Empanadas Ilegales announce new album LABORATORIO TROPICAL, share first single

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.

LABORATORIO TROPICAL artwork