artpower at uc san diego Performing Arts Season 2012-2013

Mexican Institute of Sound

with mexican dubwiser + cumbia machin

Camilo Lara never set out with the intention of taking his personal musical career very seriously. At first, he was simply creating holiday mixes for friends. But then his friends convinced him that he should take his songs off his computer and into the studio. Now five years later, Lara is building upon the momentum of Mexican Institute of Sound’s third release, ‘Soy Sauce.’ ‘Soy Sauce’ traverses Lara’s wild musical imagination with a witty sense of humor… whether it’s converting the traditional sounds of cumbia to a full-on electronic dance track, paying tribute to hip hop luminaries De La Soul or N.W.A with Mexican sonidos or singing a love song as if Serge Gainsbourg had spent time in the Mayan jungle.

While early M.I.S. songs combined a variety of vintage samples into instrumental tracks, ‘Soy Sauce’ features almost entirely original songs recorded with a live band and vocals. Songs like “Yo Digo Baila” are the most to-the-point M.I.S. dance tracks to date. “What I like is that one has the sounds of cumbia but in a very radical style,” Lara explains. Lara also invited some of his influential musician friends to perform on the album. “When I was working on ‘Soy Sauce,’ I was obsessed with Café Tacuba’s classic album ‘Re’,” he says. “I wanted to record an album like that – going from polka to punk in one second. That’s why I had found it so fascinating. I wanted my album to really cover the entire scope of my musical tastes.”

MORE +