-era Talking Heads but with a defiant, genre-defying flair.
“A guanaco is a South American animal that is a bit like a llama. It’s known for spitting,” Bowers Castillo explains. “In Chile, it has another meaning, and is colloquially used to refer to police vehicles that shoot water at protestors. We wrote this song in the wake of the 2019 protests for a new constitution in Chile. The line “ya viene el guanáco” means simply “here/now comes the guanáco,” which against a driving, melancholic backdrop, had an almost fairy tale quality to it. I felt it communicated a sense of foreboding and nervous anxiety. Taken more literally, it means a beast is coming, here. Of course, a guanaco is not a terrifying thing, but a police line in riot gear with the machinery of dispersion and violence, is.
He continues “To be clear, the aim was never to make an explicit political point. Rather, I wanted to capture that peculiar environment of communal tension and mounting emotional energy, be it conviction or catharsis, or fear. The album had yet to take shape in those months, but I was certain the song would make an apt intro to whatever came next. I hope you enjoy it.”
Created by the band’s Chris Bowers Castillo and Will Parkhill, the accompanying video for “Guanaco” is a surrealistic fever dream of found footage from old documentaries, sci-fi films and other weird shit seemingly randomly stitched together.
“Some time ago, Will and I began compiling found footage and visual art from the Creative Commons,” Kiltro’s Bowers Castillo explains. “These were old movies from the early to mid-20th century, experimental sci-fi films, documentaries, and abstract ambient works that we would project on a screen as we rehearsed. Certain pieces stuck, and it was often difficult to explain why. Imagery and characters with no apparent connection to the lyrics or emotional content of the songs would create a kind of dreamlike, subconscious dialogue with the music. It was fascinating.
The ‘Guanaco’ video is a compilation of these images, arranged purposefully. We chose those that seemed to thread a conversation with the music, often beyond the grasp of logical sense but somehow meaningful nonetheless. They just worked. I hope you enjoy it.”
Along with the new video, the band announced newly added tour dates. The tour includes a June 25, 2023 stop at Johnny Brenda’s, one of my favorite rooms to catch a show in the City of Brotherly Love and a June 28, 2023 stop at Baby’s All Right. Check out the rest of the dates below.
Kiltro US Tour – new dates in bold
June 21 – Detroit, MI – Lager House
June 22 – Columbus, OH – Woodlands
June 24 – Bethlehem, PA – Sabor Festival
June 25 – Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s
June 26 – Cambridge, MA – Club Passim
June 28 – Brooklyn, NY – Baby’s All Right
June 29 – Vienna, VA – Jammin Java
June 30 – Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall
July 1 – Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle
July 3 – Nashville, TN – The Basement
July 6 – Madison, WI – The Bur Oak
July 7 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry
July 8 – Chicago, IL – Beat Kitchen
August 9 – San Francisco, CA – Cafe Du Nord
August 10 – Los Angeles, CA – Gold-Diggers
August 11 – Pioneertown, CA – Pappy’s & Harriets
August 13 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar
August 16 – Austin, TX – Ballroom
August 17 – Houston, TX – WOMH Upstairs
August 18 – Dallas, TX – Club Dada
August 19 – Oklahoma City, OK – Resonant Head
August 25 – Denver CO – VORTEX 2023
September 14 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir
September 16 – Vancouver, BC – The Cobalt
September 17 – Seattle, WA – Barboza
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