Miguel Colmenares
̸
Biografía
- It must be beginner's luck. After a scant two years kicking around Miami and DJing scattered gigs there and abroad, Miguel Colmenares fell in with a techno-loving crowd, founded the music-and-art crew Future Collective, and got his hands on production..It must be beginner's luck. After a scant two years kicking around Miami and DJing scattered gigs there and abroad, Miguel Colmenares fell in with a techno-loving crowd, founded the music-and-art crew Future Collective, and got his hands on production software-from there, it was only a matter of months before labels and listeners alike fell for the Venezuelan producer's singular brand of intensely syncopated minimalism. Inspired as much by Latin bandleaders like Cheo Feliciano and Eddie Palmieri as by fellow South American technophiles Ricardo Villalobos and Pier Bucci, Colmenares emerged fully formed, armed to the hilt with percussive grooves that bounce like digitized conga drums shimmying through a steel pipeline. Colmenares' 2006 debut, the slithering come-on of "Sure You Do," caught the ear of Sweden-based netlabel Subtropical's Vincent Casanova, who remixed the track as the b-side to "Carta Roja." (Matthew Dear has been known to drop that particular track into his sets, calling Colmenares "a perfectionist of the simple yet oh-so-addictive house groove.") A pair of releases on Pinksilver followed. But after spending time in Sacramento and reconnecting with Auralism's Jason Short, the producer knew he'd found a spiritual home—even though he now lives half across the globe in the Netherlands. Lately, Colmenares has been constructing his elegant odysseys the old-fashioned way. "I've started doing more jam sessions in the studio where I just turn the machines on and start recording long parts on the sequencer, drum machines, and real synths. I've found it's a lot more interactive, as well as a lot more open to error…which in techno can sometimes be good!"