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THE DROP: San Antonio producer Mexicans with Guns on "Dame Lo," and on his sonic revolution

25 Aug

San Antonio, Texas native Ernest Gonzales had a great career going as a dance music producer and label head. However, he wanted to take his music down a deeper path, and like so many producers before him, invented an alter ego. The creation, “Mexicans with Guns” celebrates and revels in many of the wonderful historic flourishes of Mexican culture, mixing stereotype with musical flair and creating sounds that are arguably the hottest bass coming out of the American southwest. His latest EP, Me Gusto has been met with critical acclaim, largely due to the video for lead single “Dame Lo,” which glorifies the rich traditions and gritty everyday existence of both the decent and indecent sides of Mexican culture. I had the opportunity to interview the rising producer, and get his opinions on the musical scene in the southwest, his development as a producer, and his influences. Do enjoy, and visit him on Twitter (@mexwithguns) or at http://www.myspace.com/mexicanswithguns.

1. “Mexicans with Guns.” It’s the kind of name you really can’t forget, and is really brilliant marketing. Where did it come from, and how has it helped and hurt your career so far?

I have been making music for a while now and over the years the sound has shifted and evolved but it has for the most part been pretty melodic and downtempo. In addition to producing I was also djing and in the club setting I was playing out a lot of bass heavy music like Miami Bass, Electro, Bmore and Dirty South. A lot of what I was djing was fun and got people dancing and so it started to infiltrate my production. Eventually I just decided to go with it and start making club friendly music but I didn’t want people to know it was me. I run a label called Exponential and I thought that if I created a new production name, I could just introduce it as a new artist to the label and run with it. As for picking the name, I just wanted to pick something that sounded hard as hell. One group of artists that always had THE hardest name, in my opinion, is NWA. I thought of how I could play off NWA with my ethnicity and came up with Mexicans with Guns. So the name Mexicans with Guns is an homage to NWA.

2. Who do you count as your influences as a DJ and why?

My influences as a dj and as a producer are really two seperate things so as a dj I would say that DJ Jester the Filipino Fist and Prince Klassen are my two main influences. As a dj, Jester is always mashing up tracks together…he’s got this one mashup of Willie Nelson that he does with one of his beat records and it always gets people singing along and two stepping. I learned from him how to talk to crowds while performing, how to read the crowd, and not to be afraid to stick with 1 genre while djing. My boy Klassen taught me the value of really digging for new music and keeping an ear open as well as mixing half time beats…taking a dirty south beat at 70bpm and dropping some 140 bpm crazy beat shit on top. That idea of mixing fast and slow is something I use a lot with my Mexicans with Guns tracks.

3. Your progression as a producer and remixer has been extremely swift with you remixing a plethora of artists from all over the musical map. How did many of those remixes occur, and which of them do you believe had the most impact as far as taking your career to the next level?

The first couple of remixes that I did were bootleg remixes to get me going. After that the remixes I did came from friends of friends…my dude Leeor linked me up with Rainbow Arabia, I did some work with the Faunts on my EG album so I returned a remix back for them on their project, I was asked for a remix from Creaked Records because we had done some work before, my boy Yppah asked me to do one for a Ninja Tune remix competition which I was a co-winner on. I think the remix that really did well early on was the Faunts remix I did for Friendly Fire records. Up until that point most of the music I had done as MWG was on the party tip but the Faunts track has very sincere lyrics and the song became this epic kind of sound. It made me realize that I could do more with the MWG sound.

4. So what is the south Texas underground like? Most probably think it’s similar to Austin, given that so many are in formed of Texas’ underground by SXSW. I’m presuming that in Houston, San Antonio and further south towards the border towns, it’s a bit different. What are people into, and what influences the sound?

I think the Mexicans with Guns sound represents a big chunk of the South Texas music scene. If you go out you can find dj’s playing electronic music, house, cumbia but you can also find some down south rap, and some dubstep here and there. San Antonio will forever be dominated by its metal roots though and so there is a big undeground scene of young rock bands.

5. Releasing your debut EP Me Gusto on Stones Throw imprint Innovative Leisure has to be a great point of early success for you? What about the EP shows off where you’ve been, and what about the EP shows where you intend your sound to go?

The EP is a good sampler of my different styles and influences. The track styles are pretty distinct from one another…I think this album shows you what I was thinking about. There’s a dubstep kind of track, a cumbia track, and the there’s Dame Lo. Dame Lo kind of pulls together the latin influences together with Dubstep, and a little bit of Chaos into this new animal. This is the direction I am looking to go into more…combining a variety of latin sounds with new electronic sounds and hopefully coming up with something that represents me. Some of the newer tracks that will be coming out on my EP with Robot Koch on Friends of Friends start to bring in a mystical shaman element into the mix…an indigenous Mexican vibe to the tracks.

6. Clearly, many are becoming acquainted with you now because of D-128’s phenomenal video clip for “Dame Lo.” How did the track come about, and did you have any creative influence alongside D-128 in putting that video together?

Duey (D-128) and I go back a few years, I met him when he was on tour with Michna and we just kept in contact since then. The label was interested in making a video from the EP so I decided to give him a shout and send him some of the tracks. He was really feeling Dame Lo and decided to put together a treatment that was influenced from Mexican pulp comics. We brought him down to San Antonio, did some location scouting and casting and filmed the video entirely in San Antonio. There were a few things that I threw in…I really wanted to get my friend Monessa in who plays the Kumbia Kween…she’s the Red Ninja looking Shaman. I was also adamant that we have some shots at the flea market. My wife, Devyn Gonzales came up with the beautiful make up treatments for the girls. The video was Duey’s brainchild and a bunch of us came together to deliver that baby.

THE DROP: "Dame Lo" by Mexicans with Guns. Dubstep’s visceral reaction in video form.

11 Aug

“I wanna have sex with a martian.”
“Naah dawg, I wanna run up on somebody with a gun and rob them.”
– Two unnamed revelers expressing the emotions Tittsworth’s drum n bass and dubstep set last Wednesday at U Street Music Hall inspired in them.

San Antonio TX’s Ernest Gonzales produces a particularly hard style of Mexican dubstep as Mexicans with Guns. I’ve been getting tracks from him for about a year, but none of them really met up to the levels of a dude with such a ridiculous pseudonym. I mean, if you’re going to run around calling yourself “Mexicans with Guns,” you’ve gotta bring it. It’s like being called “Lactating Lesbian Strippers,” “Midgets with Grenades” or “Niggaz With Attitude.” There’s really no room for anything less than 150% every time out the gate. “Dame Lo,” from a production standpoint, is at 100%. A traditional rhythm, a jaunty bassline and a sample of a seductive Latin female vocal make the track feel like Kid Frost on mescaline and lean, all of this before the bassline drops in. It’s terrific fun and a really solid production.

Dame Lo – Mexicans With Guns from System D-128 on Vimeo.

But the video takes it to 150. D-128, maker of all videos strange yet awesome directs this video that is an homage to border town violence. There are a smorgasbord of Mexicans with Guns in this video, which, alone, should be enough. But between a man committing suicide by shooting himself in the eye, Mexican women with faces painted like Day of the Dead figurines brandishing rifles at a community store to get free sno cones, domestic violence, doing Tequila shooters out of pistol shaped shot glasses, a day in the life of a Mexican prostitute (oral and anal sex included), a cholita brandishing a rifle and our protagonist from earlier who committed suicide breaking up with his girlfriend after some vicious domestic assault. At the end of the clip, which is visually stunning and mirrors the Geto Boys’ “My Mind’s Playing Tricks on Me,” a shaman blows sand in our heroes eyes, which causes him (and the viewer to realize that all of these were just images in his mind), and all of the individuals from those images reappear with guns, along with a Ninja shaman warrior goddess with swords to fill our protagonist with paranoia, the paranoia that caused him to take his own life at the start of the video.

Frightening, intense, volatile and mystical. A heady combination that creates one of the best videos of the year from a track that finally shows Mexicans with Guns ti be worthy of his name. For more on the Me Gusto EP this is featured on, check for the 12″ from Stones Throw Records, or follow him on Twitter.