New York, NY (June 25, 2024) – Twanguero is Spanish-born, Los Angeles-based exploratory guitarist Diego Garcia and his band. Today, the outfit announced they will release their escapist and subtly nostalgic seventh album, Panamerica on September 27 via Cosmica Artists. The group shares the single and video for “Fue tanto el amor” along with the announcement.
“Fue tanto el amor” personifies Garcia’s cinematic approach to his famously evocative songwriting. “It’s a bolero – a Latino ballad. I’m imagining this vibe of a ’50s ballroom with a couple dancing,” he said of the lilting, pedal steel-sprinkled track.
“I see the world going crazy and I think that I can offer some calmness with a bolero with congas and a haunting, nostalgic sound – honoring our past but looking to the future.”
Enjoy/Share “Fue tanto el amor” on YouTube + Listen on DSPs + Pre-save Panamerica
Already dubbed, “A Journey into North and Latin America” by Rolling Stone, Twanguero consciously pursued a multi-cultural, genre-straddling Pan-American expression on the album.
The 10-track Panamerica is a largely instrumental, vibrant, and virtuoso coming together of North American electric guitar and rock ‘n roll heritage with classical guitar-based bolero, cumbia, Tejano, ranchera and rhumba influences from Latin America, alongside hints of Hawaiian, surf, and country music. Filtering stylishly throwback vibes through the prism of Garcia’s very here-and-now creative curiosity, it’s a percussion-adorned album of what he calls “new nostalgia.”
“Los Angeles is like a sonic map of the Americas. In this city, you can find that crossover that I am chasing,” Garcia explained. “I moved here to experience that vision of North American music and South American, Latin, and Hispanic roots.”
Just as his previous Twanguero album, 2022’s Carreteras Secundarias, Vol. 2, channeled the Costa Rican rainforest where it was composed, this time Panamerica captures the cosmopolitan, multi-genre vibes of its LA backstory. When Garcia’s initial plan to track the album at different studios across the Americas was nixed by pandemic restrictions, he retreated to a boat in an LA marina where he lived and composed the record for 18 months.
And the name of that boat? By pure coincidence, it was called the Panamerica. It felt like fate and only affirmed Garcia’s direction for his new record.
With a batch of new songs ready to present to his band, Garcia moved to nearby Culver City, literally living in his studio while tracking and co-producing Panamerica with a roster of world-class musician friends including vocalists Mireya Ramos and Alih Jey. True to the traditions of his Valencia upbringing, Garcia would invite them over at weekends, barbecue for everyone and mingle on the patio, and only then record short, to-the-point songs in live takes, all together in the same room and on vintage instruments. This visceral, organic approach enhances Panamerica’s ultra-authentic and lovingly retro feel.
“The energy and love that everybody put in that same direction, just to get out what I was dreaming about,” marveled Garcia. “With this wonderful team of people, I achieved what I was looking for.”
The four-piece Twanguero – completed by percussion, drums, and bass – has scheduled extensive touring in Europe and across the Americas in support of the album.
“For me, Panamerica is transporting.It moves them into another place, instantly,” Garcia concluded.“ It’s open to the listener, but I want to take you away from where you are, at least for the three minutes of a song or the thirty minutes of the album.”
