matias aguayo @ muac 11/4/2010

for more reasons than i can even list, sunday in mexico d.f. was a real, real treat. i'm tempted to say "best day of my life," not because it actually was, but because that expresses the sentiment. another in a string of brilliant spring days, sunday was about being outside, winding down the weekend, leisure. at least that's all i expected. but then a surprise: chilean (via argentina and germany) dj matias aguayo peforming at the muac, mexico city's new-ish contemporary art museum. knowing i'd be boyishly excited about seeing one of kompakt's hottest acts in such an intimate setting, my handler(s) kept the whole thing a bit of a secret until the last minute. so after an interminable brunch, it was off to unam, the mexican public university and home to the muac.

the building, praised and criticized in seemingly equal measures, is more than a little reminiscent of ando's poured concrete and open spaces, with an unwelcome twinge of richard meier modernism. see the la times' introduction here. with some time to kill, i had a look around. rather than looking at art, i wandered around to get a feel for the space. however, the felix gonzalez-torres exhibit was excellent. not to be missed.

then out to the terrace for the climax of the trip. i had seen matias about a month before at sxsw, and it was nothing short of revelatory. it really challenged my preconceptions about what a dj set was / could be.

by way of background, matias was one the early pioneers of the minimal sound kompakt popularized, both on his own and as one half of closer musik ("when the duo broke up, the girls in cologne wore black for the rest of that year"). in 2008, he dropped "minimal," a stinging indictment of the genre he helped build. i've previously written about that track, but i didn't fully understand its import until he released the single "walter neff" the full length ay ay ay late last year. the review says it better than i can: "ay ay ay explodes [the idea that matias is interested in re-ordering our expectations of minimal] with an album so far removed from [his] past - a record of maximal, fermented oddity - that it borders on the bizarre." i agree that it "sounds like no other album this year, and it's no stretch to say that it is one of the most out-of-character releases ever for kompakt." put simply "talking-heads-on-e."

as an extra special treat, a mutual friend introduced us. after shaking his hand and chatting for a very brief second, i had the following internal dialogue: "damn, he's kinda fine in person," "what the fuck mesh shirt is he wearing?" and "omg omg omg! we're wearing the same jeans!" by the time he started playing at around 4pm, the terrace, right in front of the museum, was already populated by a bunch of college aged kids, fanboys, cute girls in skirts and flats, dudes with latin beards and plaid shirts, more cute girls (srsly), and museum visitors that came out to see what the commotion was about. it made for a really cool crowd.

in contrast to his set in austin, which was more pop oriented (likely because it was for a u.s. crowd), his set this day was deeply rhythmic, focused almost entirely on latin beats. at least it started that way. that's generally not my thing (give me some bubble gum, some strings, or some driving tech house), but it worked. the weather was perfect, the crowd was moving, and everyone was happy. matias looked like he was having so much fun, and it was totally infectious. being there, and indeed the whole time i was in mexico (see below), i was continually struck by how genuinely happy everyone seemed, and it even comes across in the music. gone are the days of dour, stripped down german cynicism and mopey, depressive american disappointment. happiness is the new black.

so he sang, he danced, he played latin, he played tech house, he played his own stuff, he sang ridiculous lyrics about seasick sailors and other nonsense (i've read that his vocals seem to "magically unzip flies"), and on and on (videos below). it was fucking so much fun. so much fun. in the end, there are relatively few moments in your life in which everything is right. for me, they're so often soundtracked by music like this. i left reminded and reassured that dance music really can solve all the world's problems, if only for a moment or two.

what a day.