Graded on a Curve:
Back Up: Mexican Tecno Pop 1980–1989

Readers with an insatiable appetite for synth-pop and new wave should prepare themselves for a treat. On September 24, the Dark Entries label is releasing Back Up: Mexican Tecno Pop 1980-1989, its ten tracks enlighteningly enjoyable and with a prevailing DIY sensibility that lends appealing cohesiveness to the whole. Just as important is range in both style and temperament, so that the contents are likely to please curious newbies as well as obsessives. It’s out digitally and on vinyl combined with a 12-page booklet printed on neon green, pink and orange paper and loaded with photos, lyrics in Spanish, and background info in English.

Right up front, the most fanatical of synth-wavers mentioned above may already be hip to the majority of the selections featured on this set, as eight of the ten were snagged from Backup: Expediente Tecno Pop, a collection issued in 2005 by the AT-AT label. But as that release was a CD-only affair, the Dark Entries edition earns the distinction of being the first ever vinyl compilation of Mexican new wave and post-punk, with this stature enhanced by two exclusive tracks.

There is also some reconfiguring of sequence, as side one begins with the CD’s twelfth track (out of 13), “Pesadillas” by the Tijuana-based trio Avant Garde. The sound is tangibly Euro-wavy (the cited comparisons are Ultravox and Alphaville), but with fidelity that favors tape hiss over glossiness. While surely not the band’s preference, the modest acoustics do reinforce that Mexican Tecno Pop was largely an underground phenomenon. Instruments were scarce (it was an economically precarious time) and monied record labels were reportedly disinterested).

And as captured audio of a live performance (unreleased prior to the 2005 CD), “Pesadillas” does honestly represent how Avant Garde sounded: rhythmically punchy with a dash of retrofuturist iciness and modest levels of crooning. These ingredients are also present in “Cambios en El Tiempo” by Tijuana four-piece Vandana, but in a song that’s appreciably more anthemic and sporting higher levels of glisten. I’ll submit that Vandana is what Avant Garde would’ve sounded like if they’d gotten into a legit studio, but with the caveat that I’m not operating from a position of expertise with these bands.

I dig Verdana and Avant Garde but am frankly much more smitten with Syntoma, a quartet from Mexico City whose style (tagged by the band as electropicalurbano and in the booklet as techno-cumbia) falls securely on the progressive end of the electronic pop spectrum. Frankly, Syntoma are one of the few outfits on Back Up that isn’t audibly reaching beyond Mexico’s borders for inspiration, reinforcing “No Me Puedo Controlar,” which titles their 1983 album on the Tropico Digital label (reissued in 2019), as one of the standouts on this comp.

“Mundo Sin Viento” by Artefacto jumps forward in the timeframe to 1989 while returning to Tijuana (which by the looks of it was a prime locus for Mexican synth-wave), with the sound blending highly danceable synth-pop (I hear some New Order in there) and the more accessible side of the nascent club-focused Industrial scene (Wax Trax, most def).

The Industrial elements in Artefacto’s scheme are mainly the beat’s aggressive rigidity and the sampled political speeches and news broadcasts (which are intermingled with singing and a spoken interlude in the track’s midsection). There’s also synthetic bass wiggling to contend with. Do you remember Information Society? I sure do.

Artefacto’s selection comes from their debut album Synthesis, its title serving as their original moniker. And Back Up’s notes explain how Synthesis (the first of four albums that spanned deep into the ’90s, including a collab with Sascha Konietzko of KMFDM) yielded a hit on commercial radio (but not “Mundo Sin Viento”), so not everything on Back Up operated at a purely subterranean level.

The six-piece Coo Coo Bazar emerged from the band Casino Shanghai, who are amongst the 13 acts assembled on AT-AT’s initial release. “Coo Coo Bazar” is on that CD too, in an otherwise unreleased song that’s stripped-down fidelity suggests it was culled from a demo tape. I’ll admit that a big part of the appeal for me here is in experiencing synth-pop executed in such an unadorned state, but after a few listens, the tune itself, essentially a theme song (always a good sign when bands have a theme song), and with no lyrics other than a repetition of the title, is a solid grower.

Volti is another sextet, and one of the only entrants on Back Up of which I’m vaguely familiar, as they were based in New York City for a while and released an EP in 1986 on the Belgian label Crammed Discs, its title track “Corazón” included here. This situates Volti and Coo Coo Bazar on opposite ends of the Mexican synth-wave spectrum, but a quality they share is an indifference to the loquacious, as the lyrics to “Corazón” could easily be scrawled onto a cocktail napkin with lots of white space remaining (there’s still a substantial amount of singing, however).

Volti’s main objective is an art-funkiness that, as pointed out in the booklet, can be likened to the mutant disco that thrived in NYC during the same era, but with distinctive elements, such as the sophisto motions of the keyboard solo. And “Corazón” is a pretty sharp contrast to the decidedly synth-punk motions of “La Dama de Probeta” by Nahtabisk, though as that cut progresses, the trio doesn’t seem particularly agitated (a refreshing twist).

In terms of breathy restlessness, Escuadrón Del Ritmo has a corner on the market, but only after establishing an instrumental foundation that lands squarely in the neighborhood of the Neue Deutsche Welle. Jesús Bojalil does eventually get up close to the microphone, sounding like he’s jogging in place as he emotes. The notes inform that Bojalil was a member of a Mexican No Wave outfit (Los Pijamas a Go Go) and formed Escuadrón Del Ritmo thereafter with a size-shifting lineup that’s a duo for “Las Cucarachas,” their only issued recording and exclusive to this vinyl edition. It’s all so very intriguing.

The comp’s final two tracks share a member in common, though besides a few frontloaded, severely throaty vocal exhortations in the dark-edged synth-pop dance groove of “Alfabeto (Cold Version),” Carlos García isn’t doing a damned thing as half of the outfit Década 2. The weight of the track (programming and synths) is pulled by Mateo Lafontaine.

García is much more active during “El Paso Del Tiempo (Versión Remezclada)” by Silueta Pálida, another duo (but augmented to a sextet) that he fronted prior to joining Década 2. It’s a solidly techno-poppy scenario given a boost of uniqueness via dual marimbas and some brief bursts of serrated-edge synth. It brings the album to a succinct but wholly fulfilling conclusion.

In conclusion, if the national scene documented here wasn’t an especially fertile one, I’m still very keen on hearing some of the full releases from which Back Up: Mexican Tecno Pop 1980-1989 comprises its revelatory sequence.

GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-

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