MUSIC

Mexico City DJ finds inspiration in chaos

By Jeremy Schwartz
MEXICO CITY BUREAU
Tuesday, November 20, 2007

MEXICO CITY — Camilo Lara must have one of the biggest record collections in the Americas. With 45,000 albums and compact discs, his music has crowded the Mexico City DJ out of apartments, landed him in the hospital for back surgery (those record crates are heavy) and sent him into dangerous neighborhoods in search of shadowy record dealers.

For Mexico's premier beatmaker, an exhaustive record collection is a tool of the trade.

"I'm kind of like an archaeologist of music," Lara says. "I don't have a girlfriend, but I have my records."

As the creative force behind the musical outfit Mexican Institute of Sound, Lara's quirky yet heartfelt music — a melding of cumbia, hip-hop, mambo, electronica and Mexican pop culture references — has established him as an icon-in-the-making both in his native Mexico and north of the border.

Lara's first two albums — "Méjico Máxico" and "Piñata" — have taken up residence in hipster record collections from Austin to Apatzingán.

"His music is for connoisseurs; it's consumed by trendy guys in the indie scene," said Uriel Waizel, music director for a Mexico City alternative music radio station. "His music is superclever and smart ... He's more a cult figure for scenesters."

And while critical praise has followed the 32-year-old from the beginning of his music career (outlets like the BBC and Rolling Stone have given him glowing reviews), he is increasingly finding commercial success while touring the U.S. and Europe.

Lara and his band have performed in many large American cities. In Austin, he played South by Southwest twice and headlined at Stubbs BBQ. Austin holds a special place in Lara's heart — public radio station KUT even gets a shout-out on his album liner notes.

Although his music is filled with Mexican pop culture references ("inside jokes," Lara calls them), his records might be more popular outside the country.

His first album was released in Spain and the United States before Mexico, and his latest album, "Piñata" — on the American Latin music label Nacional Records — has been among the top-selling downloads on the Internet site eMusic.

"He's very conscious of the Frida Kahlo phenomenon, the lucha libre (wrestling) phenomenon, and he exploits it rather ironically," Waizel said. "But his music isn't superficial: He goes very deep. His samples are segments of forgotten Mexican culture."

Lara's sound is as chaotic and spirited as the city that birthed it: the 20 million-strong madhouse that is Mexico's capital.

"My record smells like Mexico in a way," said Lara, also a record executive with EMI Mexico. "Like the subway, like where I live ... the people that I see. If you go to a regular house here and put all the volumes at their highest, then that's my sound. Mexico is schizophrenic with music. On the street you can hear the most random music all over."

And Lara is on a mission to turn the stereotypical portrayals of Mexico on their head. He rails against movies like "Amores Perros" and "Man on Fire," which show Mexico City as a violent cesspool.

"I wanted to create music that reflects the middle class that Mexico has," he said. "When people talk about Mexico it's all drug dealing and kidnapping and all these things that I don't relate to ... That doesn't mean there isn't chaos here, but there is beauty in the chaos."

And in chaotic Mexico City, Lara's extensive record collection and off-the-wall mash-ups (one song features a 1940s aerobics tape for housewives) have become the stuff of legend.

"The difference with Camilo is that the samples are very peculiar and very strange, from records that only he finds," said Pablo García, an editor at the Mexico City pop culture magazine Chilango. "He is someone who is setting trends."

Lara, the son of two lawyers, is quick to point out that he is no trained musician but rather a fan who began playing around with samples and weird sounds on a synthesizer.

He made Christmas mixes for friends who convinced him to get his songs off of his computer and into a record studio. His first album, "Méjico Máxico," was all-instrumental, while on the second, he began recording raps and singing.

His live show has similarly evolved, he says, from "pushing buttons" to using a live drummer and bassist.

His day job continues to be that of a high-ranking record executive (he helped sign successful Mexican acts like Plastilina Mosh), a role that helps explain his stiff-sounding stage name. The initials of Mexican Institute of Sound in Spanish — IMS — are a play on Mexico's Kafkaesque state health system, the IMSS.

"When I did remixes for people, they kind of saw me as the 'record industry guy,' " he said. "In a way I have a very bureaucratic part of me, so it was good to have a bureaucratic name."

His two jobs make him one very busy man.

A recent three-day span went like this: On a Thursday night he played the role of record executive, shepherding about 20 EMI bands in town for the MTV Video Music Awards Latin America. The next night he performed with his band in front of 20,000 at a festival in a Mexico City stadium. The following morning, about six hours after he stumbled home from the show, he was filming a video in his downtown apartment for his new single. That night he finished with an intimate one-hour set at the city's hippest record store.

"It's all the extension of a big joke," said Lara, who still can't quite believe his music has caught on the way it has. "I never expected this."

jschwartz@coxnews.com