Panda Bear and Sonic Boom release Reset Mariachi

This week is the two-year anniversary of Panda Bear and Sonic Boom‘s excellent 2022 collaboration, Reset. Last year, the duo released Reset in Dub, which offered dub versions of those songs, and now a year later, they’re presenting those same songs in mariachi versions. Their Reset Mariachi EP is out now via Domino, featuring recordings with Mexico City’s Mariachi 2000 de Cutberto. Hear it below.

Pete Kember, aka Sonic Boom, said in a statement:

“The final chapter in the Reset story.  

We had the idea to record with a Mexican mariachi party band going back to “Tropic of Cancer” from the Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper LP, but it was always just a pipe dream & circumstances never came together. 

Then last year, knowing we were shortly to head to Mexico for a show, we asked our Mexican friend & sound tech Oswaldo Terrones if he had contacts with any mariachi in Mexico. He did … and also with a studio specializing in mariachi recording. With that burning a hole in our imaginations we pulled together a six person team of three Mexican and three Spanish friends, here in Portugal and in Mexico City, and painstakingly translated two Reset songs, making sure to be true to the poetry, the Mexican Spanish, the rhymes and of course the rhythmic flow. 

In November ’23 we recorded them at Topetitud Studio in Coyoacan, Mexico City with additional arranging by Santiago & Patsi Mijare, with the mariachi playing the instruments, us playing the percussion, and all taking turns to sing. Our Spanish didn’t enable us to understand their animated chatting, but we were told afterwards that the mariachi loved the songs and were bemused by their simplicity and the apparent sleight of hand in their construction. It was a great day, and a joy to watch the mariachi enjoying the songs and taking them back home.“