Aterciopelados Releases Live Anniversary Version Of 'El Dorado': 'The Challenge Was Bringing It Into The Future'

Revisiting its entirety El Dorado for a live 25th anniversary edition – which ended up happening a few years later due to the coronavirus pandemic – was something special for Aterciopelados, the Colombian rock band led by singer Andrea Echeverri and producer Héctor Buitrago.

“To face a repertoire from 28 years ago is difficult, you are no longer the same,” admits Echeverri in an interview with Billboard Español. “The challenge was to take this '90s-sounding album back, bring it into the future and keep the essence of that era, but make it sound more appropriate for these times,” adds Buitrago.

Today (March 15) they are released El Dorado Live, a version of the top Colombian rock album of the 90s that took them beyond the borders of their country, with classics like “Florecita Rockera”, “Siervo sin Tierra” and “De Tripas Corazón”. Recorded on April 22, 2023, at the Palacio de los Deportes in Bogotá, the new independent production includes the 16 songs from album/5kywkECQwnIBHzst6DCQem” target=”_blank”>prototype LP, featuring Rubén Albarrán of Café Tacvba on 'Mujer Gala' and 'La Estaca' and Carlos Vives on 'Bolero Falaz'. The project includes videos for every song that have been released on Aterciopelados YouTube channelwith Vives debuting on Thursday night, just hours before the album's release.

“Aterciopelados for me is one of the Bogotá rock gods I grew up with,” Vives said in a press release. “For me, it's an honor to sing this song with them.”

The release will be followed by the El Dorado tour, a 12-date North American trek that kicks off April 9 in Phoenix and will make stops in cities including Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Miami, before wrapping up April 27 in Toronto ( for the full itinerary, click here).

Echeverri and Buitrago were young idealists and dreamers when they debuted as Aterciopelados in 1993 with the album Con El Corazón en la Mano, in which they combined their punk rock influences with sounds of Colombian folk. But it was El Doradoreleased on October 24, 1995, through Sony BMG, which put them on the international map, with original sound and relevant lyrics about ecology, feminism and human rights.

“We are not [academic] the musicians, it's all very much by ear and sensitivity,” explains Echeverri. “I think because of that … we've done things in different ways and come up with all kinds of weird things that work great.”

A three-time Latin Grammy winner and five-time Grammy nominee, Aterciopelados performed at Advertising sign charts with their album Gozo Poderoso (2001), which reached No. 11 on Top Latin Albums and No. 7 on Latin Pop Albums, while their song “El Álbum” (from the same set) entered the Latin Pop Airplay chart.

In 2021 they released their last studio album, Tropiplop, while their last single was “Liberté” with Dr. Shenka, Susana Baca and Bunbury, released in December 2023. They are currently working on a new album which they hope to release before the end of this year. Echeverri and Buitrago discuss returning to El Dorado below.

28 years have passed since its release El Dorado. What was it like to experience the whole album again after so long?

Echeverri: Well, we were going to celebrate the 25th [anniversary] because a big festival here [in Colombia] he had suggested it, but then the pandemic happened. That's why it ended up being the 28th, which is kind of an odd date. What did we feel? Many things, because facing a repertoire from 28 years ago is difficult, you are not the same anymore. At least vocally I suffered, because I had a light, naive girlish voice and now I have a more mature female voice. [Laughs.]

Which songs were especially challenging for you?

Echeverri: All of them! In fact, I changed voice coach, worked on the whole thing. The idea was to not sound like before. The idea was more to adapt the songs to my current sound, which we achieved. But there are also many very fast songs, there are many very wild ones, like 'Pilas', like 'No Futuro', which we never stopped singing… It was a challenging and difficult process, but in the end I think we succeeded. turns it off. I was listening to it the other day, and it sounds powerful, with a thick, powerful voice, beautiful.

Hector, what was the hardest thing for you?

Buitrago: The challenge was to take this '90s-sounding album back, bring it into the future, and keep the essence of that era — but make it more appropriate for these times. We've been doing the work all these past months where we've been rehearsing the songs, and I think we've struck a balance between everything we thought we wanted to do with this album. In my case, it was also stressful because I was the producer, but there were also a lot more details — and it's an album that we released independently, so we had to watch the cameras, the lights, the video, the guest musicians…

Echeverri: …the set design, the costumes… and they also made the money! It is also difficult. [Laughs.]

Can you give us an example of a song that was heavily changed to make it more current?

Echeverri: I think the most notable is “Tripas”, because we didn't have a keyboard back then.

Buitrago: Yeah, “De Tripas Corazón” was probably the rockiest, the one we felt was the most repetitive and would sound more like the 90s, so we added a keyboard to it. Let's just say it was all we transformed so much. The rest are closer to their time.

A lot has happened in your life and in the industry since you came out El Dorado. Do you still identify with your songs in the same way?

Echeverri: I think that amidst the difficulty, the tension, the most beautiful thing was to meet the songs again, because they were songs we wrote years ago. We are not [academic] musicians, it's all very much by ear and sensitivity, but when you hear the songs you say “Wow, we were good!”

I think the one that influenced Hector and me the most was 'Siervo Sin Tierra'. Yes, yesterday when I was watching it [concert] video, in “Siervo Sin Tierra”, many people cry. We cried in rehearsals.

Aterciopelados has created an important legacy for rock en Español and has been very influential for other artists. How do you feel about that?

Echeverri: I think just because we're not academic musicians, we've done things in different ways, and we end up with all kinds of weird things that work perfectly… But I think the legacy also comes more from the identity side and the conceptual side because, from the beginning , Aterciopelados was talking about feminism, environmentalism, and anti-war issues when those weren't such common topics.

Many of your songs are still relevant 25 years later. Did you think you were creating anthems then?

Echeverri: I think we've always been ahead of our time. [Laughs.] But did we think it would last? No! I think just because we went through the rehearsals in a washing machine… in the album recording, we were very inexperienced, very naive. But we were also kind of punk, so we were very daring. I think no one imagined anything. And there wasn't even a music scene in Colombia, you did it because it was fun, because it felt good to do it.

Buitrago: But later we found out that yes, there were a lot of bands who said that Aterciopelados were an influence at some point early in their career, that they saw Andrea or saw Aterciopelados and were inspired by the lyrics, by the attitude.

Today Colombia is a major exporter of music, with many artists entering the Advertising sign charts and tours worldwide. How do you see the current music scene in your country?

Buitrago: I feel like everything that happened in the 90s, when there was no scene — there weren't even any scenes, there were no festivals — that's when everything started to develop, an infrastructure that didn't exist before started to be created: managers, technicians, recording studios… and I think that what began to develop at that time is what makes Colombian music everywhere today.

What is happening right now with Colombian music is, firstly, the reflection of a country that has many geographies and therefore a very rich sonic richness — there are not only sounds from the Caribbean but there are sounds from the Pacific, sounds from the coasts but and from the interior. All this wealth is now presented to the world with a very strong infrastructure.

I hear El Dorado En Vivo by Aterciopelados here: