Intervista agli Hello Mexico

First question: Who are Hello Mexico? Introduce yourself to your Italian friends  

 We are bunch of guys from London/ Iceland who started writing music a few years back and have continued to do so. We have had a few member changes since we started back and now we are getting ready to release our new EP.

Who are your influences, and why?

Our influences come from everywhere, as we all have different backgrounds and tastes. The most obvious would be that one of our members is Icelandic which adds a fundamental factor to our sound. We have been brought up on Rock music and as we have grown up we expanded our tastes. From a Rock band perspective we have always been influenced by artists such as Thrice, who have kept their integrity throughout every release and have managed to evolve their sound. Artists such as Olafur Arnalds, Sigur Ros are also inspirations to us as they are able to evoke emotion through simplicity. We like to think we have a good grasp of the best parts of different musical genres and combine them musically to our sound. Our music tastes are constantly changing and i think thats a good thing as it keeps us on our toes and helps us write fresh ideas. Currently, we have been introducing more electronic sounds in our music, incorporating bass and synth tones to help our live setup. We recently just added a new drummer who has brought a whole new vibe to our playing which means we can have the option of going complex with the drums or hold back in places. Artists such as Bonobo, Active child and Evenings have inspired us to jam loops and take us further out of our comfort zone from being just a ‘Rock’ band.

You have done a cover of Duality. how did you get the idea of doing a cover of a song from a musical genre completely different from yours?

  We were meaning to record a cover song for quite some time now and we came up with a few ideas such as Phil Collins, The Smiths and even Take That but we settled for Slipknots – ‘Duality’. We have grown up on heavier music and most of us love Slipknot so we thought it would be quite the controversial song to cover as we sound nothing like them at all. We ended up recording it with our good friend Nick Scholey up in Scotland during a heavy night of drinking which made the whole experience even more surreal. The feedback we have received has been great, especially when die-hard Slipknot fans voice their approvals and disprovals, which is exactly the reason why we wanted to record the track.

Changing the subject, since our webzine also talks about movies and TV series, what are your favorites?

  I think we all can agree that ‘Breaking Bad’ is the best TV series that has been created and we cannot wait for the final 8 episodes to come out. There is a picture of Heisenberg up on the wall of Gulli and Nicks flat dedicated to the show. I also stumbled on Criminal Minds, which i absolutely love as it is based around profiling and tracking Serial Killers – my type of TV show. Gulli and I used to work together during the London Olympics and we managed to watch every season of 24 whilst we were working. Gulli also managed to get front row tickets to the Womens Water Polo tournament. (click here to watch him http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxou3aRpNqY)

Last question, what’s the future plan for Hello Mexico? 

 We are currently in the process of releasing our next EP which hopefully will be very soon. The tracks are being mixed and mastered right now which we are very excited about. It’s been a few years since we released our last self titled EP so it will be great to show what we have been working on. We have definitely progressed our sound even further and cannot wait to get this released and play some shows with these songs in our setlist

thank you for answering the questions and we’ll see you in Italy, right?

  Hopefully! Italy is beautiful and we would love to visit a few more cities and have a chance to perform our music there. I became addicted to arancinis when i was out there last so i need to eat more of those.