Mad Radio MedellínMad Radio Medellín

Leo Herrera started Mad Radio in Medellin in 2017 as a bar built around a record counter and a DJ booth rather than a stage, somewhere emerging local selectors could play and the rest of the city could come and hear them. Rooms in Barcelona, Bogota, Miami and New York followed. Medellin got a second site in November 2024, when Mad Records opened in the Astorga neighbourhood: a cafe with playlists of its own, a lo-fi bar running vinyl and live sets, and a store stocking funk, disco, jazz and soul.

An afternoon here runs on Detroit deep house and the European records that grew out of it, mostly long and mostly patient, warming toward balearic edits as the evening comes in. It is the least hurried of the group's frequencies. Guests take the booth in full view of whoever happens to be drinking, which was the founding idea and remains the one the other rooms copy.