Descartes a Kant

“Descartes a Kant, a wonderfully wacky band from Guadalajara, Mexico. To try to describe their music is to do it a disservice. It’s loud, racy, incredibly imaginative, sophisticated, funny and wild; it’s as if the Yeah Yeah Yeahs fronted Albert Ayler with Frank Zappa conducting...”
- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

From Guadalajara, Mexico by way of LA’s Cleopatra Records, come a sonic and visual art gang to be reckoned with. Until not long ago, if you’d asked me who my favorite Mexican musical group were, I would have smiled and answered: “Ampersan, hands down. The greatest group I know of in Mexico playing today.” Well, most days I learn something, and if you’re like me, the more you learn the more you’re reminded of the vacuum of absolute ignorance you are trying to fill. Discovering Descartes a Kant was a darkly illuminating experience like being pulled free of a shipwreck by being tossed a lifeline into a vortex.

Love and propaganda are nothing to play around with, nor approach lightly if safety is of any concern. I’m personally opposed to warning labels on album covers myself (primarily for aesthetic purposes) but consider this my implicit advisory in regards to Victims of Love Propaganda. - New Noise Magazine

“Coming from Guadalajara, we stand before probably the most risky and interesting music in the mexican scene…”
- Switch magazine

“Descartes a Kant did the best Mexican record last year. A very edgy one; it’s got all things necessary to be quality of exportation…”
- Warp magazine

“Descartes a Kant did the best Mexican record last year. A very edgy one; it’s got all things necessary to be quality of exportation…”
- Warp magazine

“Paper Dolls is one of the best albums made in 2000’s decade on this country…”
- Sonorama magazine

“Paper Dolls is one of the best albums made in 2000’s decade on this country…”
- Sonorama magazine

“Their debut album, Paper Dolls, is an innocent little paper doll book to learn how to make a collage of all music genres in the less possible time. Several emotions occur in the same lapse”

- Rolling Stone magazine

“Their debut album, Paper Dolls, is an innocent little paper doll book to learn how to make a collage of all music genres in the less possible time. Several emotions occur in the same lapse”

- Rolling Stone magazine

“Paper Dolls is a huge surprise in the independent Mexican scene. Far away seem the days when rock was validated trough the search of a “Mexican” sound (whatever that means)…”
- Marvin magazine

“Paper Dolls is a huge surprise in the independent Mexican scene. Far away seem the days when rock was validated trough the search of a “Mexican” sound (whatever that means)…”
- Marvin magazine

Beneath the hedonistic reverie of Descartes a Kant’s Victims of Love Propaganda is the story of a fictional couple, told over the course of 10 deliciously volatile tracks. The songs follow a relationship through its manic highs and crushing lows, from desire, to rabid infatuation and, ultimately, to obsession-induced self-destruction. Throughout Victims, the Guadalajaran iconoclasts illuminate the stark contrasts of toxic love.

Their darkly eccentric opus resists pop culture’s romantic clichés. “We find out that [love] is not the way it’s presented to be [in media],” says Memo Ibarra, who plays bass and synths—and provides the album’s diabolical screams. According to Ibarra, some of the songs are pulled from personal history. “What may seem as a traumatic or terrible experience turned out into what we think is a great album,” he says.

Victims was engineered by Steve Albini, known for his work with alternative rock fixtures like the Pixies, Nirvana, and the Breeders. Throughout the album, Descartes a Kant turn their broken hearts into a sort of exorcism, setting woozy lullaby vocals against digital hardcore beats and frenzied punk riffs. Their live show takes cues from dark cabaret pioneers like Dresden Dolls, as well as the camp of Rocky Horror Picture Show, and all of the group’s members wear ’50s gas masks on stage. Toxic love, indeed. - Daily Bandcamp

I’ve recently realized that chaotic, kitchen sink progressive rock/avant garde metal is one of my favorite sub-genre of music, certainly my favorite sub-genre in metal. Bands like uneXpect, Mr. Bungle, and 6:33 are just a few acts that bring me unbridled joy as a weirdo prog dog (no one calls me that). So I was excited to be exposed to the music of Descartes a Kant.

Their music is self-desribed as surf, punk, and swing. However, that description just scratches the surface of this band. In one song their sound will shift from gorgeous indie pop to chaotic hardcore chaos before a crescendo that resides in a third unrelated realm.

The band went through quite a few line-up changes, but settled down a bit around the time of their debut Paper Dolls. This cemented their sound has much as a band like Descartes a Kant can. The songs were much shorter then, with most clocking in as about two minutes. Each song is a brief burst of artistic fury.

2012 saw their sophomore release, Il Visore Lunatique, which expanded greatly on what the band is. Dolls came off like a Melt Banana meets indie hybrid. Visore runs a gamut of styles in its brief thirty-six minute run time. It brings all sorts of musical acts to mind like Mindless Self Indulgence, Dillinger Escape Plan, Amanda Palmer, Mr. Bungle, Primus, Stolen Babies, and Le Butcherettes.

“Peter Pan Syndrome” sounds like if St. Vincent fronted Nuclear Rabbit. “The Robbery” plays out like a Sleigh Bells meets Melt Banana collaboration. “Convince Me” sounds like straight up Mr. Bungle, and it’s wonderful. Then album’s conclusion, “You May Kiss The Bride,” is an eight minute avant garde cabaret journey. In short, this album has just about everything. - Metal Injection

First: Mexico’s Descartes a Kant are, almost without doubt, the best rock band in the world right now; and secondly, the Delmonas’ version of Farmer John is one of the Greatest Rock Recordings of All Time.

For those unfamiliar, Descartes a Kant are a theatrical and high-energy bunch of cocky neon misfits from Mexico City who have been making records since the middle of the last decade. They present themselves like Gogol Bordello if GoBo had watched a lot of Pedro Almodavar films while listening to Lightning Bolt and early Devo while accidentally doing speed. I accidentally did speed once; my companion – hello, Ace, how are you? – said to me, “Prepare to spend the next three days feeling like you are walking across a six-lane highway holding a large pane of glass.” And if you imagine a band of Angels and Warhol Superstars and Moondogs and Masked Wrestlers running across a six lane highway while holding panes of glass, maybe you can imagine what Descartes a Kant sound like.

When I think of all the fakes, flowers, tuned and tattooed slackers, and billionaires dressed as beggars who pass for pop stars these days, I go oh my (as Joe Kenda might say), those are not pop stars! Look instead to Descartes a Kant! They are true pop stars, they are true rock stars. This limber army of angel-winged Biafras and Bjorks dressed by John Waters fluttering and stomping around the stage are the real thing!

Descartes a Kant are, truly, the kind of band everyone thought Arcade Fire could have been combined with what the Sugarcubes should have been, if the either Arcade Fire or the Sugarcubes had been produced by Lightning Bolt and Danny Elfman (I could shorthand that, effectively, by saying that Descartes a Kant are what would have happened if Arcade Fire had been produced by Lightning Bolt instead of LCD Sound System). Descartes a Kant are the first true prog-alt rock band since The Tea Party, which is to say, Descartes a Kant are somewhere between Rush and a hallucinogenic viewing of Velvet Goldmine (while at the same time, in a very nagging way, reminding me of the marvelous 1980s British pop band Voice of the Beehive, if Voice of the Beehive were allowed to be the Acid Cowsills they really wanted to be).

Bizarrely, while inhaling Descartes a Kant I keep on coming back to Lightning Bolt and Voice of the Beehive, two bands that would appear to be at polar opposites of each other. Think about that, because post-core luvvers like meself have long been searching for someone to take the pine-resin/grain alcohol/Dali-on-fire teeth-grinding noisik of Lightning Bolt, and somehow make it sexy, flamboyant, and theatrical.

And that is what we have here in Descartes a Kant: It all has the effect of what happens when you drink some serious Dutch Jenever and fall asleep while watching a news report on Santa Murete, and you dream of skull-people wearing ballet shoes dancing with the spirits of Greg Ginn and Cocteau Twins.

(!)

Can you imagine, can you imagine a band combining Gaga’s flamboyance and sexy/ugly with a weird early-Swans growl and the kind of hyper-musicianship in a horror-schau context that makes me think of Van Dyke Parks producing Captain Beefheart?

It is very, very hard for me to imagine there’s a better rock band in the world right now, so you may wonder, why isn’t the name Descartes a Kant on everyone’s lips? Well, there’s a lot of reasons for that, but largely it’s due to the reverse racism of the music critic establishment, a topic so tender that even an a-hole like myself is loathe to mention it. But there’s also this: We spend so much time convincing ourselves that brand name mediocrities are geniuses that we don’t have much mental/emotional real estate left to grab the brass ring of the real thing. - Rock and Roll Globe

A dark cabaret act from Mexico City, Descartes A Kant are a raw lesson in removing performative inhibitions. Jerking between moods and styles in a single track, three guys held the back and three girls dominated the front of stage. Shapes are thrown on-stage before bodies are thrown into the crowd. Silver confetti cast upon everyone and ‘You Assfucked My Heart’ badges at the merch stand. Categorically the greatest show at Airwaves 2018. - Nialler 9

If, at first brush, it doesn't seem as if Bob would appreciate this chaotic, vaudevillian punk tune by Guadalajara, Mexico band Descartes A Kant (and produced by the legendary Steve Albini), wait just one minute, there's an unexpected surprise. - NPR

There are few words that sound sexier to me than the words “experimental” and “punk” put together. But apparently the words “experimental punk from Guadalajara, Mexico” sounds way sexier to me, so I jumped on the opportunity to check out Descartes a Kant (which, since they’re from Mexico, I guess translates into Descartes to Kant). I’ve never heard of them before, but apparently Victims of Love Propaganda is their third album. As I look through their website and other sources, it looks like the first two albums were more aimed at a Spanish-speaking audience, and this is the first album their really trying to market to the United States.

The press release I got for this album called them an “avant-garde/experimental punk band (though they've been called unclassifiable by many).” Okay, no, let’s not overstate things. I can sum them up pretty quickly: Dresden Dolls meets The Blood Brothers. No, really, it’s that simple: the disjointed, piano-based rock of the Dresden Dolls combined with The Blood Brothers’ ability to beautifully meld experimental hardcore with pop hooks.

The perhaps too on the nose title of the album, Victims of Love Propaganda, establishes the album’s theme. Throughout, the album explores the silliness of societal conventions about love, relationships, sex, and marriage. No song illustrates this more than “Until the Day We Die,” which tells a story, with very generic characters, that skewers the very ideas of marriage and monogamy. The opening track starts with an uncomfortably distorted rant, from some kind of twisted, angry preacher, about love, before launching into the fun and wickedly titled “You Assfucked My Heart.” Nowhere is their similarity to the Dresden Dolls more on display than on “Motion Picture Dreamboy” which, after starting off as a ferocious punk song, slowly turns into a simple, innocent piano tune.

There’s definitely a whiff of pretension to Victims of Love Propaganda, but it’s not entirely unearned. Descartes a Kant does actually manage to create an album that pushes the boundaries of punk, challenges societal norms, and has a lot of fun along the way. That’s a hell of a hat-trick to pull off, and makes me excited to see what they’ll do next. - Punknews

De mexicanske karneval-punkere Descartes a Kant vækkede abrupt det middagstrætte publikum med en overrumplende og vanvittig musikalsk forestilling, hvor ikke mange genrer forblev uberørt.

René Descartes og Immanuel Kant. To af oplysningtidens store filosoffer og udtalte fortalere for den rationelle tankegang. Hvad der har fået et mexicansk band til at navngive sig efter lige præcis dem står hen i det uvisse, men man kunne godt lege med tanken om, at det er for at skabe en slående kontrast.

For Descartes a Kant er alt andet end rationelle i deres musikalske udtryk. Skulle det vise sig.

Seks mexicanere indtog scenen, tre kvinder i røde kjoler i front på guitarer og keyboard bakket op af en stor bassist iført en rød S/M-maske samt både en trommeslager og en på trommemaskine med gasmasker.

Så var scenen sat.

Og den næste times tid i det for tidspunktet – lidt over middag – pænt fyldte Pavilion-skulle blive en tour de force bestående af rablende sindssyg musik kombineret med teater.

Med sangtitler som 'Hello Tarantino', 'You Assfucked my Heart' og 'The Peter Pan Syndrome' ligger Descartes a Kant heller ikke skjul på hverken inspirationer, eller at de er klar på at tage både tekst og musik hele vejen.

Det ville være nærmest umuligt at skulle bryde de enkelte numre ned, for showet fremstod mere som én lang forestilling, hvor gruppen moste sig igennem alt fra slugde metal over surfrock til barnagtige godnatsange. Altså sunget, som var der et barn på scenen for i det næste øjeblik at sætte gang i vredt punkstykke med skrig for at gakke helt igennem, Mr. Bungle-style. Alt i alt en slags Tarantino-film på syre trukket ud af månens indre.

Alle seks medlemmer var mere end på – og for dem som fandt det fornøjeligt, hvilket virkede til at være det mest af teltet, var der intet andet end brede smil. Til sidst var to af medlemmerne, efter at have performet et slags bankrøveri på scenen, nede at danse rundt blandt publikummerne, mens det hele sluttede med en 10 minutter lang rant om at hjælpe bandet – fortalt af den ene forsangerinder gennem en effekt, som gav hende en stemme som en 100 år gammel mand med et livslangt overbrug af cigaretter. Bizart, men alligevel opløftende, uden at man var helt sikker på, hvad der havde ramt en. Men overbevisende, det var det. - Devilution