Not (Just) Your Mama's Sound Machine
Nortec Collective’s Bostich + Fussible stay grounded on their latest release
They’ve been her-alded by no less than Time magazine as bearers on a completely new, revolucionary, geo-cultural musical genre: Nortec, or Norteno techno music.
But Pepe Mogt (Fussible) and Ramon Amezcua (Bostich) aren’t concerned with such grand, postmodern labels. For Mogt, Nortec Collective Presents Bostich + Fussible: Tijuana Sound Machine (his outfit’s latest release, out Tuesday on Nacional Records) is still all about returning to roots and root inspirations, while constantly evolving as electronic composers.
“Every show is different,” Mogt says from a hotel room in Monterrey, Mexico, where he and Amezcua are holed up rehearsing for the evening’s performance, opening for Groove Armada in front of at least 10,000. “We can play a small show by ourselves or with the musicians now. When we play with the musicians, it’s the two of us with the live band, and it makes eight of us total. Plus we’re bringing a guy who does the live visuals, the graphic interface with the music.”
It’s this juxtaposition of old-school, even traditional, regional sounds with the bleeding-edge of electronica and electronic computer culture that ostensibly defines the Nortec phenomenon—and Mogt is happy to wax techno-nerd on the group’s newest toys.
“Every time we find a new interface or technology, it’s like being a kid at Christmas,” he gushes. “We are playing with a new instrument, the Tenori-On, which programs the melodies and the rhythms right on a touch-screen. So every note and rhythm can be sent straight from the DJs to the graphic artist. Everything is on a network, because we’re all using iPhones to control computer software that interfaces with the Tenori-On, and all of us, in that way, we can control the visuals that end up on the screen.
“We put special software to take advantage of iPhone’s multi-tasking, and maybe that’s not legal, but that’s the way we’re doing it.”
Mogt agrees, however, that the surfaces of their third full-length, Tijuana Sound Machine, are far more organic and musically structured than their two previous outings, 2001’s Tijuana Sessions Vol. I and the slyly named follow-up, Tijuana Sessions Vol. 3. (There is no second volume, so don’t go looking for it, gringos.)
“This record,” says Mogt, “it’s far more based on our live performance. For me and Bostich, and to our fans, too, to hear a tuba on electronic music will always be strange, of course – and funny. Instead of synthesizing a low bass sound, to hear a live tuba, even to us, it sounds humorous. But this album’s tracks are much more than that, with the band sort of leading the way.”
Mogt admits, somewhat embarrassingly, that his parents’ traditional sounds must have seeped into his DNA:
“Ramon and I grew up with Norteno music, and we hated it. When we were growing up, we didn’t listen to it with open ears, you know. But even though we tried our hardest to avoid this music as kids, now that we’re hearing it again, it’s just incredibly familiar, a part of us. We can automatically pick out which instruments go where and play what. It comes to us so naturally, I think.
“A few years before we started Nortec Collective, we began listening to this traditional music again, and now, eight years into it, still today we are discovering new Norteno sounds like they are brand-new. Especially now, touring with the musicians in the band, they will break out and jam in the hotel rooms for us, and it’s just amazing how inspiring that can be.”
Mogt’s well-grounded approach to a much-hyped new-music genre is paradoxically refreshing as well – he claims to consciously, constantly, try to keep himself humbled.
“What I really want to avoid is the stuff in making a living from music that is most distracting – the fame or unreal ideas like that,” he says. “You know, the whole rock star and backstage scene … being famous or thinking that you’re popular and famous in your mind can take away from the best in us. So I would always want to avoid that.”
Nortec Collective plays Thursday at the Glass House (200 W. Second St., Pomona; 7 p.m.; $15) and Saturday at the Echo (1822 Sunset Blvd., L.A.; 9 p.m.; $10-$12. 18+).
Published: 04/30/2008
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