Rebolledo - Mondo Alterado

Pitchfork 74

The Mexican techno producer Mauricio Rebolledo has compared his own aesthetic to a drive through a long tunnel. You can hear that in his music: the whine of the engine and the wheels against the road; isolated notes bobbing in empty space like taillights streaking through the darkness; the steady pulse reminiscent of the rhythm of fluorescent lights passing overhead, all lines converging dimly on a distant vanishing point.

There were glimmers of it on his debut album, 2011's Super Vato, which spun bare-bones synth and drum tracks into rowdy, psychedelic club cuts that conveyed the manic rush of hallucinating at the wheel. But it really came together on his 2014 mix CD Momento Drive, particularly on a remarkably strange song he created for the mix, “Windsurf, Sunburn & Dollar,” in which he hollered the titular phrase in a throaty caveman howl—something more like “Windsor, sumble 'n' doar!”—over a beat that sounded like an electric guitar going up in flames, strings popping their coils as the whammy bar turned molten.

The same aesthetic defines Mondo Alterado, a new album of original material that has more in common with that mix CD than it does with his debut album. A DJ who is partial to psychedelic sets of mind-numbing duration—he and Superpitcher played a 25-hour back-to-back set at Burning Man a few years ago—Rebolledo has said that he only began producing in order to create the kind of material he was seeking for his sets but couldn't find elsewhere. In that sense, Mondo Alterado is a testament to the clarity of his vision. It unrolls like an impeccably thought-through DJ set, right down to the way tracks flow seamlessly from one to the next, with held notes or drumbeats acting as the glue that holds the pieces together.

Rebolledo's music has always been sparse, but on Mondo Alterado, it's more hypnotically hollowed-out than ever. “Spacer Rainbow Woman” is typical of his approach, as two spindly guitar notes and a gently swaying drumbeat are strung like a rope bridge across the void. A wordless sigh offers a suggestion of melody, and in the song's long plateau—you can't really speak of “peaks” in Rebolledo's work—a rubbery bass arpeggio creates rhythmic and harmonic tension. “Discótico Sinético” and “Discótico Estático” are similar: one-finger synth melodies, distant whoops and howls, lunkheaded rhythms heavy on cowbell and tom. “A Numb Gas to the Future” is even more minimal—a coldwave sketch and seven-minute palate-cleanser, connecting two of the album's highlights, “Fears Come True” and “Pow Pow.” (The latter is especially great, coming closest to the unhinged ecstasy of “Windsurf, Sunburn & Dollar.”)

Nothing happens in a hurry here, and Rebolledo himself pokes fun at his music's humid languor in the title of the album's opening track, “Here Comes the Warrior (Super Short Album Version).” Its swirl of droning synths, tribal drums, and ululations goes on for nearly a quarter of an hour, and begs the question: What on earth must the long version be like? Which brings us to one of Mondo Alterado's best qualities: its absurdist sense of humor. In “Life Is Strange, Life Is Hard, Life Is Great,” Rebolledo fills in the music's emptiness with a rambling monologue full of platitudes and positive affirmations, sounding like a self-help speaker that the denizens of Black Rock City have mistaken for an actual shaman as he builds to a tongue-in-cheek climax: “Never lose the faith, 'cause life is really great/Dance again/Dance again.”

Despite the lyrics' campy qualities, there's something off about them, something almost sinister, and that disturbing undercurrent carries into “Fears Come Through,” a dead-eyed protestation of unrequited love delivered over canned tambourines and Novocaine-drip synths. With a chorus that goes, “I don't want to be afraid to say I love you,” it's the creepiest anthem you're likely to hear on a dance floor all year.

Throughout this long, sidewinding album, you may find yourself asking, Is this guy for real?—and that's precisely what makes Rebolledo's whole shtick so compelling. The music is enervating and exhilarating in equal measure, and it sounds unlike almost anything else in techno right now, save for similarly left-field primitivists like Barnt. Mondo Alterado isn't for everyone. But for those who like their techno with a healthy dose of deadpan, Rebolledo's unique strain of gonzo trance is all the fuel they need for a long trip to the far side of nowhere.