BALTHVS

A painter's name and a three-piece from Bogotá

Balthazar Aguirre was working as a museum tour guide when he came across the Polish-French painter Balthus, and the name stuck to the band he would front. He and drummer Santiago Lizcano had already played together in a group called Cosmico; they met bassist and singer Johanna Mercuriana in 2018, drawn to the idea of a guitar-bass-drums trio after hearing what Khruangbin had done with the same three slots. The band's own site dates the project to late 2019, but the working unit that exists now formed in 2020, in Bogotá, during the pandemic.

The music sits on cumbia from their home city, with surf-rock guitar and Middle Eastern melodic shapes laid over the top and long stretches of spiritual-jazz improvisation between the songs. Lyrics arrive in English and in Spanish, and a good share of the catalogue has no words at all. Aguirre has described the aim in plain terms — a world psychedelic funk band, built so that people dance — and the band frame the whole enterprise as a way of easing the wear that modern life puts on mind and body.

A release rate built for the streaming era

Aguirre told The Pitch in August 2024 that he could write an album in a month, and for a stretch the band held to roughly a release a month. The tally on their own site now reads five studio albums, one live album and twelve EPs, with over 140 million streams and shows in more than 26 countries and 98 cities. They have supported themselves entirely from music since 2021.

The debut, MACROCOSM, arrived in September 2020. Cause and Effect followed in 2022, Third Vibration in September 2023 and Harvest in August 2024. Placement work moved faster than the touring did at first: Mango Season went into Netflix's Remarkably Bright Creatures and Turkish Coffee into Outer Banks, and there was a national Sun Cruiser campaign. On the festival side they played Rock al Parque, Colombia's largest, then three separate SXSW appearances, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, Outside Lands, Electric Forest and Burning Man, with a first European tour in 2024.

Transmutations, or the live band finally on tape

The Flesh and Soul world tour took the trio through Europe, the United States and Latin America, including support dates for My Morning Jacket, and the band set themselves a rule: a different setlist every night. Engineer Zev Russ recorded the late-2025 European leg. Aguirre then took those tapes into studios in San Diego and in Bogotá and rebuilt them.

The result, Transmutations, came out on 20 March 2026 and was the band's first fully independent release, on their own Cubensis Records imprint. It is neither a live album nor a studio one. Several of the nine tracks are marked Alchemized — reworked versions of Ojos Verdes, Mood Swing, Flesh and Soul, All is One and Johanna's Dream — alongside LSD in Bahia, Outer Reaches, Inner Heights and a psychedelic reading of the Grateful Dead's Shakedown Street. The band's own explanation was that they transmuted the live concert into a studio album, re-recording elements to get studio quality while keeping what the room had given them. Their stated motive was simple enough: for some time, they said, they had wanted to show that live BALTHVS was a different experience from the records.

The record also documents a change in personnel. Vanessa Muñoz had covered bass while Mercuriana was away on maternity leave, and Transmutations captures both her final stretch with the band and Mercuriana's return.

Deadheads from Bogotá

The band describe themselves as probably the only Colombian Deadheads, and Aguirre has said that Jerry Garcia is his spirit animal. That is not decoration. Recent setlists have carried Help on the Way, Slipknot!, Shakedown Street and Bird Song, Phish's First Tube, and a straight run at Disco Inferno, dropped in among Turkish Coffee, Siente and Year of the Snake.

The affinity has carried them onto the American jam circuit rather than the indie one. They played Suwannee Hulaween in 2025 and Jam Cruise 22 in February 2026, then All Good Now at Merriweather Post Pavilion on 13 June 2026 and High Sierra Music Festival at Grass Valley from 2 to 5 July. The 2026 diary also took in Cat's Cradle in Carrboro on 11 June, Sawtooth Valley Gathering in Stanley, Idaho, Zootown in Missoula, Lee's Palace in Toronto on 20 July with Pearl & The Oysters opening, and Release Athens in Greece.

Where they stand in late September 2026

Manifest is due on 7 October 2026 through Mixto Records, a move off the self-run Cubensis imprint they used for Transmutations six months earlier. Eleven tracks: five singles already road-tested and six new recordings made between tour legs and at a farm studio in the countryside outside Bogotá. The running order opens with In-N-Out (Downtown) and closes on Kilig, taking in Pale Blue Dot, RARE PSALMS, Eternal Flow and a studio Flesh and Soul on the way.

The band frame it as intentional creation rather than reinterpretation — the opposite instinct to the record before it — and say it reaches into drum and bass, harder rock playing and Ethio-jazz. Mercuriana's return after motherhood is credited with setting that direction. The first single, Liminal Stages, was announced on 23 June 2026; Aguirre said it came out of the video games and the general optimism of the late 1990s, when the future still looked futuristic and hopeful. In an interview on 17 March 2026 the band also said they intended to have a new studio of their own standing by the end of the year.

The North American headline run begins on 8 October, the day after the album, and currently lists fifteen dates through the end of the month: Aisle 5 in Atlanta on the 9th, Music Farm in Charleston and The Moonshiner's Ball in Livingston, Kentucky on the 10th, Eulogy in Asheville on the 11th, The Atlantis in Washington on the 13th, Ardmore Music Hall on the 14th, Meanwhile Brewing in Austin on the 16th, the Ramova Theatre in Chicago on the 17th, El Club in Detroit on the 18th, Cervantes' Masterpiece in Denver on the 20th, The Holding Company in San Diego on the 22nd, the Regent Theater in Los Angeles on the 23rd, Felton Music Hall on the 24th, The Independent in San Francisco on the 25th and Wild Buffalo in Bellingham on the 30th.