viernes 30 septiembre en Tijuana

lo que sigue:

next stop: D.F

Coldplay

Mis apuestas musicales son varias y me gusta hablar y escribir de ellas, tanto aqui como en otros foros en que me lo permiten. Ahora mismo escucho de nuevo el Power Corruption an Lies de New Order y sigo pensando lo de siempre: es un disco perfecto.

Cuando un grupo no me gusta, regularmente no escribo de el. Ahora me entero que Coldplay viene a Los Angeles y no aguanto las ganas de decir: no entiendo como ese grupo tan, pero tan malo haya tenido tanta repercusion y aceptacion mundial (en otra escala mucha gente podria decir lo mismo de Nortec. jaja). Pero ya en serio, la neta, a poco no es terrible ese grupo sin una pizca de originalidad y lleno de cliches tantas veces utilizados en la musica desde los ochenta?

Soy muy tolerante a distintos generos musicales y a distintos grupos. No todo me gusta pero puedo escuchar varias cosas que no son ni lejanamente cercanas (que rara expresion acabo de apuntar "lejanamente cercanas", ahora que lo leo parece un oxymoron) a lo que a mi me emociona de la musica, y estar tranquilo y hasta disfrutarlo.
Casi siempre encuentro algun elemento musical interesante, ya sea a nivel sonoro, a nivel composicion o a nivel de produccion. Es una de las grandes ventajas de ser productor musical, si la musica en si de algun grupo o genero musical no es del todo de tu agrado, puede que te emocione tal o cual estructura de construccion o el tipo de efectos o la mezcla que hicieron de la cancion o el sonido del bajo o de la percusion utilizada etc. Por eso la paso bien escuchando muy distintos y variados generos musicales y la puedo pasar bien escuchando a un sinfin de grupos con apuestas musicales variadas y muy alejadas de las mias: pero definitivamente no aguanto, no soporto y no entiendo como a un gran publico le puede gustar un grupo como Coldplay. El efecto que Coldplay causa en mi es el de la desesperacion y enfado.
Pero bien por ellos, algo deben estar haciendo correctamente para despertar la pasion de tantos. Simplemente yo no lo he descubierto aun...

PS. siempre trato de ser muy respetuoso con cualquiera que se dedique a la musica y el 99% de las veces asi lo hago, despues de todo, tengo mas en comun con cualquier musico que con el 99% de la poblacion del planeta; pero ya no podia reprimir mas mis sentimientos hacia Colplay. Creo que han logrado lo que pocos grupos logran en mi: el desasosiego.

Nortec en el periodico Clarin de Argentina.



Electrónica fronteriza


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
La ciudad mexicana de Tijuana queda ahí en la frontera con los EE. UU. Y fronteriza es la música del "Nortec Collective" (compositores con motes tipo Bostich, Fussible, Panóptica, Hiperboreal, Clorofila): entre el dance global y el folclore local, lo popular y lo elitista, lo antropológico y lo turístico, lo orgánico y lo electrónico. Los Nortec se destacan como un laboratorio latino de la música de baile, en sintonía con nuestros Gaby Kerpel y Marcelo Fabián. En el 01, el colectivo nos visitó sin la repercusión de un Creamfields. Es hora de hacer un poco de justicia. (P.S.)



Ficha

Tijuana Sessions vol. 3
NORTEC COLLECTIVE
ART MUSIC

MUY BUENO

PS: por cierto, estaremos pronto en Buenos Aires. Daremos un "showcase" para 600 personas en La Trastienda el 11 de octubre. Un dia antes participaremos en un festival musical masivo.

En diciembre regresaremos para tocar en el Personal Fest y de alli irnos a Santiago de Chile.

pensamiento ciclado

Gracias por todo Mr. Moog. Si no fuera por ti lo mas seguro es que estuviera trabajando en una oficina de 9 a 5, aburrido y sin futuro.

Habiendo tanta basura en este mundo de sangre y arena por que se tuvo que morir este cabron.

Fuck de veras que siento ganas de llorar!

ps: eso mismo pense cuando se murio mi padre...

ps2: sigo sin acentos en la compu.

Bob Moog ha muerto

Supe hace una semana que estaba muy enfermo y hasta me atrevi a escribirle un mensaje deseandole lo mejor. Desafortunadamente, los genios y la gente amable muere al igual que lo hacen los despreciables.
Ayer murio Bob Moog, el inventor del sintetizador moderno y uno de los mas grandes visionarios de nuestros tiempos.
Mi amigo, el cineasta Hans Fjellestad filmo un documental hace apenas unos meses sobre la vida de Moog.
pagina del documental de Moog.


Una triste noticia para todos los que hacemos musica con sintetizadores...

Nortec Review OC Weekly

Do el Mash-up
Latin alternative: The place for effortless musical miscegenation
Nortec Collective: Rancho soul, DJ smarts


All the recent talk about mash-ups and wacko mixes just proves that music's hipster elite, your Pitchforks and Spins, are a bunch of culture-ignorant dolts (remember rhythm & blues, guys?). To Latinos, the mash-up phenomenon is as old as the Conquest. Musical miscegenation isn’t a trend in Latin America; it’s day-to-day life. It’s Mexicans blasting bastardized polkas and waltzes from their pimped-out Chevy Suburbans and Russian-named Dominicans blasting grand slams toward the upper decks. And three recent Latin alternative releases mash their music in a way that shows again that Latinos can do almost anything better and more efficiently than Americans can.

The Nortec Collective, a group of Tijuana-based electronic mavens who mix digital landscapes with traditional Mexican music, returns after a four-year hiatus with Tijuana Sessions Vol. 3. The first session bored listeners with its cold drones, never mind the critical acclaim; what makes this session succeed is that Nortec now places the emphasis on Mexican rather than electronic sounds,an album with a rancho soul but DJ smarts. Nortec's five members Bostich, Clorofila, Fussible, Hiperboreal and Panoptica,allow accordions to treble on while trombones and tubas burp gaseous oomph-pahs and thick bass and synthesizers hover in the background.

Nortec also remembered to include humor this spin-round. The fun starts with the cover art, a fat, mustachioed, Stetsoned Mexican who might just be my uncle. Tijuana street slang slips in here and there, but the highlight of Tijuana Sessions is Fussible's anthem to the group's hometown, the unapologetically goofy accordion-techno number: Tijuana Makes Me Happy, with the proud opening lyric, Some people call it the happiest place on Earth/Others say it's a dangerous place/It has been the city of sin/But you know, I don't care! You can play most of Vol. 3 during a quinceañera set, and the old folks won't flee the dance floor in disgust, the ultimate Mexican musical compliment.

Nortec's emphasis on re-inventing Mexican regional music is a much-enjoyed relief from the current plague in Latin music known as reggaetón ....

Nortec Review en emusic.com

An orthodontist, chemical engineer and a DJ walk into a bar... Okay, so it sounds like a bad joke, but the origins of the Nortec Collective, a group of musicians and DJs from Tijuana and Ensenada (sic), aren't far from that setup. Their music is best defined as mood rather than sound (which is electronica- and indie rock-tinged): playful, coy, cheerful and profoundly likeable. The first two tracks are fantastic, and you'd be hard-pressed not to be charmed by the rest. Occasionally a record store will play something on its in-store stereo so infectious that no one can resist asking what it is. This is that record.
— Amelia Raitt

hoy


Mi vida es un desmadre sin medida. De pronto lidiar con la realidad me sobrepasa.
Me dan risa los encuentros divezcos.
A poco asi era lo que me esperaba?
Y si hoy no quiero banarme?
Y si hoy no me quiero peinar?
Y si hoy ando de malas?

Antier le di un golpe en el menton a un idiota que me quizo ganar un taxy.
Me rei todo el camino hacia el dandy del sur.
Ya andaba con varias XX en mi sistema y no podia permitir tal humillacion callejera.

Tengo mil cambios en la cabeza por realizar.
Hoy me siento de 16.
Fuck you!!!!!
Sacrificios...

Me diagnosticaron intolerancia a la lactosa y me queria morir. Sobre todo por los quesos. fuck them!!!!

He conocido gente que podria creerse una mierda divina y son tan amables como cualquier cantinera divertida.

En el arte, la envidia, sigue funcionando muy bien...

Nortec en la revista gringa: Rolling Stone

3 1/2 estrellas de 4 posibles.


Nortec Collective
Tijuana Sessions Vol. 3
Nacional Records/ADA

Many acts combine indigenous ethnic music with international electronic beats, but few do it with as much cojones as Nortec Collective of Tijuana, Mexico. The group samples and loops snippets of mostly local musicians playing trumpet, tuba, clarinet, accordion, guitar and various Latin percussion instruments, then digitally stirs the spicy results. Like Paris' twenty-first-century-tango Gotan Project, Nortec create updated lounge sounds for both dancing and chilling. On the sequel to their 2001 debut, Tijuana Sessions Vol. 1 , Nortec lean heavily on organic, acoustic sounds: The frolicsome vocal cut "Tijuana Makes Me Happy" is as much indie pop as Beck, a kindred fusionist whom the Nortec folks have previously remixed. The mostly instrumental tracks throughout have less hipster cool than before but more summery, south-of-the-border appeal, and you don't need a passport or even your name on the guest list.

BARRY WALTERS
(Posted Aug 25, 2005)

Tijuana Sessions Vol3 en la revista Mosaico de Nueva York:
nymosaico.com

///al leer la resena me acord'e de Julio El Sueco///

Nortec Collective....¿y quienes son estos batos, pues?

By Oscar León Bernal

....¿y quienes son estos batos, pues?

Back in 1999, while listening to a banda sinaloense at a wedding, Pepe Mogt (Fussible) thought about translating the traditional rhythms of northern Mexican music into the field of electronica. Excited by the idea he invited several of Tijuana’s most active musicians and producers from?its electronic scenes to participate in the experiment, which Roberto Mendoza (Panóptica)?named Nortec. Some of these musicians came from industrial bands such as Artefakto while others came from electro-acoustic projects such as: Sonios and Aural.

When Fussible, Panóptica, Bostich, Hiperboreal, Clorofila, Terrestre, and Plankton Man launched Tijuana Sessions Volume 1 (2000),?its creation signified that the Mexican electronic scenes?had begun integrating local and global rhythms, similar to what occurred in 1990s with rock records such as Café Tacvba’s Re or La Barranca’s El fuego de la noche . Nortec signified the interiorization of the Popular through a globalized optic via a dialogue with?this otherwise overlooked tradition as?well as?a renewed interest in the regional particularities of Tijuana. In order words, why look for Latin rhythms in electronic music from Germany when all the necessary ingredients were already at home?

The Collective then enlisted the participation of a group of graphic and multimedia artists to accompany the Nortec sound. These artists provided an ambiguous visual pop aesthetic composed of iconographic elements from Mexico’s Northern cultures: Narco-chic, the Mexican curios, the maquiladora, the constant flux of consumer goods and human beings, and the sensorial assault characteristic of late modernity’s urban spaces. It was through this (re)appropriation of stereotypes and simulated Otherness that the world met what was destined to become one of the most significant cultural movements of the northern Mexican border.

....pa’ luego es tarde, socio.

Five years have passed since the release of Tijuana Sessions Vol. 1 . Terrestre and Plankton Man have left the collective in order to pursue equally interesting projects. Other electronic experiments that integrate traditional elements have emerged from Latin America, and many of us have waited patiently, wondering whether the Nortec Collective would be able to give continuity to this project without becoming formulaic.
?
Well, the Tijuana Sessions Volume 3 has arrived; consisting of 15 tracks and 48 minutes in length, the record proves that Nortec is no gimmick. The Nortec sound might not be easily digested by those unfamiliar with northern Mexican music nor by purists accustomed to specific electronica subgenres—rather than simply adding a conga to a house track or a Latin piano as a loop,—Nortec creates a distinct aesthetic that grounds itself on the borderline, in northern Mexican music and more specifically in Tijuana, while maintaining a fluid exchange with global electronic beats that range from down-tempo and electro-pop to drum and bass.

¡aunque le cale compa!

The Nortec collective continues to integrate banda sinaloense, norteño, and electronic rhythms, however, this time the music was recorded with digital and analog instruments.?The music?was then reinterpreted by norteña musicians from a different popular indie-underground, that is, those who play in bars, restaurants, family gatherings and street corners. Besides creating a record rich in textures and versatility this collaboration assured that the roughness that characterize the street sound of Tijuana would be maintained in the record.

From the very beginning when the record opens with the unmistakably Nortec mix of trumpets and synthesizers in "Tengo La Voz" from Bostich, and as it continues with the blissful border-pop of "Tijuana Makes Me Happy, (Bang, Bang!)," the invitation to live in?the city that inspired this movement from within has been extended. Clorofila adds the lounge-feel that coexists with the tubas, snare drums, and accordions in tracks such as "Funky Tamazula" and "Almada." Hiperboreal contributes with a timeless and melancholic cabaret touch in "Dandy del Sur," Don Loope and El Fracaso (¡esa cala, compa!). "Narcoteque"—a Clorofila and Panóptica collaboration—is a norteño bass and dub midtempo with escalating intensity. Two essential tracks in this record are Fussibles’ "Colorado," the only narco-corrido made for headphone listening that I know of, and "Bar Infierno," with a full accordion and bass driven dark mood. Panóptica gives us only one option in his a richly structured track, "Revu Rockers," to dance!

Melancholic urban-dub with a norteño feeling, border-noir, a very Mexican global sensibility, an aesthetic, that as the border itself, remains a work in progress with no clear-cut urban planning, and the coexistence of illegality’s excesses and the creative force of a young nation. The soundtrack one would like for a remix of Orson Well’s Touch of Evil, the perfect disc to enjoy during a summer party in Tijuana, New York, Buenos Aires, Mexico City or an American Southwest freed of neo-Mexican clichés. Enjoy it while drinking a cold beer and a book by Mike Davis.

Nortec en L.A. Weekly


AUGUST 12 - 18, 2005

Factory of Dreams
Nortec Collective's new Tijuana is beautiful & funky & funny
by JOHN PAYNE


With The Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 3,
the Nortec Collective continue to
invent new music for a new
Tijuana, and a new world:

TIJUANA, Mexico - I recently found myself on the road to TJ: The
sun was hotter'n a bulldog's bumhole, and the traffic was even more
infernal, but no worries - this is what it's like when you receive The Call.
My goal: to meet and hang with the five members of Tijuana's Nortec
Collective, a group of musicians, artists and textual provocateurs based in
Baja's notorious playground for American frat boys. Nortec have a new disc
out, called Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 3 (Nacional), wherein their streamlined
Technicolor techno - with the oompahing tubas, tootling trumpets, gurgling
clarinets and shuffle-stomping drums of northern Mexico's ranchera, norteño
and banda styles - gets mashed into a most exquisitely funky and funny and
beautiful riot of sound that could only come from a city with a lot of pride
of place and not a whole lot to lose.

Crossing the border into Mexico, I quickly sensed that palpable
energy shift that follows the landscape's devolution out of San Diego - all
whitewashed bungalows, shiny high rises and sailboats - into what feels like
a deeper, far more complex corollary to the human condition. Here, the
streets and shops and cars and even the dogs look well used because they're
so full of life, rather than empty of it. Vitality, you might say.


On our meeting, the five members of Nortec are all shy smiles
and a rather courtly friendliness. Over water, Cokes and beers, we proceed
to probe the whys and wherefores of their sound/vision collaborations, and
how Nortec's mere existence probably owes to fate or divine providence or
sheer good luck, if one happens to believe in those sorts of things.

Formed in 1999, the group today consists of the "godfather" of
the T.J. electronic scene, Ramón Amezcua, a.k.a. Bostich; DJ-graphic
designer Jorge Verdin, a.k.a. Clorofila; Pepe Mogt, a.k.a Fussible; P.G.
Beas, a.k.a. Hiperboreal; and Roberto A. Mendoza, a.k.a. Panoptica.

"The idea," says Mendoza, "was to get out of the ideas that we
had gotten from all the European bands. I wanted to just stop what we were
doing and just think of places where we were coming from. Like drum & bass,
for example - you know it's coming from England, and U.S. techno, you know
that it's from Detroit. The same thing with minimalist techno - you know
when you hear it, it's from Germany. At one point we said, 'We have to do
something so that can identify ourselves with the music. We can say we are
from Mexico, and from the North.'

"Pepe was the one who came up with the idea of putting this
music together, techno music and banda music. But when we did that, a lot of
DJs here were not interested in the whole Nortec concept, so we fused all
these other elements, regional musical traditions, with more high-tech
things."

Why is a Northern identity so important to these guys? "The
culture in Tijuana is very different from that of Mexico City, Guadalajara
and in fact from the whole country," observes Verdin. "We are between these
two places - the biggest city in the country, to the south, and the reality
of the Mexicans across the border in the U.S., and that whole different
culture from us. Our particular reality is only possible in this part of the
country."

In contrast to the almost stereotypical view that
Mexican-Americans must by definition have a severe identity crisis, says
Verdin, "We don't feel like Mexican-Americans, who feel they don't really
belong to either culture. We feel that we belong - this is our land, our
country, our people, our place. We wanted to expose what is sort of a
little-known culture, the Tijuana culture. We have our roots basically in a
new thing, and it's, like, under construction."

The members of Nortec are perhaps the first generation of
Tijuana's people to recognize their essential separateness from both the
North and South. "We are the first generation to face that reality," says
Verdin, "of something new being needed - music and art and literature,
everything."

The reality for young people in Tijuana in the '80s, when the
Nortec crew were at that special age of sensitivity to new music and art,
was that Tijuana was basically isolated from the rest of Mexico. The
installation of a massive radio transmitter in northern Mexico made all the
difference. "That affected us in a good way," says Pepe Mogt. "A lot of
radio stations had special shows, playing nothing but electronic music, so
that was the main influence for us." This, and the subsequent opening of the
Iguana Club - where San Diego promoters brought in big-name touring acts
from the States and Europe - literally changed the face of music in Tijuana.


Too much talk, though - rather collectively, the group and I
decide to take a little tour of their favorite watering holes, places that
served as inspirational hot spots during their conceptual development. In
other words, we go bar-hopping.

In the fantastic Dandy del Sur - a moodily dim and narrow room
stuffed with curios, candles and a crude mural of a pimp wearing huaraches -
we discuss the group's widespread influences, and why the group isn't bound
by them. (By the way, Dandy del Sur's also graced by the continuous sound of
"New York, New York" from the jukebox, pumped out about six times an hour.
One of the regulars there plays it pretty much all day, every day of the
week. If you don't care for Sinatra's "New York, New York," better stay away
from the Dandy del Sur.)

We talk about old faves like Chrome, MX-80 Sound, the Residents,
Cluster and Krautrock in general, and this guy Steven Brown, the
ex-Tuxedomoon guy who's been resident in Mexico for a number of years,
making his peculiar brand of art music with locals. All of the group's
members are deeply knowledgeable about electronic music, especially from the
late '70s through mid-'80s: Kraftwerk, Ultravox, Depeche Mode, Aviador Dro
from Spain. In the early '90s, their tastes hardened with the arrival of
heavy industrial shit like Ministry and Pigface and the rest of the Chicago
weirdos. Apparently there were electronic bands from Mexico City, and even
in Tamaulipas, but they were superunderground. Then came rave music in the
mid-'90s, which really catapulted the electronic scene in Tijuana, and
inspired what was to become an original electronic sound from Mexico.

At the famous La Estrella, a legendary club where you pays your
money and a nice woman will dance with you (or, if you come accompanied,
someone else will steal your partner), the DJ has been in his little booth
for 30 years; he doesn't read, picks all his stuff by memory from the
covers. The Nortec guys are telling me that places like this, ?in fact, have
come back strong in Tijuana, and that as a result there aren't as many
places for DJs and electronic types to ?play. Recently, however, they did
good business at the massive Las Pulgas, the ?most impressive of the large
trad-Mex music halls. A vast complex of four huge rooms, it can and does
hold 6,000 people who come every weekend to stomp and swirl to ranchera and
norteño, and imbibe very cheaply priced booze.

Las Pulgas' supremely atmospheric vibe of high ceilings and
walls painted black, oceans of tables, huge sound systems and stages and
bars were perfect for the group's hypnotic barrage of electro-banda and
?technoteño. While the owner of the place insisted that they do the show on
a weeknight, because he didn't think it would draw, it did in fact pull in
the masses, via radio spots and a massive flier campaign around town.

Tijuana is about 117 years old, and that's still relatively
young. The population has grown from 250,000 two decades ago to more than 2
million residents today. That, the Nortec fellas tell me, is because of a
particularly nasty myth that still circulates in poorer areas in southern
Mexico, that the border is easiest to cross in Tijuana. In fact, it's the
most difficult. The most frequently crossed border in the world, it's
doubled-walled for miles in this region, with numerous patrols occupying and
defending the ground between the two walls. The result is that the migrants
end up stranded here, and stay; they end up working at one of TJ's over 700
maquiladoras, foreign-owned factories that employ more than 150,000 workers
here, most all of them cheaply paid and non-union-organized.

A few other tidbits strewn in the maze: Someone once referred to
the "emergency architecture" of Tijuana. That's rich. Nortec emphasizes that
Tijuana is accurately seen as "on the edge of the Latin American world;
outsider by nature, a city of mixture and opportunities." Though it's often
viewed as "the world's longest bar," a dark pit of drug traffic and
prostitution, some locals here say that the real Tijuana is off-limits to
tourists - the real Tijuana is where regular people carry on their business
in a non-scandalous way.

Meanwhile, Nortec is touring the world - the U.S., Australia,
Japan, Europe, including prestigious gigs at the Barbican Center in London
and the Hollywood Bowl. They currently sit atop iTunes' Latin Albums Chart,
alongside Thalia, Shakira and Juanes.

And they say: "Know that Nortec is the border, and the border is
our future."

They also say that Tijuana is apparently ugly but at the same
time very marvelous.


Nortec Collective co-headlines a free show at the Santa Monica
Pier Thursday, August 11, as part of the Latin Alternative Music Conference.
rtec en L.A. Weekly