El Taller is thrilled to present Gabriel Ríos, an up and coming singer-songwriter from Puerto Rico. Gabriel's music fuses together a wide variety of genres including rock, punk, hip hop, and salsa.
He only recently arrived in New York, after several years of studying, recording and touring in Belgium. For Gabriel, Belgium was a welcoming place. A fleeting five years, he earned a Fine Arts Diploma and a unique place in the local music scene. But finding himself far from home, songs played by his father and grandfather began to visit him in dreams. In a cold attic and with a more than worthy sidekick (Jo Bogaert of Technotronic), he concocted a blend of Puerto Rican rhythms and Belgium surrealism that churned through computers and samplers and became two consecutive albums: Ghostboy and Angelhead.
The European festival scene is an enticing and powerful force. Crowds cheering, brass blowing, people knowing the words to your songs. And let's not forget the good food. Feels like one could stay there forever, but Gabriel started to feel the pull of a smaller, organic, and more intimate set up. Flanked by Kobe Proesmans and Jeff Neve, he hit the theater circuit with a new sound and a new album. His latest, The Dangerous Return is a stripped-down collection of songs featuring piano, percussion, and guitar interwoven with whimsical tales of growing older and of the end of the world as we know it.
And so it was that the need to fly proved irresistible once again. It was only after his arrival in Brooklyn, New York, that he realized with a strange grin on his face that he had forgotten to pack.
