Las Nubes, Miami’s dream pop/shoegaze rock monsters, have a new release and they want you to celebrate with them. They want you to bring your skates or boards too. Sounds rad – do an ollie off of their amps!
Now dig, if you’ve been involved with or paying attention even a little to the local South Florida music scene you’ve probably heard of Las Nubes. This band has consisted of Ale Campos (guitars/vocals) and Emile Milgrim (drums/percussion) since 2017. They’ve had more bass players than Spinal Tap has had drummers. None of them have exploded though…yet. The band has paid its dues in playing locally, nationally, internationally. They yearn to do more too.
They had just backed up the Godfather of Punk and were hitting their stride right when the world shut down in 2020. They’ve played bars, basements, festivals and storefronts before and after Covid struck. When the world closed the train may have stopped but the songwriting continued. They gathered up enough material by 2022 to record with Jonathan Nuñez at Sound Artillery Studio. The results are HUGE. As good as their debut record is, these recordings are next level. It took Guided By Voices ten records to sound giant in a lo-fi DIY way. It only took Las Nubes two.
After recording and carefully selecting who to play with and where to tour over the past couple years, they opened for Bikini Kill in Miami, traveled the Northeast, the West Coast, two jaunts through Mexico, and of course III Points here. In between they showed off some of the LP2 recordings, which tweaked the ears of Ecstatic Peace Library run by Eva Prinz and Thurston Moore, who offered to release a single.
So here we are, Las Nubes 7” records pressed.
It’s your chance this Saturday, December 16, to pick one up in person at the release show. The music sounds great – a double-A side. The first song/video released in October is “Enredados,” Spanish for “entangled.” The song and video imply the difficulties of being tied to something or someone so acutely that it can lead to (often hilarious) complications. Fast, catchy, and a less-familiar time signature surrounds and confounds you. The other A-side is “Drop-In,” a track deceptively dealing with isolation. It’s essentially a song of choruses, making for a non-traditional structure, serving to represent anxiety and anticipation. These tracks are a definite indication of the full-length they’re pulled from – just wait ’til you hear the rest of the songs, some of which are in their current live set. Nina Souto and Gabriel Duque accompanied Ale and Emile on the recordings. Alumine Soto and Cuci Amador accompany Ale and Emile live.
The release party is at Skatebird Miami, an all-ages skate park with food and drink available. Also on the bill: The Creature Cage, Wetflix, and DJ Rat holding it all down. Skatebird Miami is at 533 NE 83rd Street Miami Florida. Show is Saturday 12/16/23, 6-10 at is $15.
A SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THE COVER ARTWORK:
Garki on a motorcycle. Who is she? Garki (Helen Doane) was an original Golden Girl. She worked as a switchboard telephone operator on skates from 1920-1950 then lived 45 more years vacationing, popping wheelies and doing donuts as she went. She retired to Hollywood Florida in 1950 where her daughter Charlotte Dickens had lived since the 1920’s. Charlotte was a pioneer of that city. Photo from either Mexico or California on one of her journeys.
