Experimental rock always gets the short end of the stick. Sometimes defenestrated for being “impenetrable”, sometimes burned at the stake for being “pretentious” and most of the time ignored, left alone in a corner with Pluto.

In the words of a certain American writer: “it never got too weird for me.” Especially when the final product is paired with a comic book that takes inspiration from the sights and sounds described succinctly in the music.

Bonetti‘s Dos Mescal para vamanos is an interesting trip told in an art rock narrative: three short instrumentals peppered with found sounds and bits of spoken word, three songs that noodle enough to approach a math rock asymptote.

The subject? Travels, trips and journeys. The style? Weird, but when you are traveling through the strange countries of Latin America (well, they are strange!) you find the weirdest of sights and sounds. ‘It’s all stopped and we’re not gonna get home’ captures the busy cacophony experienced in any plaza of México. You can even imagine wads of corn dough being fried in suspect tallow and burnt oil. ‘London Pleasures’, a song that incorporates a fire bell as an encompassing swell, comes as an stream of consciousness telling of a trip through Oaxaca, with the sights of people with sawn off shotguns, unpaved roads and people who prefer Orwell over Castro.

Fair enough. ‘Bish on’ stems from a conversation and segues into the very sexy ‘Oaxaca’, a seedy track that swirls around a saxophone snakecharming its way into our consciousness. If Tom Waits went backpacking, uh, he wouldn’t have made this but surely would’ve run into the Bonetti people and done a couple of drinks.

Don’t get me wrong: the seediness of ‘Oaxaca’ is pitch perfect, as the roads in certain parts of Latin America can be deadlier than the seediest dive bar a noir writer can conjure. The sax still resonates when an eerie rendition of ‘Ave Maria’ overtakes track #5, ‘Seen his arse’. The trip seems to be taking a turn for the worse, could this be the end?

‘Flying to Bogotá’ is the breezier track in Dos Mescal para vamanos. Maybe a happy ending was finally achieved. Heck, it’s impossible to decide what constitutes a happy ending, but it’s easy (and usually correct) to assume that every trip changes you. Whatever changed Loic Tuckey during his trips into rougher parts of Latin America left a mark. Then he made a plaster cast out of it, molded a frantic EP out of it and sampled the smashing of said mold. Artistic and engaging. Sounds like a good trip, in the end.

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Words: Sam J. Valdés López