KINKY
Jan 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Ken Micallef
During a recent performance at New York's SOBs, Kinky brings the bump of many nations to a sweaty crowd of faithful fans. Crossing tribal African drums with Mexican Nortena organ swirls and Brazilian guaguanco rhythms with UK-style big beats, Kinky summons a mystical meeting between Jimi Hendrix and Tito Puente at the Paradise Garage.
As drummer Omar Gongora bashes his upright drum kit — which comprises a Roland TD-10 Sound Module, Latin percussion and standard acoustic drums — keyboardist Ulises Lozano pulls freak tones from a Novation K-Station, a Korg VC-10 Vocoder and various Moogs (and accordion). Mixed with searing electric guitar and Roland SP-808 loops, Kinky's music rages from Brazilian cumbia to stomping house reveries. Likewise, Kinky's Atlas (Nettwerk, 2003) assaults the senses. The Monterrey, Mexico, quintet believes that making music is like cutting up ingredients for a good meal.
“A lot of the loops from the first album were made in my bedroom, playing knives and forks and spoons,” Gongora reveals. “We left them the way they were recorded. We love the sound of a well-recorded kick drum with a badly recorded cowbell; that mix of clean and dirty sounds interests us.”
Recorded in the deepest Mexican jungles and on a globe-hopping tour bus, Atlas is a mash-up of Apple iBook compositions. In concert, Kinky improvises loops with live instruments for an intriguing balance of sound. “Omar cannot play all his drum parts at once, so we use the drum loop in the Roland sampler to keep the beat,” Lozano explains. “Then, he will play a timbale solo over it. Then, Omar comes back and plays the beat, and the loop drops out. We have all these loops and pads in the sampler, and we are triggering them in different ways. We keep it very free so we can improvise on the songs as we like.”
Lozano complains that getting vintage Moog Minimoog and Rogue keyboards — which they play in addition to the new Minimoog Voyager — to function properly on tour can be frustrating. “The Moogs are very difficult to use live; you have to tune them every time you play,” he says. “But the sound is something that you cannot duplicate. Software synths just don't have that fatness and Moogness.”
Kinky's live shows are explosive, but Atlas' hidden track, “Semillas de Menta,” reveals the group's softer side. The song's bossa nova guitars and hallucinatory keyboard were produced with gear both old and new. Using Digidesign Pro Tools' Beat Detective plug-in, Carlos Chairez cut up his acoustic guitar for a bizarre effect. “[Beat Detective] cuts everything by the bars, and you can set it in the tempo you want, and it still sounds cut up,” Chairez explains. “A drumbeat is easy to cut up and assemble, but with an acoustic guitar, it doesn't sound natural. But we wanted that unnatural sound.” The guitar cut-up isn't the only unusual sound treatment in the song. “The dreamy keyboard is called an Electroflux,” Chairez continues. “It looks like an old answering machine. It has a metal bar with keys, and you play it with a pencil. It is an old English toy.”
For Kinky, DIY recording is not limited to country or creed. The band's joyous jams combine home-brewed dirt and antiseptic computer technology. “One of the keys of Kinky is that we keep everything in the mix,” Gongora says. “In ‘The Headphonist,’ there is a snare that I recorded just holding it with my feet in front of this crummy mic, and we left that on the album. And the congas recorded in the jungle are still in there, too. That is one of the most important things: We put the mood of the demos into our songs. Even if the sound is not very good, the vibe is more important than the sound.”
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