My trip to Austin was as fun and exhausting as my previous one. I travelled to SXSW with the talented guys from QUITAPENAS. That story, and a few photos, is up on Remezcla. I was able to catch a few bands at the Sounds From Spain and Sala De Espera showcases, all of which delivered. I was most excited to see El Mato A Un Policia Motorizado on my last night out in Austin. I wasn’t disappointed.
Check out a few photos from SXSW below. The complete set of photos is on my Flickr.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my first ticket giveaway on this site! My friends at artdontsleep will bring Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge to the Mayan Theatre in LA this Thursday where they will perform songs off their collaborative album, Twelve Reasons To Die. One lucky winner will receive a pair of tickets to the show.
Shoot me an e-mail at afroxander@gmail.com with the subject line “Afroface Killah” with your full name to enter. Winner will be announced on Wednesday and also contacted by e-mail. 18+ only.
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be returning to Austin for SXSW this year with an added bonus: I’m travelling with a band!
I’ll be on the road photographing/partying with QUITAPENAS for a tour diary that will be published in Remezcla.
The band is a eight-piece cumbia tropical group from the Inland Empire. It’s their first performance at SXSW and first show outside of California. Stay tuned!!!
It didn’t take long to find my new favorite band of 2013. I’ve been obsessed with the music of Él Mató a un Policía Motorizado (He Killed A Motorcycle Cop) since late December. My obsession grew worse after the band released its second full-length album, La Dinastía Scorpio (The Scorpio Dynasty), on Spotify about a month ago.
Courtesy Georgetown Radio
The band hails from La Plata, a district of Buenos Aires, the capital province/city of Argentina and features Santiago Motorizado on bass/vox, Doctora Muerte on drums, Pantro Puto and Niño Elefante on guitars, and Chatrán Chatrán on keys. Él Mató, who got its name from a line in Die Hard, released its self-titled debut album in 2004 followed by a trilogy of EPs focused on the themes of birth (Navidad De Reserva, 2005), life (Un Millón De Euros, 2006) and death (Dia de los Muertos, 2008).
The group’s sound is similar to that of alternative/indie rock groups of the 1980s-1990s such as Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., Yo La Tengo, Guided By Voices, and Sonic Youth. The characteristic lo-fi sound of the genre is more prevalent in the earlier releases probably due to the fact that it was the best they could afford at the time.
That’s not to suggest that Scorpio sounds like a completely different beast altogether. The guitars are still distorted, the drums still layered enough to sound like there are four drummers in the studio playing simultaneously, and so on but, it’s all cleaner and more polished, an organized mess were no instrument drowns out another. Plus, Santiago’s vocal skills have improved greatly over the past decade.
La Dinastia Scorpio
The band released Scorpio in early December last year in its home country and shared it internationally on February this year. They’ll also make their SXSW debut next week at a few showcases. Listen to four tracks off Scorpio below including my two most favorite songs, “Mujeres Bellas Y Fuertes” and “Mas O Menos Bien.”
I spent only three weeks in Peru but one would think I were there for at least two months considering the amount of photos and videos I have archived. I have more time now to share the rest beginning with the country’s capital, Lima.
My friend and I stayed at Shablul hostel in the district of Miraflores. We were just a few blocks away from Parque Kennedy (Kennedy Park), which hosted a variety of events and festivals that we were lucky enough to partake in.
Mediterranean food fair with many pro-Palestine signs and such.
My first taste of coca came in beer form. My face should tell you how delicious it was (re: it wasn’t).
My friends in Lima took us to Club La Havana, a Cuba-inspired bar/restaurant. It’s where we had our first taste of pisco, a grape brandy popular in Peru and Chile.
Another club whose name I forgot.
Art vendors at Parque Kennedy.
Check out this cool building!
Hence the name. Lima’s sister city is Pensacola, FL.
The Road To Machu Picchu is a four-part series that chronicles my exploits travelling form Cusco, Peru to the mountain of Machu Picchu, an ancient site built by the Incas that is preserved and protected by the government of Peru and UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
Also read Day One, Day Two, and Day Three.
My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. My things were packed and my change of clothes waited for me on my backpack. My group met downstairs in the lobby at 5 and we walked for a few minutes in the darkness to the bus station where we, along with hundreds of other tourists, were to catch one of many buses up to Machu Picchu. The thought of hiking to the entrance came across no one’s mind that morning for obvious reasons.
The ride up the hillside was a calm and soothing one. Our bus made its way up the road that snaked up the hillside of Machu Picchu with dawn’s first light following close behind.
It was sunny and slightly warm when we disembarked at the top of the mountain near the entrance to the city. There was already a long ling of tourists when we arrived.
The entrance to Machi Picchu
Plaques commemorating Hiram Bingham who discovered the site and the indigenous families who lived on the site who aided Bingham
There are a number of large plaques mounted on the stone walls just past the modern entrance (the one you see pictured above) of the city of Machu Picchu that commemorate the area as a UNESCO heritage site as well as the exploits of Hiram Bingham III. Bingham learned about “lost” Incan cities while a lecturer at Yale and is credited with finding Machu Picchu in 1911 with the aid of families who lived in the area.
More official plaques!
Behind the facade of this innocent-looking tower lies….
The Road To Machu Picchu is a four-part series that chronicles my exploits travelling form Cusco, Peru to the mountain of Machu Picchu, an ancient site built by the Incas that is preserved and protected by the government of Peru and UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
Catch up on Day One and Day Two.
Day three began with the realization that Viracocha was out to get me. The Incan rain god followed me to Santa Teresa and, once again, poured buckets of rain overnight. This wouldn’t have been a problem had I not hung one of my shirts on a clothesline to air out the stench of nicotine attached to it after a night out on the town. Luckily, Viracocha showed some pity and the rain stopped around sunrise. I had just enough time before breakfast to dry the shirt to a “slightly moist” level.
After breakfast, our group split in two and we each headed to different directions for the same exciting purpose: ziplining! We went to a park run by Canopy Peru/Cola De Mono for the excursion. We hiked up to the top of a hill where the first of six ziplines awaited us. I’ll let the picture and videos describe how it happened (I suggest turning the volume down, ziplines are pretty loud!):
View from the third zipline
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Observations on culture, politics, travel, lifestyle, dating and anything Latino. @wendycarrillo
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