Montreal’s Psychotropical Orchestra back after over a decade of silence

Montreal’s Psychotropical Orchestra formed as a band 27 years ago, but their love for music began long before that.

“My love of music, it’s something natural. It’s just part of me. I was born like that, I think,” said Mariano Franco, a singer and producer in the band.

At the heart of the band are Franco on vocals and sound design, Fernando Pinzon on guitar and sound design and Jose Dominguez on drums. Their deep-rooted passion for world music fusion–blending cumbia, rock, afrobeat, electronica, dub and trip-hop–has shaped the group’s distinctive sound.

Mariano and Fernando both arrived in Montreal in 1996 and met and formed their band in 1998 along with Jose Dominguez, their drummer from El Salvador.

“We are immigrants, so we have all these cultural musical baggage from Latin America,” said Franco. “We’re Mexican and Panamanian, so it comes from what we used to listen when we were kids, you know, cumbia, mambo, all the stuff that my grandparents used to listen to. And also rock and electronic music.”

“We were not that old, you know, and back in our days we were actually playing rock, even like heavy metal when we were young,” the vocalist continued. “Exploration of our roots, as I say, we used to play rock and grew up as rockers. And just the desire, like finding the roots of our Latin American roots, in music and to see that it was something that we were hiding. And then when we discovered it, we wanted to explore it.”

Despite meeting 27 years ago, the band hadn’t put out an album since 2008–until their recent release, La Travesía, earlier this month.

The band worked together full-time for almost seven years after forming in 1998, before breaking off for a bit, explained Pinzon.

“We put [out] a couple records, we toured and the natural progression of bands, it just became a lot,” he said. “People got tired and life happens, kids and so on. So now we’ve regrouped and we hope to pick up from where we left off.”

For those wondering what the word “psycho” has to do with a Montreal orchestra, the answer is in its cross-cultural experimentation and mix of “psychedelic” and “tropical” music. Franco and Pinzon describe a mesmerizing fusion of Latin rhythms, alternative rock and intricate sound design.

“Psychedelic music and tropical music, I mean, that’s what the name came to be,” said Pinzon. “Montreal was really the key here because it’s so many cultures, so many different types of music experiences that you can live. Basically, it’s just the more time you pass here, the more it just gets into you.”

For Franco, who has been composing songs since he was a kid, his band taking over a decade of silence doesn’t mean he ever lost his passion for what they do.

“It’s some sort of a nature; it’s an addiction,” said Franco. “I can’t stop. Even, I think, when I’m older, and I won’t have a band anymore. I think I will still do it just for me, you know–it’s just part of myself.”