We had a chance to talk with Ulises, the keyboardist and programmer for KINKY about being the #1 alt- rock-dance band in Latin America, their crossover appeal in the US and the UK, and their new upcoming album, Reina.

Wow, at last! A new Kinky album coming up…please tell us about ‘REINA’!

ULISES: Yeah, we decided to stop touring and focus more on producing the album so we spent a year almost on writing and recording it. It was also a really good time for us to spend that time together because we were able do more experimenting with the ideas we had from each other and also the experience of touring with the five of us and having two albums already, the communication is more clear now, more fluent.  The ideas come along more easily now than before, because we know each other so much better!

Your self-titled album “Kinky” had a feel of a dance or techno influence and Atlas has more of a live rock and roll sound. Are you continuing in that direction with Reina?

ULISES: This album is also exploring a lot in between both of those albums. We like a lot of ideas we relied on for both albums and we also developed new ideas we want to incorporate. So it’s a combination of both albums and new ideas we want to experiment with. It’s a dance album… it’s an album to have fun!

We are really looking forward to seeing you here in LA July 1st. What do you think of Los Angeles?

ULISES: We love LA! It became like a second home to us while recording our first album. We started from Monterey, Mexico and then jamming the scene in London and we arrived in LA to start promoting our 1st album we spent a lot of time here. We felt comfortable and welcome. It’s a really great place to create music and develop your art. There are a lot of creative and interesting musicians here. It’s a really good scene on the alternative side. It’s not like for example the East coast where it seems more into hip-hop. Here we have more capacity to expand and explore the music we like.

How did you come to working with Chris Allison in the UK? (note: producer of Coldplay, etc at Sonic 360 Records)

ULISES: He’s always been into the Latin scene. He likes a lot of the bands from Latin America. He was working with a band in Monterey and heard about us. He invited us to go with his label and wanted to produce and promote our first album. We were interested in that way of working. In 2001 when a lot of indie labels started with the Internet it was a new way of working instead of going to majors. Sometimes you have more creative control and freedom rather than with a major label. For us it was really important to have that freedom of experimentation and creativity. It was a good opportunity for us to start building a foundation.

Sonic 360 seems like such a small label, but they have these fantastic heavy hitter bands like you.  They have good taste!

ULISES: Yeah…Yeah!! They have really good taste and they like to find music from around the world and show it to the rest of the world. For us that was very important. That’s something we really like about that label.

The vastly different types and styles in your music fit together so well. It’s not a hodge podge of sound. How to you get it to fit so coherently together?

ULISES:  Sometimes its very difficult to make it work! Our musical backgrounds are all very different but somehow we meet somewhere in the middle I think. For example Omar, our drummer,  is really into jazz and Latin jazz, I am more into electronic music, Gil, the lead singer, is more into alternative rock and experimental, Carlos on guitar, is more experimental, Cesar, the bass player, is into Norteno and folk music. All of that we have to blend and put it together somehow.

How do audiences in the US compare with Mexico?

ULISES:  Audiences in Mexico are more intense in the way they express and how they feel the music. They really jump and sweat and have a good time! In the US I think they jump around and dance but are maybe a little more organized.

It sounds like the last three years or so have been an incredible adventure, traveling all over the world and working with bands like the Flaming Lips and just having a great time!

ULISES: Yeah, the first time we came here to the United States we got on a tour with the Flaming Lips and Cake they became like our godfathers. We toured the whole United States with them. It was an amazing experience. Then suddenly we jumped to the UK, Asia and Indonesia with Gloria Gaynor and INXS… and stuff like that is really, really weird for us too, coming from a small town in Mexico!

-June & Rodger Caldwell

June Caldwell lives amidst drawers stuffed with an array of earplugs, clipped wristbands, and notes scrawled on ticket stubs… splitting her time between concert reviews, and doing radio airplay promotions for Indie bands at Bryan Farrish Radio Promotions. She covers the LA music scene for artrocker.com, the largest bi-weekly new music publication in the UK, and www.fly.co.uk with her shutterbug hubby Roger.

June’s always interested in Indie bands looking for promotion, and can be contacted at: junejer@gmail.com.

LA guitarist Rodger Caldwell

has been shooting the action ever since a resourceful high school teacher offered a photo class to him as a last-ditch attempt to keep him from dropping out. Jerry’s pit pix grace such sites as hip-hop and world music's Fly Global Music Culture in the UK.