Category: Mexico

TRACK | Cosme – ♀/♂

5/5 golden merles

More Groschi flagged digi drum gruel,
Cosme’s “♀/♂” has the right balance of grime and pop. Mexico-based egg and post-punk with track titles designed to stymie the algorithm. It features sharp synths. It is agreeably weird and pulpy. If you polish this it would die, the act breaking the barrier needed for breathing the muck it is coated in.

When the primary melody finally releases its jaws the newly minted guitar & synth hook cushions the transition into another form. That sequence kindly allows for a brief recuperation before proceeding into another mauling.

There’s a really fine assemblage of instrumental and vocal hooks then a bit of late-stage discordance on vocoder production that merges them into one. Additional digi-drum variant fills keep it all nice and novel in the detailing, fleshing out the piece. If one were so inclined you could surely dance to it with minimal hardship.

Demo No. 3 is currently $2.70 for the .wav files or $8.50 on the remaining cassettes. Maybe you can in the sequence of your life pair it with Priit Pärn’s “…And Plays Tricks.”

TRACK | MIINT – Farmacopea

5/5 golden merles

Mérida, Mexico-based psych punk, with a great acuity of influence, blending many genre elements of surf, garage, shoegaze and some field-recording experimentation toward the latter stages of the album. Opening salvo “Farmacopea” stretches to what would seem a breaking point. But before you know it it’s wrapped back around, the ouroboros insatiable, the spine of bass holding steady.

In light of all that, the production is equal parts bone crunching and soaring. Change is constant and the track is always moving forward, chimeric, feinting and lacerating. These whims come naturally and compound in the cloth of the thing, all of the delirious addendums arriving to seize and gratify. Much is made from the synthesis, its hybrid and contorted form a myriad of chaoses I find to be compelling.

Proceeding to the bandcamp, the digital ghost of the record can be captured for $26 MXN ($1.29 USD).

TRACK | Fili – Tommy

5/5 golden merles

Job For a Cowboy is more tempered fang runoff from Mexico’s Fili, slightly more refined and solemn than Volcom but well within the same anarchic universe of eggpunk and ruthless hooks.

Pleading from a punctured lung, the kind of good ooze you might find emanating among the likes of GEE TEE, Prison Planet, Checkpoint, et al. Look it up if you’ve gladly consumed this discharge, I don’t think your gut biome will reject it.

It’s the brilliant kind of bilge that alienates the right sort, keeping melody in the pocket and pathos near enough to be called upon as needed. Cowboy is a 2022 release that’s definitely competing for the glory and prestige of this humble blogs year end list, cloudy and combustible stuff.

TRACK | Fili – Automatic

5/5 golden merles

Lo-fi garage thrash from Mexico, Fili’s “Automatic” is my favored track off a real superb, tarnished and smeary set. Egg punk tones and bedroom recording methods combine to contaminate one another, a resourceful and regenerative dossier.

From the intro we are fed the requisite raving through a grit of vocals so tactile they’re practically percussive. A series of small instrumental melodies combine to make one great net that effectively colludes to capture. And all this lovely melding and mashing affixed to the discursive litany, today / i don’t want to be disturbed. The album art alone should warrant a peak; it’s good & fun.

TRACK | Karl Neudert – yamevoyadormir (unfinished)

5/5 golden merles

To my taste, Karl Neudert’s extremely prolific demos are better produced than anything I’ve ever mastered.

When the chorus/backing vocals kick in around the one minute mark something very good becomes revelatory and mercilessly catchy.

Seek out his hyper-active youtube channel for more radiant lo-fi hooks.