The boys of Kardoid play music from their ranchera-loving parents’ nightmares. Mostly Mexican-American teenagers native to Chicago, these four up-and-coming rockers prefer Slipknot and Molotov — bands that can sound like planes taking off in their Midway Airport neighborhood — instead of the rural ballads and bandas of México lindo y querido. But when I telephoned guitarist Ivan Duarte at home, his mom answered excitedly in Spanish that he was busy practicing, as she passed the phone through a wash of feedback and amp distortion. “They really don’t like the music we play,” Duarte says of his family’s more traditional tastes. “But now that we’re getting attention, they have a little more respect for what we’re trying to do.”
Category: Features
“En la vida, dos cosas ciertas/Son la muerte y el cambio,” say Ozomatli on “Dos Cosas Ciertas,” a mix of Cuban son with drum ‘n’ bass rap, from their second album Embrace The Chaos (Interscope). The Los Angeles combo of seven musicians (including MC and DJ) seem older than their actual ages (ranging from 25 to 34 years old) and certainly more mature than the band’s lifespan (going back to 1995) to be commenting with such sonic eloquence on the certainties of death and change as life’s only guarantees. Typical for the group, this observation goes beyond existential weariness; personal change intersects with social upheaval, while physical death can be the culmination of spiritual and moral fatality, unless one takes action to create meaning and seize dignity in life.
Lights dim, shimmer, fade, and revive – pulsing with breath as if to match the steadily roaring grumble of a capacity crowd at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas. Showers of raucous catcalls pour from all walls in rivulets of rage, furor, and nail-biting tension. This 1,324-seater is sold out, and people are looking for blood like sharks who have inhaled fear, thundering like sports fans who taste a touchdown or a piledriver with hands clapping against the backs of chairs and shoes stomping on concrete. The auditorium could almost crack open and swallow itself from stage to balcony.
