Interview with Panda Bear & Sonic Boom

The reminiscence of a past that never happened and the longing for a future that will never happen: Reset Mariachi.

Noah Lennox and Peter Kemberbetter known as Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, launched in 2022, Reset, an album that sampled the 60s in its melodies, its addictive style and the lyrical virtue of Lennox. It was in 2023 that both musicians sought to re-adapt, in collaboration with Adrian Sherwood, all of his songs in the fusion style of electronic and reggae: a resounding success after the recognition of his original version.

Now, a year later, the duo sought an even more ambitious alternative: Reset Mariachi. Two reversals of “Danger” and “Livin' In The After” that resume the sample original with a restructuring for mariachi, with all its traditional instrumentation. To learn details about its release, the inspiration behind a mariachi version, and communication in music, we spoke with Sonic Boom and this is what he told us.

As musicians with electronic roots, the very thought of a traditional version seemed far away, for Peter Kember It was a long wait to complete this ambitious task, an opportunity that came thanks to the visit they made to Mexico City during the festival Hypnosis in 2023. The inspiration goes back more than a decade and the precise moment for its realization.

“It was actually a long time ago, 15 or 20 years ago, we were opening in Silver Lake, which was a very Mexican area in Los Angeles, I was staying at one of my friends' apartment and I went to an art show, I think it was somewhere on Sunset Boulevard, they had a mariachi band, I don't remember the name of the band, but it was my first experience with mariachi. They were amazing, they had something special. Then I worked with Panda Bear more than 10 years ago on his album Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper, had a song, 'Tropic Of Cancer'at that time I remember telling him that it would be amazing to have a mariachi version of it, but we didn't have the contacts or connections to do it. One of my friends lives in Portugal, Oswaldo Terrones, He is Mexican, he does sound and is part of the team Reset, while we were in tourI remembered that we would be visiting Mexico soon, so I asked him if he knew any mariachi bands that could maybe try to record a couple of songs with us. He replied that yes, his friend Santiago Mijares I was recording a mariachi album in his studio, so I realized it was a possibility and we decided to give it a try,” he said. Kember.

The ideal team, a studio specialized in mariachi and previous work with Reset In Dub allowed the duo to reinterpret their songs. Selected, almost unintentionally, because they were two similar pieces, almost sisters, to this traditional Mexican genre.

“I knew right away what songs we should do, for example, 'Living in the aftermath' It was written by two young Jews, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, for an Afro-descendant band, The Drifters, but it is clearly written in a Hispanic mariachi style. The strings in the original song were the sample that we took from the first recording, it always sounded like mariachi to me; 'Danger' Also, I could listen to it and imagine a cantina in the afternoon, in the middle of the heat, trying to escape the sun while enjoying a beer in a quiet town in Mexico. It was very easy, as soon as we heard what they did with the songs, we wanted to do the whole album, but we already had the dub version with Adrian Sherwood, Not many people release different versions of a single material, in different languages. I loved the idea, I would have liked to continue, but we only did those two songs in the end,” he explained. Sonic Boom.

There are no distances for two musicians in session, even if there are language barriers, it seemed that the compositions themselves spoke, giving the opportunity to Mariachi 2000 by Cutberto Pérez to communicate between the guitarrón and the vihuela.

“It was very interesting to see the mariachi. I speak a little Portuguese, which is in the territory of the language, but my Spanish wasn’t good enough to understand what they were saying, but I could see that they were enjoying it. When I asked Oswaldo, he said that they loved it, that it was strange how the songwriting was relatively simple and that it translated easily to their instruments, I think that comes across clearly in the recording,” the musician noted.

In preparation for the session that was recorded in Coyoacán, Mexico City, arrangements were made to adapt the two songs to a traditional mariachi structure, where the duo trusted in other hands to bring their pieces to life.

“Santiago and Patsi Mijare “They made the arrangements for the mariachi, for the winds and the strings, they did an incredible job. They were in the session and we let them direct it, they speak Spanish and we don’t, so we trusted them and everything really worked out. We were very happy about it,” he said. Sonic Boom.

When the structure becomes a language, even the distance between English and Spanish is reduced, since, in this case, it emphasizes the very essence of mariachi and the original pieces, allowing both to converse with each other.

“Musicians of all genres communicate with each other through music, even if they speak different languages. For me that is one of the great joys of music, it opens up communication with others. What I consider to be ‘my music’ would not exist without other musicians and I know that feeling is what we do, so it’s like a beautiful conversation, which I am always happy to be a part of,” he explained. Kember.

However, in that same communication, it becomes relevant that mariachi is a genre that arises in the Spanish language, that is why Panda Bear & Sonic Boom They decided to translate both songs into Spanish, resulting in “Living in the aftermath” and “Danger”.

“I think they needed to be translated into Spanish, there were six people working on the translation, because we wanted to keep the poetry and the meaning of the original lyrics. We wanted to incorporate Mexican Spanish, Mexican idioms, even dialects, so we had three Mexican friends who speak English along with three Spaniards. We were looking to keep the rhythm, the rhyme, and the poetry of the songs. I know from songs like 'My Way'which you may know, is already a classic, it is originally a French song, where the emotion it conveys in English is thanks to its translation, that is why I know it is critical,” said the composer.

With the help of six people, we have two songs that are natural for any previous listener of mariachi, a careful work that sought to maintain all the essence of their original versions during the transition. In this process, they even confronted the use of AI, a resource that, with modernity, faces difficulties.

“In one of our first attempts, one of our friends tried to use artificial intelligence to translate them and it was horrible, it was completely soulless. I think that as musicians, AI will never be able to do what we do, because it is looking for a consensus, what everyone else accepts, while we are looking to do what no one has done in some way. To give feelings and emotions to something, not just to make a leak of everything that has been documented. The translation was very important, it was done with great care, it was hard work because we wanted to do justice to the language from the lyrics and the music,” he explained. Kember.

It seems, then, that the most complex part of these adaptations was not the musical language, but the transfer between languages and cultures, which was also congruent with the musical adaptation.

It's complex, because there were phrases with a particular meaning in English, they had an instant resonance and that's something you can't translate literally. That's why there were so many different opinions, in particular, the three Mexicans involved played a crucial role, they are bilingual and could point out what worked and what didn't. It was a very interesting process, all around Reset “It was a magical period for me, I wouldn’t change it for anything. We translated into another language even if we couldn’t understand it,” the musician described.

So we have a Mexican, colorful and sincere version of Reset, which also converses with its sister dub remake: two works that reflect the creative possibilities of the duo, along with the very quality of the original songs.

“Noah (Panda Bear) He wrote some great songs, from the first moment he sang them for me, I knew there was something very strong in them. I had a feeling that these songs could be universally translated into almost any genre, because the songs are so good. So, it was time to see what would happen, we even thought about doing a children's play using the songs, which is something I still want to do, maybe one day it will happen. I think the songs, partly because of the samples that we used and by the nature of the composition of the letters, they instantly seemed possible to translate into any language. We immediately came up with the job of Adrian Sherwood, “It completely transformed the record, some would say it was even better or as good as the original, into a different genre. My intuition on these things is good, anyway, so it really worked,” he said. Sonic Boom.

The quality of composition of Noah Lennox and the infinite range of possibilities in its melodies are responsible for this album having mutated into versions so different and similar at the same time, timeless songs for any type of listening.

“The original record had an instant timeless quality. It’s a reminiscence of a past that never happened and a longing for a future that will never happen. It’s a kind of nostalgia for the future, it doesn’t make sense and at the same time it makes perfect sense, we were very lucky. The future and the past are constructs of our imagination, they don’t really exist and they won’t exist, but as humans we have this weird concept of time. Things will happen, like the concept, but we can’t predict what will happen and it will never be as we expect it to be,” he concluded. Pete Kember.

You can now listen to the EP Reset Mariachi on all platforms.