Mexican Institute Of Sound - 'Mejico Maxico' (Cooking Vinyl) Released 05/05/08

By day Camilo Lara works as the head honcho of EMI Mexico, whilst his alter ego recording moniker of Mexican Institute Of Sound travels by night through the 20's to 60's timezones to blend his cut 'n' paste aesthetics to a crate diggers lust for the latino riddims of cha cha and rhumba, as well as dub, bhangra and skanking reggae. 'Mejico Maxico' features a patch work of electro-doodles and etch-a-sketch skewwiffery that takes in a sideways glance of the pace of life in contemporary Mexico City. His 2007 album 'Pinata' was hailed by Rolling Stone as one of the best ten albums of the year, and on 'Mejico Maxico'  M.I.S. comes across like a manic Fatboy Slim with the musical palate of Mr Scruff coupled with the trad. of Thievery Corporation with all the sass of a lap-top Manu Chao.

Stand up or shut up as tracks such as 'Bienvenidos A Mi Disco' rock out with what sounds like a warbly digi-dub-skank of that old nursery chesney, Three Blind Mice, and the Mr Scruff-like 'Cyber Mambo' and 'No Hay Masa Yah' give good reason to prick up your ears, the former sounding like a rumba out-take from the space cafe in Star Wars and the latter with inventive day-dreamy loops, squelchy samples and woodpecker bongo raps to a rumba rumba. Elsewhere, flavours-latino are evoked on 'Juan Rulfo' with some of the old-time jazz/blues with itchy and scratchy (TM) beats, and 'La La La' cuts a latino party tune like a tune from the old Peter Sellers movie 'The Party'. 'Cancion De Amor Para Mi Futura Nova' playfully blends space-hop chill out to spoken word radio samples, while bum tracks such as 'OK!' mine a spent seam on adventures in a Nightmares On Wax or Up, Bustle & Out mien.

The musical lexicon of life in Mexico City is painted on the private eye-like 'Mirando A Las Muchachas' played up in a Manu Chao style with cha cha and horn samples, and a homage in the guise of 'Lennin Y McCarthur', a mash-up of The Beatles Norwegian Wood by way of The Clangers, and a salsa piano melody is cut and pasted on 'Drume Negrita'. Electro-doodles like 'Jaja Pipi' and 'Buena Idea' make for lame, drunk-sodden, cocktail bar fodder, and the 4-square house by numbers of 'Hey Tia' sounds like something from a Club 18-30 scream-mare - I go "hey", you go "Tia", an ardour that not even the Bollywood samples can soften (just wave your hands in the air like you're going nowhere and you just don't care). 'The Gypsy Rose caravan of 'Que Rico' forms a welcome reprieve with it's beats and samples, as the dub-skank of 'Dub-A El Tiempo Es Muy Largo' trails digi entrails and is probably best served with the sensi, whilst the closer 'M.F.P.D.A.' hones in with a Rockerfella Skank-style "bomb and destroy" sample, only aborted by a dubby mission.

With the gravitas of cult appeal because your Cut Copy and Kid Kaola are more like household names, 'Mejico Maxico' is more like the gift you'd come back from holiday with. The party feel is in the ascendant and comes across best on the rumba and skanktastic dancehall moments heard on 'Bienvenidos A Mi Disco', 'Mirando A Las Muchachas' and 'No Hay Masa Yah', whilst elsewhere there's the old tedium of elongated loops and sampledelica. 'Mejico Maxico' serves as a timely commentary on the vacuity of much of sampled music, where cut 'n' paste is only as strong as the glue of the original recording.