FACT SHEET

For fans of:

The Surfaris, Khruangbin, the Pulp Fiction soundtrack

‘Los Bichos’, without the ‘t’, means ‘the bugs’ in Spanish, and it was non-Spaniard Serra Petale’s idea to bastardise the phrase. “Honestly, it was a spur-of-themoment thing,” she laughs. “I was like, ‘Yeah, cool – instrumental, Turkish, cumbia

– Los Bichos, but with ‘bitch’ in it!’”

Let The Festivities Begin! was mostly cut at Gallery studio, a facility owned by Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera. They’d just about finished recording when Covid lockdown arrived in March 2020, but had to wait a few months to add final overdubs, and then another year before the album could be released with any prospect of touring.

During lockdown, the band kept busy with their own radio show, Planet Bitchos, on Gilles Peterson’s internet station Worldwide FM. Explains Petale, “We would visit a different country for each show, and chat about the music, basically like a virtual tour when you couldn’t tour.”