¡Aparato!
Los Angeles, CA | Established. Jan 01, 2010 | SELF
Music
Press
“However you peg the style, [Felix Contreras] says, there's one Los Angeles-area group that's doing it right, a trio whose name translates to "machine," fuses rock with instruments and sounds from Mexico's son jarocho tradition.” - - NPR Staff, ¡Aparato! Takes Latin Music Traditons Into The Future (Nov 08, 2013)
"Since debuting in 2010, ¡Aparato!'s blend of traditional Mexican folk instrumentation and experimental post-punk-rock riffs has mesmerized music-lovers. With her rich vocals, Anaheim's Nancy "Cat" Mendez shares righteous musings of a better world to a progressive, futuristic sound." - - OC Weekly Staff, Orange County Weekly
“A lot of respect for the way he plays the instrument, a lot of knowledge and history for the music, but the way he adapts it to different styles. --Felix Contreras on Alexandro Hernández from ¡Aparato!” - - Felix Contreras, Alt.Latino
"Sounds like blissed-out, magical realist post-punk."
Felix Contreras - NPR's Alt.Latino
- NPR'S Alt. Latino
The diaspora of musicians resulting from the demise of all-girl band Anaheim’s Mystery Hangup in early 2009 has flowed in all directions. After more than a year, former singer and lead guitarist Cat (real name: Nancy Mendez) has re-emerged with a new avenue of expression; the exciting jarocho-rock hybrid known as ¡Aparato!
Joining forces with drummer Josh Duron and guitarist Alexandro Hernández, the band are experimenting with mixing traditional Mexican music with post-punk rock. In this laboratory setting, ¡Aparato! function much like an updated and Mexican version of Chile’s 1970s rock band Los Jaivas, who, with charangos and electric guitars, sought out a unique fusion of two seemingly removed musical realms. - OC Weekly
"Aparato! lifted me to new realms the other day... When I heard their song "Aire" for the first time in our studios, I got "the flash" – a term that attempts to describe something fairly indescribable."
Anne Hoffman - NPR's Alt.Latino - NPR'S Alt. Latino
Powered by the vocals of Anaheim resident Nancy Mendez, ¡Aparato! is exploring a new way of combing jaranas and electric guitars in an amalgamation that can be described as "Jarocho-Rock." Son Jarocho, Son Huasteco, and Boleros intermingle with futuristic rock riffs in one of the most innovative sounds to emerge in LA or OC.
Tackling politics, spirituality and a little fun in between, ¡Aparato! is visionary in all of the noise that it makes. The band is currently heading back into the studio to record more tracks to add to its John Avila produced sessions with an EP to come soon enough. - OC Weekly Blog
CAT (Nancy Mendez)
The publicity shot for¡Aparato! is a spicy-senorita motif at its most caliente. Lead singer Mendez's face is obscured by a gaucho-esque hat, her flowing hair and plump, red lips the only parts visible. But Mendez is no cha-cha chick; the Anaheim native has played with some of the more innovative bands in Orange County’s Latin alternative music scene and currently fronts a trio who meld post-punk sensibilities with the strumming melodies of son jarocho. When not being stopped by Border Patrol agents in Laguna Beach on account of her looking so darn Mexican, Mendez throws herself into the county's notorious immigration wars with pro-immigrant songs and lyrics, frequently donating her time and talents to fund-raisers. - OC Weekly
¡Aparato! excels in blending these disparate influences, of being in the in-between, the multiple-identities and world-traveling of those who are of an interstitial space. This is the lived experience of both Méndez and Hérnandez, fronterizos who know Mexico and the Mexico within the United States as coexisting—in contrast to a zero-sum either-or logic of national boundaries and dividing lines. This experience informs their practice: their music, their songwriting, their philosophical outlook.
Change comes from within, but it is only through dialogue, conversation, participation in the world around us that society can be transformed. Less prescription than invitation, ¡Aparato! asks us to join them in making a better world a reality. - Smithsonian Folkways
Discography
¡APARATO!'s album is now available at: www.aparato.bandcamp.com and www.cdbaby.com/aparato
Photos
Bio
¡Aparato! The word conjures up imagery of mechanization, of machine-man música, perhaps a throbbing techno beat punctuated by a bilingual binary code. Dot, dot, dash, dash: punto. Yet this is not the cold, unfeeling sound of a harsh, alienating, dystopian futurevision—so popular in young-adult fiction and science-fiction these days. Instead we find songs and sounds full of love and hope, a clamor for social justice grounded in a playful imaginary that takes flight in the most humanistic of ways.
Guitar in hand, the lead vocalist commands your attention as her presence overshadows her tiny frame. To her side is a masked figure, white-on-black thunderbolt marking the bandana obscuring his face. Part Ziggy Stardust, part Zapatista, he bounces around the stage. His traditional wooden five-string requinto is plugged into a mission control panel’s worth of effects pedals. Depending on the night, depending on the venue, they might be joined by a drummer or a drum machine—percussion provided by the pa–pa–pa café-con-pan rhythm as performers and participants stomp their feet in unison to the son jarocho beat.
Easily—if not quite accurately—described as jarocho punk, the aural landscape transmitted by ¡Aparato! bridges the terrestrial with the ethereal: earthbound concerns meet the means to transcend, through sound and imagery; a here, now and a somewhere else, something better, both at once. This is a science fiction soundtrack for tomorrow’s Raza, “the people,” time travelers and visionaries, a MeXican@ música de y desde fronteras, of pop, punk, rock, and Afro-Mexican son jarocho; alt-Latin stylings and Xican@ soul; the traditional and the modern as filtered through the future.
Band Members
Links
