Bio

Balún are José A. Olivares, Angélica Negrón, Andrés Fontánez, and Noraliz Ruiz from Puerto Rico. They like to build electro-acoustic melodies for imaginary films. These films are sometimes filmed by them or made by others for them. Balún uses electronic and acoustic instruments such as the harp, violin, the accordion, melodica, guitar, puertorrican cuatro, tiple, toy piano to create from concrete sounds to fantastic sounds.

Brought together by their love of simple melodies, 16mm films, cartoon doodles, and experimental pop music done by such bands as Múm and local heroes Súperaquello, and more importantly their desire to make music that was more melodic, accessible, and that also was different from what the rest of the bands in Puerto Rico were doing, the group was formed in May of 2002 by José and Angélica as a side project to their former respective bands.

After the break-up of their bands, on June of 2003 Balún releases their first EP (EP1), followed by their second EP (Nada Que Hacer Hoy) in January of 2004. On October of 2004 their released their third EP called "While Sleeping" for the Vienna-based netlabel Observatory. Following this release, Balún contributed in 2005, a remix for Arturo en el Barco (Carte Postale Records) and a track for the compilation "Porch, Kitchen, Bed, and Basement: Songs from the Blue House" (The Blue House). Brilliante Records from Chicago released their debut album titled "Something Comes Our Way" on June 27, 2006. Following this release Balún embarked on its first tour outside Puerto Rico and played a series of dates in the United States during the summer of 2006. The band's latest album has received positive reviews from various sources such as Allmusic.com, Cyclic Defrost, Textura, XLR8R, The Tripwire, Avantfolk, among others. In summer 2007, Balún did a second mini tour in the United States and Puerto Rico, and this time they played various venues in New York, Chicago and San Juan. They also got to play in the Pop Montreal 2007 festival in October. Balún also kept busy writing new music and contributed new songs to the mp3-compilations Electronica Unplugged 2 (Aerotone) and Pantoufle Tagada (Petite & Jolie). And in 2007, Nora officially joined the group to play bass and tiple. The Balunes are now a quartet!

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Mega Update May 2008 Edition May 19

Compilations, remixes, shows, and a new EP!

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all-time plays - 156

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The kidz - see all 4

• Angelica - voice, accordion, music box, melody harp, omnichord, violin, synths

• Andres - electric guitar, cuatro, synths

• Jose - laptop, omnichord, synths, melodica

• Nora - bass guitar, tiple

Discography - see all 4

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  V/A Pantoufle Tagada

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  An EP Collection

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  V/A Electronica Unplugged 2

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  Something Comes Our Way