Before He Plays Town Park, Adrian Quesada's 'Boleros Psicodélicos II' Is the Record to Live With

When Adrian Quesada walks onto the Telluride Jazz Festival stage Saturday with his Trio Asesino, plenty of the crowd will know him as the guitarist and co-architect of Black Pumas, the Grammy-nominated Austin soul act. Fewer will have lived with the record that best explains why he belongs on a jazz festival's genre-bending weekend: _Boleros Psicodélicos II_, released Jun 27, 2025.

The album is a sequel to Quesada's 2022 Boleros Psicodélicos, and it doubles down on a beautifully specific idea — taking the bolero, the aching mid-century Latin American ballad form, and running it through vintage psychedelic haze: harpsichord flourishes, distorted guitar lines, tremolo, drama. Produced by Quesada with Alex Goose, it turns up both the intensity and the guest list, pulling in vocalists including Cuco, Ed Maverick, and iLE, plus the Swiss-Latin instrumental duo Hermanos Gutiérrez. It is period-piece music that never feels like a museum — the grooves are heavy, the arrangements modern, the melodrama entirely earned.

What makes it the right listen ahead of Aug 8 is that it maps so cleanly onto what Telluride Jazz actually is. This is a festival that will spend one weekend on a Miles Davis centennial, a Grateful Dead anniversary, and a Powered-Down Disco Biscuits set. Quesada's whole method — reverence for old forms, zero interest in preserving them under glass — is that same ethic in album form. Trio Asesino, his stripped-down instrumental vehicle, promises a set that lets the guitar tone and the boleros' cinematic bones do the talking.

There's a case to be made that Boleros Psicodélicos II is Quesada's most fully realized statement of intent, precisely because it isn't chasing a crossover single. Black Pumas were built for radio; this record is built for headphones at midnight and, apparently, for a Colorado field at dusk. The songs trust you to sit in the ache instead of resolving it, which is a rare thing on a 2025 release.

Why feature a Texas artist's record in a San Juans music archive? Because the festival that defines early August here has decided the borders of "regional" and "local" are porous by design — student jazz combos and touring soul auteurs on the same bill — and because a great record playing a small mountain town is exactly the sort of thing this scene exists to celebrate. Quesada's Telluride set is a chance to hear this material breathe in a room built for exactly this kind of genre-agnostic ambition.

Put it on before you drive up the canyon. Then go stand in the field and hear how it translates at 8,750 feet.

Sources: Boleros Psicodélicos II — Adrian Quesada | AllMusic; Adrian Quesada – Boleros Psicodélicos II | Discogs; Adrian Quesada's Trio Asesino — Telluride Jazz Festival