Rolando Chia, Vistas Fijas

Amazing find! Two essential documents from the Mexican underground of the mid-1980s, now available together.

Rolando Chía's Sara Juega Y... (Al Ejandra, 1986) is a ghost-record of rare beauty: nine compositions of minimal folk that approach the tradition of American Primitivism - John Fahey, Robbie Basho - filtered through a deeply personal sensibility. An acoustic guitar that breathes, silences charged with meaning, the same patient attention to natural resonance found in Vincent Le Masne and Bertrand Porquet's Guitares Dérive.

Vistas Fijas' self-titled 7" EP (Laudano, 1985) represents the other side of that ferment. Rolando Chía, Armando Velasco, and Carlo Salinas - three of the most important figures in Mexico City's underground - gathered together in nearly 18 minutes that drift between minimal synth, ambient textures, and post-industrial restraint. Salinas' "Gotas" sinks into sublime, shimmering downtempo; Chía and Velasco's abstract explorations on "Arcano" and "Sinfin"; and the delicate, mournful close of "Dias De Margarita." A haunting document of Mexican electronic experimentalism at its most spectral.

From the margins of the Tianguis del Chopo to the "Concierto del Eclipse" of 1991, these musicians forged a unique speculative cosmology. Listened together, these two records offer a sonic map of a parallel Mexico - the intimate solitude of Chía's acoustic meditations alongside the collective drift of Vistas Fijas' electronic visions.