Cluster Fest was a small music festival put together by students at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, on April 29. In the middle of a line up that catered to indie music fans and a non-Latino audience, there was Mexican Institute of Sound (M.I.S.). No stranger to Austin or the area, M.I.S. has performed on a couple of occasions in Austin recently, including South by Southwest and at Pachanga Fest in 2009. Apparently none of these students were there, but our Editor in Chief was there covering the festival for our sister site, Red River Noise. This is what he had to say about M.I.S. and the audience’s reaction:
“Going in, I perceived Mexico City’s Mexican Institute of Sound, or M.I.S., to be the wild card of the night. What I mean is the crowd in attendance did not have a lot of Latinos present and no one seemed to know about M.I.S. I was curious to see how a group of mostly white college students would react to a band who performed in Spanish and in a genre — Latin alternative — they weren’t used to hearing. M.I.S. blends traditional sounds of Mexico, such as cumbia, with electronic dance music and hip hop. Those musical elements transformed into quite the party starter and eliminated any chance of the audience disliking the language barrier. Frontman Camilo Lara’s humorous English language banter in-between songs was a great ice breaker. Performing songs from all three albums, M.I.S. gave the non-Latino audience a great sampling of what the new wave in Latin music is all about”.
Read the full review on Red River Noise here and check out our live photos by Kristie Bocanegra below:
