Kinky

Cesar Pliego's calloused fingers spank the meaty strings of a stand-up bass. His hand follows the wood grain curvature up the fretless board and selects those few elusive notes that incarnate pure self-assured funk. With that groove looped ad-continuum, a playful foundation is set with dance floor beats, effect-heavy samples and Brit-rock wah-wah guitar. No forcing necessary, these opposing sonic flavors combine effortlessly. As "Más," the first track on Kinky's self-titled debut pushes forward, momentum and tension build with well-timed breaks and break-downs, eventually coagulating with Gil Cerezo's suede-smooth vocals. Their full sound encompasses the mischievousness of a seasoned UK mix artist, the chaotic energy of a hippy drum circle, the nonchalance of a grease-headed hipster and the suave gait of an international exotic dancer. And if you sing in Spanish, you can't help but sound sexy.
"We are five guys, and each one of us has been influenced by different styles of music," explains Kinky's keyboardist, DJ and studio master mind, Ulises Lozano. "We are like a rock band, but the kind of music is more like the independent scene. For the record we did a lot of loops with the drummer to make it sound more like dance, but live we mix the groove boxes and drum machine with live organic drumming."
Born out of Monterrey, Mexico in 1998, the group quickly found themselves building a reputation as a great live band, generating a fan base to match. Within two years of their inception, Kinky was flown out to New York to compete in the Latin Alternative Music Conference, emerging victorious as the "Most Outstanding Unsigned Latin American Band." Their unsigned status was soon alleviated when the group inked a deal with producer Chris Allison (whose credits include Coldplay and The Beta Band) and his Sonic360 label. Not bad for a band whose roots are in a Mexican college town with only a fledgling rock scene.
"In Monterrey, the music scene for a long while was more interested in folk music," says Ulises by phone from his home town. "We have a lot of influences from the United States, from a lot of the rock bands in the States. Alternative rock in Monterrey was not important until like '97, '96. All of the bands were either from Mexico City or Guadalajara."
While Kinky may have grown up on American rock music, that one influence is not the entire scope of their sound. Where genre-bending in the latest phase of American mainstream music focuses on joining two pre-existing forms of popular music (i.e. rap-rock, R&B-hip-hop), Kinky takes a larger perspective, fusing musical elements of their Mexican heritage with nearly every form of popular music emerging from Europe and the U.S. in the last half-century. In addition, they seamlessly combine electronic-generated sounds with organic instrumentation to complete their individualized sound. Kinky is many things wrapped into one musical body, their diverse entities leaving them anything but conventional.
"We use some samplers and synthesizers, but we have a big set of percussion and drums like timbales, congas, snares and crashes…" Ulises' sentence trails off as he searches for the right words to express a musical idea. "Everything is set up in multi-layered voices."
Kinky has an underlying electronic spark, a pervasive propelling beat that harkens back to the "Firestarter" days where each and every band with a healthy studio budget found it necessary to replace a live drum kit with sampled bumps and hits. However in Kinky's case, Ulises Lozano's electronica currents seem natural, just one of the pieces of their colorful jigsaw puzzle; and where it definitely allows for easy remixes within a club's caterwaul, it sure don't stop the rock.
Kinky's rock influence is the catalyst that turns what might have been a typical Mexican folk-influenced electronica band into something of galactic proportions. Carlos Chairez's guitar style is like the second coming of Jon Squire, a shameless trip through The Stone Roses' brief but fantastic catalog. But more than that, Chairez's rhythm-oriented approach adds to Omar Gongora's conga and timbales and Kinky's flavorful vibe without punching through the paper-thin walls that house their delicate balance.
A dirty-swank vibe emanates from singer Gilberto Cerezo's relaxed voice. His lyrics entail looking at typical situations in a new way, from an entirely different perspective. Some songs peer into Latin American traditions and shed them a new light.
"(In) traditions, things that are very common for us, (but) if you look at them more focused, then you feel that those things are very strange," Ulises explains.
"San Antonio," talks about the tradition of turning a statuette of the song's namesake upside down if you are having trouble finding love. "Mirando de Lado" takes their ideas of a view a skew even further by looking at life through a sideways angle.
Says Lozano, "The song talks about how you can see things if you turn your head sideways…just walking…or driving." A dangerous but exciting past-time, let me tell you.
While Kinky's lyrics are translated into English in the liner notes of their American release, all of their songs are still sung in Spanish. However, according to Ulises, Kinky's musical vibe transcends the boundaries of language.
"The vocals are just another instrument, not the (most) important part of the Kinky project, you know. It's another instrument making a sound, so you don't have to understand the lyrics to feel the music."
Where their dotted musical boundary lines allow people of different heritages and musical tastes to find common grounds in Kinky's assorted sonics, their music highlights a universal adage. I can hear Ulises smile as he says the words that bring a close to our conversation.
"Music is the language."
Sing it brother.

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