Bloodspill seems almost endemic to Mexican history – tens of thousands of human sacrifices by the Aztecs, the rapacious conquistadors and the Spanish Inquisition, which tortured and finished off its last victims in 1820, long after its abolition in Europe. The macabre but revered Santa Muerte and annual Day of the Dead festivities, and the brutal drug cartels savaging the border towns on the nightly newscast.
Miguel Pérez lives in Cuidad Juárez, just south of El Paso, Texas, where the violence is so ubiquitous and grim that it is said to have changed the ways its nearly one-and-a-half million residents go about their daily lives. He plays his guitar raw, as a clanging catharsis, an exorcism, a signal light of righteous outrage. It doesn’t squall and spray feedback at the listener, but rather dredges up its pure “guitarness” as a sonic incantation against the prevailing dark. And for an artist working with such a limited palette, the skull mask Pérez dons on Sahumerio has many faces, from sophisticated, earthen lament to a guitar that sounds strung with chain link, to elevating salutation and closing, distantly howling ambient.
The artistry that goes into lovingly packaging each Striate Cortex edition reaches new heights with Sahumerio, the tiny disc tucked inside a handmade paper pocket, stiff and almost broad enough to stand on its own like paper-mache, tied closed with string, and inside three sticks of incense (the title refers to Aztec air-smudging purification). Sound, sight, touch, smell, a delight for nearly all the senses. No, I’m not going to taste it though yes, it does actually look appetising.
Stephen Fruitman
