Tijuana’s Ghost Magnet Roach Motel Bringing Their Multisensioral Punk-Formance to Brooklyn’s Trans-Pecos
by Reuben Torres, Oct 14 2014
There’s a great deal of stereotypes surrounding Tijuana, and a great many more regarding its musical scene. Believe it or not, it’s not just Javier Batiz, and Nortec, and ruidosón (Auto-tooting horn here, yes). The city has also been rife with some of the most challenging, out-of-left-field, downright un-categorizable music this (or that) side of the border.
Chief among this vanguard is veteran ensemble Ghost Magnet Roach Motel, comprised of two American musicians, two Mexican visual artists, and one, count him, one Japanese artist, tallying up to one batshit crazy quintet. The six-year strong band has consistently pushed the categories of “noise” and “improvisation” with their outlandish, apocalyptic and unabashedly epic performances.
Case in point is their MEXICAN JUDGEMENT DAY performance at this year’s All My Friends festival in Tijuana, which they’ve now compressed and compiled into one half hour performance, and which they’ve released in anticipation of their upcoming tour –– dubbed SEARCHING FOR THE WHITEMAN’S SOUL –– kicking off at the fresh as fuck venue, Trans Pecos in Brooklyn –– brought to you by the same folks who gave you 285 Kent.
If you’re looking to get schooled in both Tijuana’s wider musical scene and some of the most interesting experimental music coming out of Mexico today, you owe it to yourself to hear them –– in recorded form, and if you’re in the borough, in live form as well. You can download the entire release through the band’s Bandcamp page. And you can find more details about their performance with XD HD and ZVI at this link.