Track by Track: Matias Aguayo – Anenoa

Largely sung in Spanish and steeped in the sound-worlds of Mexico City’s underground dance floors, Anenoa is a genuinely collective work. Aguayo enlists a constellation of collaborators (Javiera Mena, IARAHEI, Camille Mandoki, Girl Ultra, Daudi Matsiko and the ever-present Barbie Williams among them) alongside a core band of players, Etienne Jaumet, Alex Lázaro, Rafael Cohen, Kalabrese, Juanita Carvajal, and Angel Deradoorian, who help him move fluidly between uptempo merengue-funk, dream pop, spiritual jazz, tropical ballad, and dancefloor euphoria, often within the same song.

But what makes Anenoa so vivid isn’t just its list of guests. It’s the stories underneath. There’s a woman running through the city, torn between opposing emotions. A long-legged ostrich is landing in a Veracruz cloud forest with nowhere left to bury its head. A DJ from Helsinki who beats until she remembers she also needs a melody. A word Aguayo thought he invented, only to discover it already meant “right now” in Malagasy and “listening” in Māori, fitting for a record so attentive to both.

Sounds pretty good right? It is.  Below, Aguayo walks us through Anenoa one song at a time: the block parties, the pandemic isolation in the cloud forest, the friendships, the politics, and the cat who insisted on being part of the session.

This is a breakdown of each track for my team as we began exploring the idea of “Anenoa”.

SENTIMIENTOS ENCONTRAOS

(Opposed emotions)

Red, yellow, green

Hot and dry, afternoon

“Sentimientos Encontraos” is an uptempo merengue-funk track that was born out of my participation in the “Nueva Red de Bailadores” free block parties in Mexico City. I have always sought inspiration and interaction in spaces relevant to diverse communities beyond the gentrified versions of our dance music culture, and the vibe of these parties led me to compose this ultra-dry, hot, uptempo, modern Latino body-music jam. What we want is to hear and to create grooves that you can’t sit still to, that make your body move involuntarily. Alongside Rafael Cohen from !!! (Chk chk chk) on bass and Alex Lazaro (percussionist to Lucrecia Dalt) , propulsed by the skills of producer/mixing engineer Matt Karmil, and the razor-sharp backing vocals of Chilean noise legend Carlos “Aye Aye” Reinoso, “Sentimientos” was designed to hit hard in your flat, in the club, on the street, or at your wedding! The song tells the story of a woman (impersonated by Mexican dancer Andy Villarreal in the video) feeling opposite emotions at the same time as she rushes through the city in the frenzy of late capitalist pre war anxiety and chaos, engaging in countless actions and moves to get by, culminating into the catchy sing along chorus, where we engage in the mantra of “You already know how I am, I already know how you are, I already know how you are, and you already know how I am”

ASUCA , ROCK , ROLL

(Sugar, Rock, Roll)

Blue, White, Black

Mild with warm wind, 10 pm

Walking while dancing, I am sided here by Argentinean singer Barbie Williams, who, like on this track, is responsible for most of the backing vocals of the album. The track features parts in which it is just drums, bass and groove-oriented staccato lyrics, all in Spanish, asking for sugar, checking out the floor, warning of unexpected dangers, being both a detective and explorer in life, adventures in an undercover mission, dance moves, coolness, blue flashing disco lights, and nighttime in the city. The sky opens to a melancholic and catchy dream pop, reminiscent of my time living in Buenos Aires, a city to which I have always remained connected and which has greatly influenced my musical language. It is adult contemporary dance music, driving towards an open end of ambient soundscapes created alongside Etienne Jaumet, plus a flute that transcends from its initial pop melody towards the playfulness of spiritual jazz, played by no other than Angel Deradoorian…

NUEVO DESFILE

(New Parade)

Red

Summer storm, late afternoon

“Nuevo Desfile” translates into “New Parade” and was initially part of some composition I did for a “parade of social classes” in the style of a fashion show that we did for the theatre play “Flouz” at the Theatre du Chatelet. The initial composition was inspired by the works of composer John Adams, as interpreted by the ensemble intercontemporain, which participated in the play, but then took other, unexpected paths towards something very different. But I think contemporary classical music composition with a cowbell is a thing to keep on exploring. I wanted to turn this song into a party somehow. I always loved songs with crowds in them, like in “Over and Over” by Sylvester, for instance. As a DJ, I’ve always liked to play these songs cause the recorded crowd mixes up with the crowd on the dancefloor and pushes it. Every time someone came to visit me in the studio, I asked them for help in layering the party with additional shout-outs, laughter and screams.

The lyrics are an exploration into celebrating action against the political right. “You know them, but they don’t know you” is an encouragement to leave the intimidation behind cause we need to be reminded from time to time that fascists choose ignorance willingly, which leaves vast territories to explore; they don’t allow themselves to explore cause they would cease to be fascists. Therefore, we have an important tactical advantage that we should not forget.

In this track, there’s Kalabrese playing the drums, Alex Lazaro playing percussion, Rafa Cohen on guitar, and especially Etienne Jaumet, who plays the ling crazy extended synth solo on the SH 101 towards the end of the track.

NO VES ft Javiera Mena

(Don’t you see)

Blue, Ultramarine, Indigo, Turquoise

crisp autumn, nighttime

On this track, I sought help with composition from Chilean indie pop legend and longtime friend Javiera Mena. She did help and also ended up singing along with me on it. My lyrics are often not too literal and play with the sonority of different (mainly Spanish) words, often in reference to expressions or to the sound in specific Latin American accents. This track is about carefully tiptoeing to not wake anybody up. It’s about being sleepless, trying to be silent at night, and not trying to wake anybody up. The bass played by Juanita Carvajal towards the end, plus the bongos from Alex, let the song morph from a nocturnal adult-contemporary situation into a more tropical one.

LA HEREDERA

(The heiress)

Black, Blue, Yellow, Red

This is for the hypersensitive emotional dance floor moved by a powerful sound system. Under the evening sky of any city in 2026, trying to escape the alienation of numbing commodities enforced by the leaders of the doomsday tech industry, 3 nocturnal creatures set out to discover new ways of intimacy on top of a postmodern electrifying disco beat and melancholy driven chords that struck your chest in a way the AI slop never will. Two main voices of the Latin American underground, IARAHEI (Santiago de Chile) and Camille Mandoki (Mexico City), join in the adventure to create the song. IARAHEI starts off with her unique flow, between talking and singing, me mirroring her story, an encounter and a separation, the idea of love, based on total freedom, is not for everyone! Both IARAHEI and me gazing at Camille Mandoki, like a supernatural phenomenon between the stars over a sleepless city, her celestial voice representing the mysteries of love.

In the quest for the perfect sound, I approached synth wizard Etienne Jaumet. Sofisticated sound engineering, powered by the magic of producer Matt Karmil, meets inspirational emotionality in this work of optimist utopian science fiction for a better future.

AGUA QUE CORRE ft Girl Ultra

(Running Water)

Red, Yellow

Warm, humid, summer night

When I choose who to work with, I need to to admire them for their artistry and feel some connection of vibes and values, and also I need them to be people it is fun to work and to create with. This absolutely applies to me wanting to tor with Mariana as we immediately get in a fun play of improvising and eating, writing and inventing, like children on a playground. In this song it was very clear right from the start that we wanted to talk about sensual intimacy in a playful way that

AVESTRUZ EN VERACRUZ

(An ostrich in Veracruz)

Tropical rainfalls

All colors, much green, but the green of the cloud forest, not the green of lasers.

A long legged male ostrich finds himself in a sub tropical forest while the whole planet seems to slowly fall apart. There’s no way to hide the head in the sand here because there is no sand. This new situation and being in a completely new environment makes the ostrich encounter all demons he tried to avoid in a more evasive moment of his life. He suffers but he also gets excited as he gets into an emotional rollercoaster that also means a steep learning curve. Some distorted guitars here are played by Rafael Cohen, but also some sounds that seem to come from a guitar maybe are the sounds that a local bird performs, the Oropendola Moctezuma. When I recorded this track my cat Sanji was climbing on my stuff in the studio, I kept that original recording and you can still hear me say in Spanish “Ay, Sanji, will you leave alone or not? I can’t record like this” but then I tell him to stay.

ANENOA PT1

Chilly Summer night

Black, Red, Orange, Yellow

In the pandemic, Camille Mandoki, Carlos “Aye Aye” Reinoso and me were stranded in the cloud forest of Veracruz in Mexico. It is there where we created a series of videos called “2031 – Television del Futuro para la gente del pasado “ (2031 – television from the future for the people of the past) It was a playful and psychedelic series of shows recorded in the forest, in which we pretended to be streaming from a better future. In it for instance, we created the top 10 music charts from the future, in which we created imaginary bands and created sounds of how music could or would sound in a better society, and invented stories around it. One of these songs I composed was an early version of “Anenoa” and already carried that name. In this fiction, performed by a band called “Las Saltarinas”. That song stayed with me and made its way on the album, and even became the title track.

I thought I invented the word to later find out it already had its meaning in Malgassi (Madagascar – Indian Ocean) and in Maori, in the Pacific Ocean – in one place meaning something like “right now” and the concept of “listening” in the latter.

THE BEAT

Gold, Blue, Red, Orange

Cold in the shadow, hot in the sun

This is a jacking “educational dance” track, built on the feeling of underground house music dance floors, introducing all the most popular drum sounds in dance music, from hi hat to tom, from kick to clap, I introduce the sounds we hear each night in a club, in a studio, in traffic, on the street and on headphones, while moving our bodies. I describe how my friend DJ Snoopy from Helsinki, also known as “Katerina” creates beats in her studio “from 5 to 5”, dropping one beat after another. At some point I ask the DJ what is wrong with her, and I realize that she doesn’t just crave for beats and a bass line, but also a melody! Here I start playing the keyboards and interacting with Etienne Jaumet (from Zombie Zombie), who plays crazy effected Saxophone lines on top of the bouncing rhythms.

For the video, we join forces with Jani Dueñas from 31 minutos (a Muppet series from Chile that is very popular throughout Latin America) to create the Aguayo Muppet to explain to other Muppets what a beat is (Aguayosplaining).

“The Beat” is a tribute to free public education and its naiveness and joyfulness. In a way, this is a song for children that adults can also enjoy.

ANENOA PT1

Chilly Summer night

Black, Red, Orange, Yellow

In the pandemic, Camille Mandoki, Carlos “Aye Aye” Reinoso and me were stranded in the cloud forest of Veracruz in Mexico. It is there where we created a series of videos called “2031 – Television del Futuro para la gente del pasado “ (2031 – television from the future for the people of the past) It was a playful and psychedelic series of shows recorded in the forest, in which we pretended to be streaming from a better future. In it for instance, we created the top 10 music charts from the future, in which we created imaginary bands and created sounds of how music could or would sound in a better society, and invented stories around it. One of these songs I composed was an early version of “Anenoa” and already carried that name. In this fiction, performed by a band called “Las Saltarinas”. That song stayed with me and made its way on the album, and even became the title track.

I thought I invented the word to later find out it already had its meaning in Malgassi (Madagascar – Indian Ocean) and in Maori, in the Pacific Ocean – in one place meaning something like “right now” and the concept of “listening” in the latter.

THE BEAT

Gold, Blue, Red, Orange

Cold in the shadow, hot in the sun

This is a jacking “educational dance” track, built on the feeling of underground house music dance floors, introducing all the most popular drum sounds in dance music, from hi hat to tom, from kick to clap, I introduce the sounds we hear each night in a club, in a studio, in traffic, on the street and on headphones, while moving our bodies. I describe how my friend DJ Snoopy from Helsinki, also known as “Katerina” creates beats in her studio “from 5 to 5”, dropping one beat after another. At some point I ask the DJ what is wrong with her, and I realize that she doesn’t just crave for beats and a bass line, but also a melody! Here I start playing the keyboards and to interact with Etienne Jaumet (from Zombie Zombie) who plays crazy effected Saxophone lines on top of the bouncing rhythms.

For the video we join forces with Jani Dueñas from 31 minutos (a Muppet series from Chile that is very popular throughout Latin America) to create the Aguayo Muppet to explain other Muppets what a beat is (Aguayosplaining).

“The Beat” is a tribute to free public education and its naiveness and joyfulness. In a way, this is a song for children that adults also can enjoy.

CUANDO YA NO ESTÉ DE MODA

(When it won’t be fashionable anymore)

Black, Red, Petrol

Foggy, Full moon night

This song is about friendship in changing times, and about the beauty of intimate confessions and growing between friends, the anger, the fighting, misunderstandings but also the recovery of connection, and the learning processes. Sometimes somebody wants to communicate to you and just because they don’t do it in the way you would expect it it doesn’t reach you. You haven’t listened actively enough, you haven’t paused your own insights and reflections to really listen. This song is very music about letting know somebody that you’re there, open, in silences , for once, listening.

ANENOA pt 2 (ft. Daudi Matsiko, Barbie Williams)

Black, Red, Orange, Yellow

Chilly Summer night

I love everything that Daudi Matsiko does, please listen to his music. In our first live show we did of the record he couldn’t be there so we projected his face onto a circular sphere from where he’d be singing as if he was a man in the moon. Barbie, Sabina Odone and me would look up to him in the night sky and we would do the backing vocals while looking up to him from different corners of the setting. Once he’d be finished singing his story we’d lay down between the listeners and sing to each other. We layer our voices, I wanted Barbie’s choir to sound like sirens out of a 50ies movie, somehow otherworldly.

Siding our friend.

Anenoa is out now.