San Pedro El Cortez - Creaturas

Creaturas, San Pedro El Cortez
Vale Vergas Discos, Mexico
Rating: 78
by Jeziel Jovel 

Because of its bittersweet reputation, the city of Tijuana is easy to misinterpret from the outside and hard to explain from the inside. The city that has recently seen ruidoson idols and nortec cowboys bloom is now the cradle for an unexpected resurrection of inglorious trasheostars that put anarcopunk in the social spectrum. There’s a scream behind every chord of San Pedro El Cortez, a band that flirts with the glorification of the bordertown but rejects the idea of the city absorbing them. Even in times when this kind of music is fashionable, there’s still a certain guilt (inherited by parents and nuns) that the band’s themes and punk have to challenge. San Pedro El Cortez confronts the landscape with honest and personal noise.

In 2007, a band of sick fucks called the Black Lips recorded a live album at a bar in Tijuana. The youngsters from the then-recently assembled San Pedro El Cortez were there, and the event stirred a potential path for the band to take. That particular night was full of everything and nothing. Black Lips surfed a night of drugs, wigs, and makeup and, as if they were living inside of an Emir Kusturica film, they saw the noisy night transforming into one where a drunken mariachi closed the night playing José Alfredo Jiménez’s “El Rey” (the eternal hymn of all the cantina’s drunks). “They’re living the real dream of rock and roll and do whatever they want to do…having fun and getting drunk while playing your own songs, that was a shocking revelation for us,” says San Pedro’s leading vocalist Diego Cordoba.

The UK invented punk, the gringos sold it, and the Latinos have fun with it. San Pedro’s latest EP, Creaturas, is living proof. The EP explores the hardships of a youth searching to escape absurd realities imposed on them, a sonic youth’s robbed soul that fights against the fears that now make the punk zeitgeist seem loveless. Produced by Dr. Bona (Los Fancy Free, 6 Million Dollar Weirdo), Creaturas is a notable step forward in sound from San Pedro’s first release, El Vals Mefisto. Explosive guitar riffs pristinely combine with primitive drums in fast-paced songs like “Castañeda” and “Chica Mala." It may seem like the least thing to expect, but the assembly of their instruments showcases a band that’s resourceful and attentive of your attention span. San Pedro El Cortez share a similar escapist urgency with other contemporaries like fellow punks Ave Negra, their profane compatriots Calafia Puta, or even the acoustic norteño strings from Juan Cirerol.

Coming from the absurd, chaotic, and dirty things of routine life, every track on the assaulting Creaturas feels like a platform where the band unloads their daily share of mental sickness. They search for receptors open to share the experience, continuum, and a few bucks to buy some caguamas at the after party. “Yo solo quiero escapar de esta absurda realidad,” sighs the band in “Conjuro del Diablo.” There’s nothing poetic to overanalyze—San Pedro El Cortez kicks and bites, and they’ve found a channel for escapism and rebirth in the warm yet cruel infrastructure of that almighty genre we call rock and roll.

♫♫♫ "Chica Mala" / Download EP

Hidrogenesse - "El artista"

Although united by the most elemental of cultural vehicles (language), transatlantic bridges between independent artists from Spain and Hispanic America have always been hard to find, yet seem to gradually flourish with the facilities of the digital world. The news of Barcelonian indie scene mavericks Hidrogenesse teaming up with Txema Novelo and Vale Vergas Discos for their latest video and upcoming single on the label’s always idiosyncratic body of work is certainly one to be causing a certain commotion among music fans of Old and New World alike. Matter of fact is, we didn’t really muster the courage to properly review Hidrogenesse’s 2012 techno pop, intellectually dense concept album, Un dígito binario dudoso: Recital para Alan Turing, despite continuous warnings from Spain’s most trusted tastemakers. “El artista,” though, sees the duo turning up their accessibility levels (without sacrificing their inherent quirkiness) in order to turn in a Glitter-influenced, hook-centric rendition of the independent artist's worst nightmare: fund seeking. Shot in Paris, Txema Novelo’s characteristically contemplative and vintage lens here delivers a rather shaky and claustrophobic rendition of the crowdfunding experience. As it later loses itself in opulent close-ups of various bills, it leaves you with the subtle conclusion that seeking funds is, in and of itself, an art.

Video: Mujercitas Terror - "Actriz"

It wasn’t too long ago that we realized, after failing to properly get behind Mujercitas Terror's great 2011 sophomore release, Excavaciones, just how much this was a band somber-yet-savvy enough for a strong underground cult following, but that still had plenty of mystique to successfully cruise into pop audiences. Already over a decade old and coming off a successful Mexican tour, the porteño trio made use of it to release (via cutting edge label Vale Vergas Discos) a split 7” with gorey industrial virtuosos Mueran Humanos (whose female half actually used to play keyboards in Mujercitas Terror) and team up with video director Txema Novelo for a purple-hued take on their upbeat post-punk number “Actriz.” Evoking Novelo’s previous clips’ improvisational style and loose framing, the video has something of João Pedro Rodrigues’ To Die Like a Man’s red-filtered woodland tableau scene, but with its characters indistinguishably appearing as either unprotected drifters (“Ya nadie cuidará de mí, tampoco de ti”), or maybe just esoteric paganists (“No mires hacia abajo, ahí van delicados tus chicos lastimados").

Mujercitas Terror - Excavaciones

Earlier this month we wrote about an editorial guilt for not giving Félix y Los Clavos’ Continuara the amount of attention it deserved. Well, there’s another superb Argentinean album out there that we simply failed to come across. Mujercitas Terror’s Excavaciones is so good that we just can’t keep on posting 2012 material without at least winking at it through this tiny blurb. Excavaciones is, like the title suggests, a down-to-the-bone excavation to gnarled sensibilities and wounded shoegaze. How we’ve failed to acknowledge this band for years is a bit discomforting but it’s also stimulating to know there’s so much industrial music out there we still need to hunt for. The good news is we’ll get a chance to redeem ourselves soon as Mujercitas Terror will share a 7’’ split with the great Mueran Humanos, and they’ll be doing it that through Vale Vergas Discos (Juan Cirerol, Mentira Mentira). The scene as we know it is bound to strip off its couture and go darker, hopefully for the better.

♫♫♫ "Excavaciones"

Video: Fred Lorca - "Animal Bueno"

Fred Lorca is one of the most introspective characters we’ve encountered among the remarkable Vale Vergas catalog and after his impressive 2009 debut, Cosas Que Suceden, he is back into his pop cult with his latest LP, Cuchita Club. This is the one-man project by Argentine-born multi-platform artist Christian Dergarabedian. Like Brooklyn’s Helado Negro, Santiago de Chile’s Voz de Hombre and Madrid’s Anti, Lorca’s responsiveness to sonic texture takes him to the most rumbling corners of pop songcraft. “Animal Bueno” is the opening track on his new album and shows progression in almost every layer of Lorca’s rich melodic assembly. This flat-out gorgeous clip by Barcelona-based art director Nico Casavecchia is a great companion to a venturesome piece that’s at times eye-popping and surreal and at times breathtakingly humorous. Inventively drawn and self-governing in its motion, this clip also brings Lorca’s crooner vocals closer to a never-ending summer chillwave.