Bogota’s La MiniTK Del Miedo Invents Cumbia Góthica

Name: La MiniTK del Miedo

Where They’re From: Bogota, Colombia

Genre: Cumbia Góthica, Dark Cumbia, Witch-Cumbia

When They Started: 2012

Most Like: Arca, Ritualz

Sounds like: David Bowie selling his soul to the devil on a dark night in coastal Colombia.

In retrospect it was inevitable. Since being “re-discovered” by the global hip-and-with-it a few years back, the tropical Colombian rhythm of cumbia has been chopped, screwed, sped-up, slowed-down, remixed, funkified, punkified,  pscyedelified, electronified, rocked and rapped. When was somebody going to make a witch house/cumbia fusion? Well, someone in the deep underbelly of Bogota’s heepster scene has finally done it, and the result is dark and delicious.

La MiniTK del Miedo, who claim to make their music with a combination of “two synths, a Ouija board and Garage band,” combine ominous walls of sound, church organs, horror movie clichés and the occasional Gregorian chant with Bowie-esque synth pop and, of course, the grinding “chh-chch-chh” of the Afro-Colombian guacharaca behind the whole damn thing.

On the group’s Soundcloud page, La MiniTK describes themselves their music as “the soundtrack to a Gothic tropical thiller.” As for their mission, they say they are “possessed by legionaries of the underworld, spreading a message of death and flavor.”

There’s one brief explanation necessary: in Colombia, a “MiniTK”, also known as a “miniteca” is a miniature discotheque that can be set-up anywhere. It’s used for the parties of middle-class teenagers, especially quinceañeras, and usually involves portable speakers, lights and a smoke machine. It’s basically the opposite of the massive sound systems that famously play working-class champeta parties in Barranquilla. So altogether, the band’s name translates roughly to “Mini-disco of fear”

So far, eight funereal tracks have surfaced online over the last three months. While there’s very little information available as to the identities of these mysterious, existential cumbieros, rumor has it that MiniTK’s debut EP will be produced by Eblis Álvarez, of Colombian indie-tropical fixtures Meridian Brothers and Frente Cumbiero. Check out the track below, simply titled “La Muerte” (“Death”).