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 ....