Nortec Collective: Friday Night at Trinity

Seattlest fell fast in love with Nortec Collective's Tijuana Sessions Vol. 1 the moment we heard it. We were finally coming down off our Ozomatli high (insanely good salsa music, smooshed together with really good hip-hop and the best live shows we've ever seen) and stumbled across it, thanks to Amazon's recommendation engine. We love really good, complex, electronic music such as Amon Tobin, Prefuse 73, and Squarepusher. We are also, independent of that, big fans of music from northern Mexico (aka norteno). This is due partly to exposure to that area and its music via members of our family living in San Diego for many years, but mostly thanks to our longstanding affair with salsa music that started in early college and led us on a rampage of latino music consumption thereafter.

The Nortec Collective, as the name pretty obviously conveys, is a bunch of musical projects and/or individuals who've taken a creative bent on traditional northern Mexican musical styles such as banda, norteno, and tambora, and woven them all inextricably with electronic/techno music. The result ranges from hypnotic to hyper, and it is seamless. Some musical genre-blending just ends up the sonic equivalent of an oreo cookie: you can easily identify the two different elemental styles and they don't really blend together in a way that makes sense. You've got your chocolate-like cookie, and your lard-y cream filling, not matter how you eat the sucker. (The result being just about every crappy "punk/pop/emo" band now being played constantly on MTV.) Nortec's most recent release Tijuana Sessions Vol. 3 has convincingly shown that their music is a bizarre world unto its own, without clear pre-determined stylistic boundaries.

We missed them the last time they played here as we were out of town. We're a bit baffled by the venue this time around, since any of the Showbox, Chop Suey, or Neumo's seem far better suited for this show than the Trinity nightclub in Pioneer Square. But beggars can't be choosers. And you shouldn't be too choosy either: this show also boasts dedicated A/V entertainment throughout, to round out the full Nortec experience. Should you go to this show not knowing much about them and find that you too are smitten, look them up on Amazon again and follow all the recommended artists from there. You can't go wrong in this case.