Over the last few years we’ve come to terms with a certain idea of rock promoted by bands like Black Midi, Black Country, New Road and Caroline – among many others – that the art rock of this decade would be like this: driven by proto-post-rock notions, attentive to the repetitive dynamics of 1990s electronica, without being disconnected from commercial vigour, after all the things the bands create have to be songs. Then things like Amor Muere happen, reminding us that the world isn’t Anglo-Saxon and, more importantly, it’s not them who make the rules, it’s us lazing around believing it, so we can easily tidy up our ideas of the past, present and future. Amor Muere are looking for the same thing as the aforementioned bands, but they don’t have the prison of making a song.
The Mexican quartet formed by Mabe Fratti, Camille Mandoki, Gibrana Cervantes and Concepción Huerta creates haunting melodies in some of the pieces on their first record. “A Time To Love, A Time To Die” contains wonders like “LA” or “Love Dies” that leave anyone perched on the edge of their seat with feelings of pop uplift. Then it narrows down to experimental/industrial music, with “Shhhhh” or “Violeta y Malva”, waking us up to a certain reality. In essence, it’s as if Amor Muere’s first record was a permanent contrast between the dream (the beautiful melodies) and reality (the rudeness with which they experiment with sound and expose the result). The contrast exposes the importance of this kind of risky music, which often doesn’t come from the centre of decision making (England, the United States): the desire to manipulate, control and exude our sensations not through cold academicism but through the magic of experimentalism. “A Time To Love, A Time To Die” and Amor Muerte are one of those things that don’t make much sense on paper. Listening to them, the magical territory becomes tangible and you realise the concrete effect. The way they do it is also democratic, the sounds intermingle naturally, without manifestations of ego or anything that wants to take centre stage. The result is sometimes chaotic, asymmetrical, but regulated, meaningful and convinced of the outcome. To do something like this there can be no insecurity. Amor Muerte exude a sense of being in the right place at the right time. And that’s why you believe in them, in this magical experimentalism between rock, contemporary and musique concrète. AS
