FACT’s massive man crush on Matias Aguayo just gets bigger and bigger. He’s always been one of our favourite artists – not only a great house producer, but a dancer, singer, and general personality operating in a form of music that thrives on facelessness.

This year, he inaugurated a new label, Cómeme, that deals with music from mostly South American artists. It’s in places like Chile and Argentina that Matias runs his bumbumbox parties – a series of street raves that feature Matias and his friends playing til dawn on crowded street corners – and it’s from those nights that Cómeme was born. Matias goes in depth on the philosophy behind bumbumbox in the interview you can find further down this page, so download the mix and dig in.

Tracklisting:

Chantal – Chanta UnoRebolledo feat. Raquel Wolf – CaminandoMatias Aguayo – Ritmo CoimbraFredi Michel – Marinero (Diegor’s Percapella)Matias Aguayo – Street SoundAlex Cortex – Huyendo Sanfuentes, Rebolledo, Aguayo – El Faso PoliceRebolledo & Daniel Maloso – Venganza & SeduccionWorking Class – Nonstop Trancin’DJ Mbuso – Soweto FunkChiara Linate – Mani DoblateMatias Aguayo feat. Lerato – Pata PataChiquito y Juguetó

Tell us about the mix you’ve done for FACT…

“I wanted to do a short, concentrated mix with a some Cómeme artists’ unreleased tracks, and some other rhythms I like to dance to. Starting from Chantal and Rebolledo’s hypnotic, nocturnal beats – then some “Chilean house” by the likes of Fredi Michel and Diegors aka Diego Mmorales, some music I did, and some tunes of South Africa (DJ Mbuso) and Europe also – there is also an old track by Justus Köhnke and Hans Nieswandt I like, that features the kind of rhythms we enjoy, etc…”

We’re really excited about your label, Cómeme – how did it start? Is there a particular sound/community that you’re trying to represent with it?

“Cómeme started as a necessity. Actually Gary Pimiento and me never thought about making a label. But after some time we felt like we had to do it. This mainly started in Buenos Aires, with our BumBomBox parties on the street, the way we relate to music on those parties, the rhythms we enjoy on the street… As a clubber you get used to a certain way how music has to sound – the idea of a track that “works in a club”.

“During the time we were putting on parties, the idea of what music works on our dancefloor started to differ more and more from actual club sound. We noticed that we were playing a lot of popular latin dance music like Cumbia and also old house tracks and disco music, and considering newer stuff, we especially noticed the efficiency and very much enjoyed the rhythms of what is coming from the cultural “peripheries” and is now accessible through the internet or on popular markets, from South African house music to Colombian Champeta.

“Lacking on music we wanted to play, more and more friends like Rebolledo, Diego Morales, DJs Pareja etc… started to do tracks for these parties, reflecting our kind of dance music spirit. We got used to play each other’s music, people started to ask about the tracks, so Cómeme was a natural consequence…”

Tell us about the artists you’ve got on your Cómeme roster and featured on this mix – are they long-term friends, people you’ve met through the BumBumBox parties, etc?

“Rebolledo [above], from Xalapa, México, is one of my favourite DJs so far, he did sets for  BumBumBox, and started implementing more and more his own tracks into his sets; deep simple tracks, with a lot of dancefloor knowledge, something that comes very much from his way to play, mixing a certain disco sound with his own ehm… Rebolledo sound. Diego Morales is also an early BumBumBox activist; a musician I got to know in Santiago, very active in different Chilean underground bands, a house lover, whose sound is shifting more and more into Champeta – grooves from Colombia, with that very Chilean house sound that a very young audience is dancing to in Santiago underground venues.

“Then DJs Pareja from Buenos Aires, who have been playing there since the 90s started, and use more and more the dembow rhythms we like so much, with the roughness most of Cómeme tracks have… I don’t think it is so much a genre, but there is a common spirit behind all of this, and what I specially enjoy is the way we all collaborate from a distance, being some in Buenos Aires, some in Santiago, etc… We share ideas, somebody does a rhythm, the next turns it into a song, and for example Vicente Sanfuentes from Santiago mixes it down – there is a kind of common research on how we produce and where to go, and we count on a lot of friends, also in Europe, such as Capracara and Lerato from London, Christian S and Korkut Elbay from Cologne, and the friends from Kompakt who are helping us with the production of vinyl and distribution…”

You said recently that “the laws in terms of clubbing have become strict in the capital”, so you started doing the street parties instead. Are there any laws you have to try to bypass when through the BumBumBox parties? Any problems you’ve faced doing them? How long can you get away with them going on til?

“Actually the laws became strict because of a tragedy in one club that burned down a couple of years ago, with many victims. So after the laws became strict in the capital most of the underground venues had to close down, and Buenos Aires started to recover slowly. We haven’t had any problems with the police in Buenos Aires yet, as the parties are not very huge, and there is so much noise on the streets that we’ve not got much attention by the authorities yet – sometimes I think it must be too weird for a cop to see those people dancing on the street, I think they don’t want to ruin it, they don’t know whether it is legal or not – once they told us to leave, then we went to another place, our soundsystem consists of several boomboxes, so it’s portable. In Chile we actually did have problems with the police, and in Sao Paulo we had to be careful – I think these parties are also a way of checking out how the public space in different cities work, whether it is more or less open to such a thing. Apart from the fact that it is a lot of fun, we think it is normal on the streets, it’s one of the things public space should be there for.”

Where do you usually hold the parties – rooftops, corners?

“It’s always on accessible places for everybody, in general very urban places, like a street corner in an area with bars and nightlife, popular places where things can happen, where it is possible that uninvited people join the party, where there is some street action. Finding the right spots is a lot of fun, and our criteria due to experience have become more and more sophisticated. We have developed knowledge about what are good dance floors in public space, we watch out if it is a good floor to dance on, if it can sound well, how it looks at night, and so on…”

People still associate you pretty heavily with last year’s single’Minimal’ – what was the reaction like to that back in Cologne, and places like Berlin? Did it upset people?

“I know Cologne very well, cause I’ve lived there a long time, and it is probably much less serious and much less minimal you might think. Actually, being in the right spot, it can be the most soulful and groovy place in Germany…

“Som
et
imes it seems like a Latin city to me, a neighbourhood feeling full of drama, euphoria, jealousy, gossips and humour, and you can still – on some dancefloors – breathe the air of that pre-minimal feeling, where people still are dancing like crazy and teaching each other new steps; you can still hear basslines, and there are a lot of great local DJs, such as Christian S and Korkut Elbay and many more…

“I don’t know if anyone got upset, but anyway I think we all should take ourselves a bit less serious…”

We hear you’re trying to get the BumBumBox parties over to Europe soon – how’s that going?

“I wonder if something like BBB could work in Europe, as the public space is under such a strict control, and also the attitude towards music has become a very consumerist one, people sometimes forget that a party is not only about a good DJ or musician performing. The crowd also has to be good, and have a positive impact on the DJ.

“What we will do is to bring some of the Cómeme DJs to Europe to perform at certain places (most of them have never been to Europe) and try to find spots or venues that accomplish a bit the idea of party we have in mind. Obviously we are not the first ones to do parties in public space, but there is a certain, very original vibe on those parties, we’d obviously like to share this with people in Europe… And checking out different city situations, we might also give it some tries on the street…”

Have you begun work on a full-length follow-up to Are You Really Lost?

“Yes, I am finishing it actually, it will be out someday in October. I’ve spend already some beautiful time working on it, started in Buenos Aires, will finish the recordings in Europe, gave it some time, to get some distance, so it can become something more open to the listener or dancer. I like the idea of losing control of things, of noticing that something doesn’t belong anymore to you is very appealing to me – to get away a little from the romantic idea of the poet with his computer and his bedroom production out of his introspective universe to something more communicative, doors and windows of the improvised studio are open, and friends join in the process…”

What future plans do you have for Comeme and BumBumBox, and what can we expect in the future from Matias Aguayo?

“Actually we are working on an improvised base, just following our necessities. Our main necessity was to have tracks we could play, Tracks we like to dance to, almost a physical necessity. And we hope we can share this with more people. This summer, August and September will be the months in which we will have some acts playing in Europe. I find it a very exiting time for music making and also for music research beyond the established sources of information; as a DJ, I love the fact to be able to play so much actual and different music from so different places, and I am happy to work with such nice and good people, who make music, dress up, and go out to really dance…

“Then I will be sure touring with the album from October on, but more or less it is the same mission…”

The first two Cómeme 12″s are out now – you can listen to ‘Bo Jack’ from the first one in the FACT media player, on the top right of your screen. They’re pretty great; you should probably buy them.