Aprender a Ser: Extended is an EP by Mexico City band Mint Field. It was recorded in the same sessions as Mint Field's latest album, Aprender A Ser. Mint Field decided to split the work into an album and an EP as they felt it was too dense for a double album and wanted these songs to co-exist in another space and have its own time to shine. As with Aprender A Ser, the EP incorporates influences from shoegaze, trip-hop, dream pop and electronic music. The final track includes longtime friend and cello player Mabe Fratti to play Cello.
Time. It’s something we tend to cherish. As a band, you’re typically thrown into more than usual stressful scenarios when recording albums and rushing decisions becomes the norm. Mexico City’s Mint Field knows this all too well.
Rewind to the spring of 2020 (yes, Covid). The band started fleshing out their new album Aprender a Ser (meaning Learn To Be in English), the follow up to 2020’s minimalist psych/shoegaze album, Sentimiento Mundial. For the first time, the band was not under any time constraints in the recording process. They wrote, recorded, produced and mixed the album in isolation. They had time to slow things down and think more obsessively about the sound, environment and vibe they wanted to create.
Aprender a Ser became really intimate, every single detail was meticulously worked on. Mint Field recorded take after take, but at the same time tried to keep the soul of the demos intact. Some of the guitar and drums are first takes in the final versions. The band would let a recording sit, leave it and come back to it. The songs evolved a lot doing so, but at the same time didn't lose the essence of its original intention.
Thematically, Aprender a Ser talks about opening our perspective of the reality that we live every day, acknowledging each moment that we witness in life. Learning to recognize what we are, what we live, what we see, what we feel. Whether it’s seeing ourselves in the past and observing how we have evolved in the present. Or the lifetime of a butterfly from its formation within a cocoon to how it lives its short life in five days. Or seeing how an orchid slowly opens every day, never forgetting the essence of what we are and will be. Nothing in life should be taken for granted. Living in the present is a gift. Learning to be (Aprender a ser) is learning to recognize our emotions, not repress them, not turn them off and feel them.

María Natalia Lafourcade Silva, more commonly known as Natalia Lafourcade, is a Mexican pop-rock and folk singer and songwriter who, since her debut in 2002, has been one of the most successful singers in Latin America. Lafourcade's voice has been categorized as a lyric soprano.

Exploded View is a new collaborative project helmed by the UK-born, Berlin-based political-journalist-turned-musician Anika (Invada Records / Stones Throw). After playing a string of 2014 solo shows in Mexico with a backing lineup composed of local producers Martin Thulin, Hugo Quezada and Amon Melgarejo, Anika and her new bandmates discovered a chemistry that they simply had to capture on tape.
During their rehearsals in Mexico City, the four musicians discovered a new sound, several steps removed from the krautrock-isms of Anika’s previous work. The straight to tape sessions that followed in the San Rafael neighborhood, ventured somewhere new; a lighter place, unguarded, veering from any script. Improvisation was the guiding principle and the source of the band’s inspiration. The studio itself was outfitted so that every sound produced in the room would be recorded. A Tascam 388 8-track captured everything – fully live, fully improvised, first-takes only. Produced by Thulin and Quezada and mastered by Josh Bonati in NYC, the long player is due out in August 2016.
releases August 19, 2016

María Natalia Lafourcade Silva, more commonly known as Natalia Lafourcade, is a Mexican pop-rock and folk singer and songwriter who, since her debut in 2002, has been one of the most successful singers in Latin America. Lafourcade's voice has been categorized as a lyric soprano.

María Natalia Lafourcade Silva, more commonly known as Natalia Lafourcade, is a Mexican pop-rock and folk singer and songwriter who, since her debut in 2002, has been one of the most successful singers in Latin America. Lafourcade's voice has been categorized as a lyric soprano.

This is authentic Mexican folk music both old and new, featuring the virtuoso harp music of the Huicani trio who skilfully interweave Andalusian and African influences, Amparo Ochoa and Los Folkloristas who are the leading representatives of the nueva canción and guardians of the rich heritage of Indian and Black musical traditions, and Los Camperos whose violinist the German music press has hailed as "the mountain Paganini". On a wide range of guitar-like and other string instruments, percussion, flutes, violins and harps, and with exquisitely arranged vocals, the musicians on this album provide a hitherto unparalleled survey of Mexico’s vibrant music scene.
以上文字来自网络感谢编译者

The Mexico City duo of Mabe Fratti and Héctor Tosta break with the hushed beauty of the cellist’s earlier work, exploring sprawling new directions in modern composition, jazz, and art song.