VTech is proud to present, A Decade of Mochilla, an epic mixture, spanning Mochilla’s 10 Years Mixed into on mixture and shared with you in two parts. This is part one…
Mochilla is really more than ten years old. It was 1998 when Coleman and I explained to our Mexican producer on the set of the Control Machete video for lleso that we would only shoot with the equipment that fit in our backpack. It was a Jansport (for clarity!). He replied…”Oh ok, you guys are the Mochila guys, Mochileros.” Of course we loved the word mochilla (the Spanish for backpack) but apparently didn’t know how to spell it thus the two Ls!
In 2001 we released our first project commercially under that name. Keepintime was a photo-essay that under the tutelage of Adam Glickman at Tokion became a short film. He initially thought of it as a piece to put on that new thing – the internet. But when it ended up being 12 minutes long we decided it was too long so we made a VHS to sell – we pressed up a thousand and they flew out the door.
Keepintime: Talking Drums and Whispering Vinyl became a film festival favorite and then the calls started. In the ten years since then Mochilla has grown. We have an office now and a micro staff of dedicated, talented people. We have travelled the world, made films about all kinds of music, crossed all kinds of boundaries, with with people from 5 to 95 years of age and we are having a lot of fun in the process. Along the way we have made an archive of photos, videos and audio. It is filled with glorious performances, tough breaks, ambitious harmonies and a lot of soul. Early in 2011 we will be releasing a two CD Mix of these performances – one live and one live in studio.
As a seasonal gift to our friends at VTech we have decided to sneak you this first 20 minutes of the first volume. This is truly only a sneak peak in to the vast musical vaults of Mochilla. Coleman has sat thru many hours of music, digging in and around multi-tracks of kicks, snares and scratches. It is almost unfair to try to capsulate all of this wonderful music into 2 CDs, but he did. Next week we will have another 20 minutes from the second CD – the studio one.
There’s a lot of memories here. A lot of magic.
B+ Dec 2010
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