The song emerged, the
band say, from a moment of instinct rather than overthinking. “We were
playing with a Caribbean Colombian groove, and as the song started
taking shape, this character began to appear: a fictional, tropicalized
criollo Elvis – part childhood memory, part bootleg pop icon, part
exhausted spectacle melting under the Caribbean sun.” They describe the
track as the perfect opener: “It kicks the door open, throws you a toy,
and disappears into the rhythm.”
Recorded
in motion between Montreal and Vancouver, the LP’s first sessions were
tracked at Sud Ouest Studios in Montreal with engineer William Poulin
immediately after a 2025 tour. A second session followed in February
2026 after drummer Daniel Ruiz relocated to Montreal. The stems then
travelled west to Vancouver’s Afterlife Studios, where John Raham mixed
the material, and Grammy-winning mastering engineer Adam Ayan completed
the process.
The band say the record’s musical transformation mirrors
personal upheaval, citing the phrase “as above, so below” to sum up the
relationship between life changes and the music. They describe the tone
as an “apocalyptic dance party”.
The album artwork by
Mateo Gómez Pinto draws on themes of migration, inspection, and the
weight of being far from home, ideas that run alongside the band’s
expanding psychedelic cumbia universe. Empanadas Ilegales have spent
close to a decade deconstructing tropical rhythms, and LABORATORIO TROPICAL follows 2025’s Sancocho Trifásico, which landed them festival slots at FME, Calgary Folk, and Montreal Jazz Fest.
The
band will support the new record with a summer tour that includes a
release-day show at Toronto’s Lula Lounge on 28 August, alongside
appearances at Winnipeg Folk Festival, Vancouver Folk Festival, and a
run of Quebec dates in early September.
