Search

Grinding hell-sounds, quinceañeras on the moon and quasi-spiritual trances: The two-day music festival has quickly become a global phenom.

Held this past weekend in Mexico City's Deportivo Lomas Altas park, Festival NRMAL remains one of the most exciting and geographically diverse festivals of independent music (and art, and cuisine) in the world. After starting out as a small DIY affair in Monterrey in 2010, the two-day extravaganza—named by organizers hoping to question the meaning of "normal"—has migrated from Monterrey to Mexico City, grown its audience exponentially, incorporated relatively tasteful brand sponsorships, and booked "major indie" acts like Sky Ferreira and Trash Talk alongside up-and-comers across many genres and hailing from all over the world. How "all over"? This year's lineup featured artists from Agrentina, Chile, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Mexico, Sweden, Brail, Spain, Syria, Australia, Germany, Canada, France and the U.S. Impressivo!

American visitors who made the trip down to NRMAL 2015 were likely wooed by the inclusion of such familiar names as Future Islands, Phantogram, and primordial noise gods Swans, and those acts indeed delivered potent climaxes to the weekend. But the real adventure for gringos like me was the abundance of non-US acts I would never have been exposed to otherwise. From the Britpop-influenced El Último Vecino to the glitchy electronics of Las Brisas, here are the eight "international" acts that made the biggest impression on me.

1. Metz (Canada)


It's probably cheating to include an act I already knew quite well going in, but Toronto noise-rockers Metz are not to be ignored. From the first sludgy bass note to the final barrage of feedback, their set was pure brutality, eliciting one of the weekend's only true mosh pits at a time of day when many folks were still sunning themselves on the ground. Anecdotally speaking, they seemed like the people's choice for Most New Fans Converted. Numerically speaking, they were tied with the other Canadians for Most Happy to Be Traveling Someplace Warm Right Now.

 

2. Kirin J. Callinan (Australia)


I was initially resistant to this unclassifiable Australian artist. His band's vaguely country-western look seemed an odd match for the churning, lascivious industrial that made up the first half of their set, and the bizarre-looking frontman caused some raised eyebrows when he doffed his shirt and gyrated all over the stage in only a red cowboy hat, aggressively bad haircut and khakis. Things grew odder still when he switched abruptly to folk-tinged baladeering, and when he made two audience members arm wrestle for free Vans. I'm still not sure if I love him or hate him, but he won my intoxicated "woos!" at Sunday's after party with a ridiculous 4 AM DJ set that included super-harsh techno remixes of (among other things): Rage Against the Machine, the Backstreet Boys, Frank Sinatra, the Game of Thrones theme song, Santana/Rob Thomas, and… wait for it… Crazy Town. In that moment, it all felt cosmically right. 

 

3. El Último Vecino (Spain)


It's a well-known truisim that Mexicans love them some Morrissey, which helps explain the warm reception these Spanish synth-poppers received. Mellifluous-voiced frontman Gerard Alegre channeled Moz like no other as he sashayed around the stage, danced with the microphone cord, slid down into the crowd and even threw a few roses. They also bear an uncanny resemblace to latter-day fop-poppers the Drums, down to Alegre's haircut and acid washed mom jeans.

 

4. Ghost Magnet Roach Motel (Mexico, Japan, US)


One of the more avant-garde presences at the festival, this Mexican-Japanese-US experimental/drone collective set up on various levels of scaffolding in the food court and treated hungry festivalgoers to some immersive jams and spooky costumes to go with their veggie burgers and pizza pretzels. This happened in four separate installments and reminded me a lot of NYC post-rock outfit Oneida's triumphant, 12-hour-long marathon of weirdness at All Tomorrow's Parties back in 2010.

 

5. Omar Souleyman (Syria)


How a Boomer-aged, traditionally dressed Syrian wedding singer managed to penetrate a festival circuit dominated by young, first-world, morally depraved hipsters remains somewhat unclear, but it probably has something to do with his ability to bring the fucking party every time. Undaunted by his post-Swans placement, he shook us all out of our quasi-spiritual trances and brought us back to the physical plane with bouncing Middle Eastern beats we felt in our booties.

 

6. Diosque (Argentina)



This Buenos Aires artist (a three-piece live) incorporates dreamy electronic pop with traditional Argentinian sounds in surpremely listenable ways, and his phrasing was lovely enough that I got some sense of where he was going with his story even though I couldn't understand the words. Extra points for funky dance moves, playing the maracas and the rainstick, and pairing flamenco-style guitars with breezy electronic beats.

 

7. Meridian Brothers (Colombia)



This many-membered Bogota group put the "festive" in festival with music equally touched by traditional Latin rhythms, '70s Colombian psych-rock and probably some other stuff I'm not cool enough to know about. I especially appreciated the theremin-like programming on their synths, which made me feel like I was at a quinceañera on the moon.

 

8. Las Brisas (Mexico)



It was with no small degree of FOMO that I skipped out on Saturday night headliner Phantogram to see local EDM group Las Brisas on the advice of some local pals. Luckily, they delivered in the form of vaguely menacing beats and atmospherics over which one member would periodically sing in a bizarre falsetto. Each time they warped a beat to a hummingbird-high frequency or a deep, grinding hell-sound, they were met with many full-body contortions and cheers.

21 39 3
Load more comments

to add a comment...

Close

Press esc to close.
Close
Press esc to close.
Close

Connecting to your webcam.

You may be prompted by your browser for permission.