Never belonging to just one musical style, the band prefers to play music with the aim of getting feedback in a live setting and then packaging what comes out as simply, ‘Tijuana Cartel music’. “We’ve definitely got deep electronic roots in our music, but there’s also the world music element,” he explains. “Over the last 10 years I think we’ve experimented with different sounds and it’s developed into our own sound.
“At our shows you’re really experiencing something that in this day and age is completely original; it sounds like nothing else and that’s what we pride ourselves on.”
Planning to release a three track EP soon as well as a live album of one of their shows, the band comes up with new directions to take a song in while playing out live – an ideal way to get feedback on their new works. “We tried the normal process of writing, recording then releasing material but found that we were changing things a lot in our live shows,” he elaborates. “So we started playing our new music live first, and then developing it into a full release from there.”
Inspired by fellow Australian acts like Midnight Juggernauts and World’s End Press, Gonzalez says the breakbeat scene has also influenced Tijuana Cartel and is reflected in their tunes. “Over the years we haven’t had an intention to specifically create music differently to everything else, but it just kind of happened that way. It’s always been completely in-house, with music to artwork to interviews and even ads coming through one of the band members,” he says.
Soon-to-be-released single, Endlessly is all set to be played on their upcoming tour and the clear point Gonzalez makes, is that the experience of a Tijuana show is the reason he keeps at it. “We’ve got about 20 songs that are single-worthy at the moment after locking ourselves away in the studio for months,” he explains. “We may have a few collaborations in the works for this year too, but we’ll keep that under wraps for now.”
BY TOM KITSON
