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Cabezas de Cera — México Industrial 1923
(Somno Automatum No #, 2024, CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-05-26

México Industrial 1923 Cover art

What we have at hand is a musical score for a silent film that was made in 1923. Cabezas de Cera began work on this project around five years ago with the goal of performing it live; once t he recordings were completed it was produced and released by the University of Puebla as a book with CD and DVD, celebrating 100 years of the textile industry in Mexico. The original release with the book and DVD sold out quickly, so a re-release with only the CD followed, and the entire video with images and music can be viewed at the link below (it’s roughly an hour long). The music is comprised of seventeen vignettes of experimental sounds and music, some as short as thirty seconds, others lasting six minutes or longer, all instrumental with the exception of one track near the program’s end with some voices embedded in parts of it. Cabezas use their full complement of various stringed instruments, percussion, synthesizers, railboard, bicefono, piano, flute, loops, and electronics in order to make this soundtrack come to life. Each piece offers a unique subset of sounds to match the imagery in the film, each with its own character and mood, in a way that only Cabezas de Cera do. The film contains a considerable variety of imagery, from the workers busy on the factory floor to outdoor scenics and buildings, machines and much more, and the band’s music and sound sculptures match each scene perfectly, as one might suspect, but even listening to this soundtrack without the accompanying film scenes is certainly a powerful and mind opening experience, which is pretty much par for the course of anything this band does.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Cabezas de Cera, Mauricio Sotelo

More info
http://www.ahmim.com/m%C3%A9xico-industrial-1923

 

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