Monterrey Pop: The Return of Mexican Hipsters Plastilina Mosh
"We never wanted to make music that sounded like it's coming out of a particular place in the world," says Alejandro Rosso, programmer/sampler/keyboard player, in a phone interview. "Not Mexico, or the States, or Europe. Just like music that you put onto a CD and you can buy."
Juan Miguel is a multilingual celebration of everything from Daft Punk, vocoder, disco house to sexy, bongo-driven Latin triphop. Rosso and his partner Jonas met about 12 years ago when they were both playing in different bands in Monterrey. Each brings very different musical tastes to the table. Jonas is into rawer stuff like hardcore punk, acid jazz, disco and rock, while Rosso's more conventional taste includes classical jazz, samba, salsa and some electronic dance music.
They manage to collaborate successfully by following two golden rules. One is that any idea they come up with they have to try. Even if they both know right away that it'll probably sound stupid, for the sake of the one time out of a hundred that it turns into something interesting and unique, they try everything that comes to mind. The second rule is that nothing is final throughout the production process. "So if we have 10 months working on a song and a little accident happens with the guitar and it's a little noise that we like better, we could just leave that," Rosso says.
The mixture results in a collage of styles that makes it hard to accurately pigeonhole Juan Miguel, especially along geographical lines. "Tiki Fiesta" captures the campy lounge funk that Beck and Dimitri from Paris are known for, while "Graceland," with its jazzy Gil Evans Orchestra sample, is a cross between old, 1940s funky piano jazz and a Beastie Boys song that samples it. "Saint Tropez is Not Far" is a mixture of snappy electro breakbeats and smooth, melodic, postrock synth lines, and "Let the Speaker Speak" uses a fat disco bassline (almost identical to "Another One Bites the Dust") to drive a mad, Kraftwerk-indebted robot pop-rock tune.
Juan Miguel is more of a postmodern 21st-century rock 'n' roll record for fans of Beck and the Beastie Boys than it is for someone who digs Selena or Jennifer Lopez. And quite frankly, Rosso and Jonas are sick of people claiming that they're aiming for a potential crossover into American markets and latching onto the hip Latin fad.
"My point of view is that it sucks," Rosso says of such claims. "For us, it's better not to have a certain style of music, but just wander about whatever we find interesting."
It's a healthy point of view. Even the most ardent Ricky Martin fan has to realize that the guy's a flash in the pan. As an individual, he may have the hype machine running well enough to churn out another few (or another dozen) records before he's finished. But being associated with the fashionable movement of the day is always risky, because it seldom lasts, and those who fall short of the highest echelon of MTV superstardom inevitably will end up in the Super Saver bins. Pearl Jam still rules the world, but what have you heard from Screaming Trees or Alice in Chains lately?
And besides, what is "Latin" music anyway? Are Colombian rock bands the same as Mexican ones? Is there really some single, overarching principle or sound?
"When you say 'Latin music,' the only thing that comes to mind for me is music that has something in Spanish, because that's the way it is," Rosso says. "There's a lot of music that's all different to me. I would never use that term."
Maybe it was their use of Spanish that got Plastilina Mosh labeled a Rock en Español band when they released their first album, 1998's Aquamosh. They had French, Japanese and English on that record as well, but the timing was right, and as a couple of Mexican dudes playing very "American"-sounding popular music they got lumped together with a burgeoning new generation of Latin rock bands. It actually put them in a rather paradoxical situation. By some Spanish-speaking bands' standards, speaking English is a shameless sellout aimed at getting American radio play. At the same time, for speaking Spanish and being a "Latin alternative" band in Beck's postmodern, cut 'n' paste school of pop music, others criticized Plastilina Mosh as being nothing more than a couple of hacks trying to cash in on the Latin craze with passe music already popularized by American artists.
"I think you have to put things into perspective. I mean, if we were trying to make money from popular Latin music in the States, probably the best thing for us to do would be like Selena or something," Rosso says. "In fact, we're not even doing music that could be that big of a commercial hit in Mexico. The first album did really well, but it was kind of a surprise. The idea is just to have fun, and sometimes a song comes together in English, because we have that influence, too. You know, we're being bombarded by that culture."
Rosso says you might be surprised by how "American" Monterrey is. For one, it's a mere two-hour drive from the Texas border, and when he was a kid, Rosso used to spend a lot of his weekends up in Texas listening to American music. Perhaps more importantly, Monterrey is a wealthy industrial city, exporting goods around the globe, giving its citizens an affluence that has spilled over into the city's arts scene.
"There's a lot of new rich people who have a lot of money to spend, but don't know how to spend it," Rosso says. "They buy art and stuff, so there's an art movement and a lot of galleries involved, and it's already spreading to music."
Yet despite the American influences Plastilina Mosh wear on their sleeves, there's no denying that Juan Miguel's Spanish vocals, hot rhythms and distinctly Latin cadences give the record's rock, hiphop and disco songs the feel the industry has labeled Latin alternative. A gringo might not be able to identify whether it's a salsa, merengue or samba backbeat kicking behind any of the sampledelic dance grooves, and Rosso says that is one of the things that differentiates American music from Mexican music.
"For you guys, you go to any country in North America and it's pretty much the same. But when we go to South America, we really see a difference from country to country," Rosso says. "Every country has its own flavor and style, and I think we are in the position to really take advantage of that. We can have a lot of influences coming from a lot of places instead of only one culture."
Plastilina Mosh caught Beck's attention in 1997 and got a recording session through his Bongload label. Then they sent their demo tape around to the big-name producers they respected just to see what would happen, and the Dust Brothers told them to come to Los Angeles to record. But because the Brothers were already tied up with a Rolling Stones project, they recommended that the duo hook up with the avant-hiphop lounge quartet Sukia to work on their first record.
With Juan Miguel, it was much the same. The duo met Money Mark at an L.A. show and sent him a demo. Next thing they knew, he was producing their new record, along with Beta Band producer Chris Allison. The handpicked, multiproducer strategy has allowed Plastilina Mosh to maintain a certain level of control over their music and keep them free of someone who would try to push them into something more commercial.
"That's the way we work. We send our demo and cross our fingers and see if they want to work with us, and lucky for us it's always happened," Rosso says.
Plastilina Mosh don't take themselves too seriously, and the fun they have making music comes across on their records. "We don't know if anyone else is having fun, but we are," Rosso says. "And I think you can feel that in the music. We just see it like this: hey, we have an opportunity to make another album. We don't know if in the future we are going to do another one, so why don't we just have a good time with it?"