Listen to new single Pressure now.
Florentino is releasing an EP via XL Recordings. Kilometro Quinze lands on 20 October and includes last summer’s Constrictor, which featured Bambii and KD One. The forthcoming EP also features a collaboration with Nymph star Shygirl, entitled Pressure. The pair’s link-up was shared today alongside the EP announcement, check it out below.
Elsewhere, the release features additional collaborations with Florentino’s Sangre Nueva affiliate DJ Python along with Baby Cocada. The EP was written over three years between Manchester, London, Bogotá, New York, and LA and documents an artist tapping back into his roots “in a way [he] hadn’t done before”.
“Kilometro 15 is the name of the road that exists closest to my grandad’s farm [near Villavicencio, in Colombia], a lot of this record is inspired by my time there over the years,” says Florentino in a statement. “This almost nameless road, that exists near to a military base on one side and marsh jungle-like land on the other, represents an in-between place to me, a path to somewhere that feels like home.”
He adds: “Since the inception of Florentino on that farm years ago, I’ve constantly been chasing a sound in between the darker UK club music I was immersed in growing up in Manchester and the different styles of Colombian music my family had introduced me to. Growing up my mum would blare salsa and cumbia from Colombia whenever my dad wasn’t playing dub or acid.”
Through the making of the new EP, he continues, he was able to “really sit with the sounds and intentionally channel them in a way I have always wanted to. Kilometro Quinze is me making my own mark in between the two sonic worlds, rather than chasing the idea of making something as close to what I admire as possible. It’s not one or the other, it’s both and something new all at the same time. It’s a sound I can call my own and can continue to explore deeper moving forward.”
Pre-save Kilometro Quinze here and revisit our Threads 2022 in conversation with Florentino and Nick León