Various Artists: The Tijuana Sessions Vol. 1 : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Based in Tijuana, the Nortec Collective includes a handful of DJs, graphic designers and architects whose sensibilities were forged by the border town's clash between Mexican and gringo aesthetics. Musically, Nortec are based on a jarring combination of extremes: Borrow a few demos from local norteno and banda sinaloense groups; lift the most enticing snippets of accordion hiccups, tuba riffs and squirrelly snare-drum rolls; transpose said materials to a digital studio and create sumptuous electronica soundscapes that, in Mexico at least, have young couples shaking their booties. The term collective is not applied liberally here. All of the featured artists, from Plankton Man to Fussible and Clorofila, obey the same principles of sonic collage and organized stylistic anarchy. The most talented of the bunch is Bostich, a thirty-eight-year-old orthodontist by the name of Ramon Amezcua. With its plump brass roars and delirious rhythmic frenzy, his epic "Polaris" is something like Caligula on electronics, the imaginary soundtrack to a movie about the debauchery of the Roman Empire, complete with orgies and dancing elephants. It is not often that a single record gives birth to a new musical subgenre, but the Latin world hasn't been the same since the release of these frighteningly original, refreshingly cool Tijuana Sessions.

ERNESTO LECHNER
(RS 871 - June 21, 2001)