With their mix of musical genres, it's no surprise Café Tacuba is Mexico's hottest rock en español band, having won a Latin Grammy for Best Rock Album in 1999. But it is a surprise that none of the members speak English well enough for an interview. On the other hand, with nearly a quarter of Vegas' population being Latino, it's a surprise that none of the Weekly staff speaks Spanish well enought to interview them.
The quartet of Ruben "Nru" Albarran, Joselo and Enrique "Quique" Rangel and Emanuel "Meme" DeReal were design students in a suburb north of Mexico City. Signed by Warner Music in 1992, they were featured in a multi-artist album, En Sessions at West 54th Street, called "the equivalent of the Beatles' White Album for the rock en español movement" by the New York Times.
Another surprise is that their biography on the English portion of their website is in Spanish. But with the help of AltaVista.com's Babel Fish translator program, we present this interview that never happened.
What else have you done other than albums?
They have participated in several soundtracks, as it is the case of the film, Y tu mamá también, To Live Bush or Loves Dogs; engraving songs for different discs tribute; and collaborated with artists like Celso Fragmentation, the Great Silence, Inspector, Kronos Quartet, Ofelia Medina and David Byrne.
What's your last studio CD, Cuatro Caminos, like?
For this, the group decided to invite to the recording of the disc to two excellent musicians, Víctor Indrizzio and Joey Waronker (who have touched among others with Beck and REM). He is incredible to be able to listen to in Cuatro Caminos as much renovation in the group, even, are subjects that seem to be hairdos by a different group, a group that when listening to it costs work to you to imagine that they take all a life touching by the so fresh sound that they manage to emit.