Place is a point of tension for Chris Bowers Castillo. The creative force behind Denver experimental indie trio Kiltro was born and raised in Colorado, but his mother’s home country of Chile has loomed large throughout his emerging career as a singer-songwriter. However, despite his own years there — which informed his band’s 2019 debut Creatures of Habit — the local Chilean-American artist has lately felt disconnected from his second home in South America.
So it may come as no surprise that his Front Range outfit’s latest LP, Underbelly, isn’t so much rooted in a sense of place. Instead, it’s about a state of mind. Much of the album was written in what Castillo calls the “former life of the pandemic,” exploring the Lynchian underworld made visible as he was sitting alone in quarantine within the confines of his Denver home.
“It feels like a strange chapter in life,” Castillo says. “The quiet of it and the discomfort of that quiet. But within it, there’s always buzzing happening subconsciously. And then the news you received from the world on your phone felt remarkably noisy for how quiet everything was.”
Exploring such disparate elements is nothing new for the homegrown musician. Earlier in his career, he billed himself as a folk artist, performing at open mics and taking the audience to an emotional, intimate place. Then he started experimenting with more ambient tones and looping effects, which whet his appetite for experimental sounds and heavily produced field recordings.
Eventually, Castillo combined the two with Kiltro (slang for stray street dogs in Chile), tapping into the rhythm of Chilean folk while also bringing in bassist Will Parkhill and drummer Michael Devincenzi, who helped hone the percussive and rhythmic quality of the band’s unique brand of self-described “zapatos-gaze” music.
“I like experimenting with different kinds of emotional states and rhythm is such an interesting way to experiment with energy and it just sort of opened things up a lot,” Castillo says. “It makes a lot of sense to me — the way pieces fit together rather than sitting down with one instrument, playing through a chord progression.”
‘When the whole world falls away’
While Kiltro’s latest album is less concerned with physical place than its predecessor, there is one notable exception in the track “Guanaco,” written by Castillo in 2019 in response to the mass austerity protests in Chile that resulted in a new constitution. In Chile, a guanaco is a llama-like animal known for spitting. But it’s also the term for large police vehicles equipped to shoot water at protestors and disperse large demonstrations.
The song carries a rising tension: The music builds, anticipating the arrival of a dark, lurking almost mythological being as protestors bang on pots and pans in support of change in their country’s government. But there’s also a “tranquil quality” Castillo says, an internal calmness to the track.
“I thought it was interesting to have such an interior feeling space, in this context of upheaval and social anxiety,” he says. “As we were putting together the songs for Underbelly, it felt surprisingly apt because those songs are so inward and about what happens and what arises when the whole world falls away.”
Castillo was not in Chile for the protests that inspired “Guanaco,” but he did spend some time around the Colorado Capitol as social unrest exploded after the murder of George Floyd. The resulting weeks-long racial justice protests informed the finished product, years after he wrote the original.
“When I was first writing it, I didn’t even have the context of an experience that I would come later and would inform it. It was almost like I happened to capture [the Chilean protests] in a way that felt resonant to me afterwards,” he says. “It’s so interesting how that could happen to a song: Where you can write it in one context and then it changes over time and the meaning of it evolves. But the core is always there.”
After spending years with the songs of Underbelly, the album’s release means Castillo can begin to close that strange chapter of his life. The band is currently preparing to support the record on an upcoming U.S. tour, launching with a June 1 performance at the Mercury Cafe in Denver. With the release, these songs and the moments that birthed them can begin to fade into the past.
“They’ve been a big part of my life for quite a while now. And it feels good to get to a place where we can now just get them out there and then move on to whatever’s next,” Castillo says. “It’s hard to get that writing itch when you’re ferrying something else to the other side of the river.”
ON THE BILL: Kiltro album release show. 7 p.m. Thursday, June 1, Mercury Cafe – Ballroom, 2199 California St., Denver. Free
