EL Jaguar

Re-amped Sonic Monuments from Colombia’s Caribbean Coast

To bring El Jaguar to life, we had to follow the sound—into the heat, colour and movement of Barranquilla, Colombia, where towering Picó sound systems pulse at the city’s core. These aren’t ordinary speakers. Handbuilt and painted like mythical creatures or street heroes, each Picó is a living monument to rhythm, reshaping music with pure power and personality. Since the 1950s, they’ve carried Afro-Colombian and Caribbean currents—always loud, always alive.

But before the Picós could leave their mark, we built a toolkit worthy of them.

Deep in the wintry forests of Quebec, inside La Hacienda Creative’s studio, we recorded everything that would become El Jaguar: hollowed-out wooden drums, marimbas, hand-played African percussion, never-repeating handcrafted modular lines, electrically plucked strings—and the unforgettable punch of early drum machines. With our Montréal-based synth wizard Yulian Pugachevsky, we pushed a classic 808, a LinnDrum, and a bench of vintage analogue boxes into the red—saturating, swelling and resampling every single hit. Nothing was polished, only energetic.

Only then did we head south—not to document Picó culture, but to take part in it.

In Barranquilla we re-amped every acoustic hit and electronic thump through towering Picó stacks, letting raw air, concrete walls and punishing volume shape fresh forms. Picó didn’t just make things louder; it made them physical. Notes swam and smeared, taking on the grit of the street and the pulse of the crowd. Chaos was the point; distortion, our compass.

The same spirit sparked a live collaboration with Circuito Sonoro Lab—Laura Katic and Ximena Delat’s handmade modular workshop in Cali. Instead of simply sampling their synths, we invited them to patch and perform through Picó in real time. The sessions were improvised and electric; we stretched these performances into playable textures, layering a modern Colombian identity that is entirely its own.

The instrument’s design honours Picó aesthetics: each custom, hand-built stack has a name, a palette, and a signature sound energy. El Jaguar follows that tradition—bold, unpredictable, built to move people. And it’s personal: many of our team have roots in Colombia and across Latin America. Channelling that heritage—sharing a sonic world that is often overlooked yet full of depth and innovation—fuelled every recording.

El Jaguar is the fourth part in our Portals series—living instruments that let you step into a place, a culture, a moment. It’s an interactive virtual instrument that expands your colour palette with sounds and processes that are rarely available outside their source. What we discovered in Barranquilla surprised us, and we hope it surprises you too.