Additional Information
Speculative futures will protect us by opening space for imagination where the present feels increasingly constrained. In Matias Aguayo’s work, dancing becomes more than celebration; it operates as a form of resistance and collective survival. Across clubs, public spaces, and unexpected contexts, rhythm becomes a way of reorganizing how people meet and listen to one another. In this conversation, he reflects on freedom, counterculture, and the need to keep movement alive as a response to a world shaped by acceleration and control.
PAN M 360 : Before we started recording, you were saying you’re in Porto right now?
Matias Aguayo: Yes, I’m in Porto where I did a show involving dancers and other musicians presenting the album (Anenao), which was released on Friday.
I’ve been on an extremely busy schedule, but also very happy to finally share this music and live with it. Releasing an album is kind of half of the project, and the other half is to let the music live, travel around, show it to people, sell the record, etc. So I’m very excited.
PAN M 360: That’s awesome. As you said, embodying the music through performance is definitely part of the process.
I’m also thinking about your upcoming set at SAT’s 30th anniversary. SAT is a space that sits at the intersection of art, technology, and community. You’ve just mentioned working with dancers, voices, and other forms of performance beyond electronic music. How do you see your work fitting into that conversation?
Matias Aguayo: I see it absolutely fitting, especially because it’s such a diverse space in its expressions.
I come from electronic dance music, but for me it was always important to have these intersections with other entities of society and not be closed within this rather conservative environment of dance music. Whether it’s street parties in Mexico City, events involving dancers and local communities, music for theatre plays, or working with inmates, I find the most inspiration in these intersectional points where one abandons the format that is expected from you.
It’s also an opportunity for me to come back and interact with the Montreal audience, which has been something that spans a few decades now. I haven’t been there in a while, so for me it’s a re-encounter with a city and an environment that I appreciate a lot.
PAN M 360: You mentioned the conventional electronic dance music scene. What do you mean by “conventional,” and how do you move outside of that framework?
Matias Aguayo: I think it’s quite natural in the sense that I seek inspiration and exciting moments, and I don’t find them so much in formats where it is already clear what is expected from you. Abandoning the booth, grabbing the microphone, going into the audience and interacting is very important to me. I find that contexts that are not restricted toward one direction, or where the micro-discourse of a scene is not so important, force you to open up to other perceptions of what you do. That’s always inspiring. It’s also more challenging, and it’s more fun for me.
Sometimes it’s simply about creating conditions in which the surprise effect is practically inevitable. Nowadays, electronic dance music has become very predictable and very focused on specific genres and tags. Corporate social media, streaming services, and algorithms drive you towards that. It’s not an environment that really encourages the intersectional, the weird, or the things that are not so easily definable.
PAN M 360 : When I was reading about the BoomBox parties, I was struck by how they seemed to create space for unexpected encounters and new directions in music. Could you tell me a bit more about that experience?
Matias Aguayo: BoomBox spans a long time ago now. Those were parties we were doing especially in Argentina and Chile, and at some point in Colombia, where we played all kinds of music. The music that emerged from there was very groove-oriented, vocal-heavy and direct.
Nowadays, in Mexico City, I’m participating very much in La Nueva Red de Bailadores, a collective devoted to making free parties in public spaces. These parties are some of the most diverse parties I’ve seen. The DJs come from very different backgrounds, often from the neighborhoods where we go. You can hear all kinds of musical styles. We also don’t announce who’s playing, so nobody really knows who’s behind the decks.
For me, that creates very special situations. It’s inspiring because it encourages you to try different things. When I make music, including the music for this album, I like to test tracks before they’re finished. I like to play them out, see the reactions, and enter into a dialogue with the spaces where I’m playing.
The studio can be very introspective, but it always has a dialogue with the outside. That’s very important for me. Not so much the idea of the lonely poet screaming in his book, but more the person who moves around and confronts different situations. For me, that’s also a little bit the essence of the DJ. Being in a context, knowing what to play, knowing how to react, reading the audience, and establishing a dialogue.
PAN M 360 : You mentioned La Nueva Red de Bailadores. Looking at electronic music today, which has become increasingly globalized and digitalized, it feels like there are still these underground spaces that create room for other ways of gathering and listening. What aspects of that culture do you think are the most important to preserve?
Matias Aguayo: I think it’s very difficult to answer in some way because the times are changing so rapidly, and especially the developments that are about to come in the next years are completely unpredictable to us.
If somebody had told me ten years ago how the landscape of music, politics, and society would look today, I would have been shocked. So we don’t really know what’s about to come. What we can do, and what I think is important, is to preserve the spirit of counterculture. To focus on imagining better possible ways of community and communitarianism, and also imagining better futures. If all the dystopias people told in the past have become true, maybe positive stories about the future can also become true if we imagine them.
Electronic music is only a reflection of something that is happening in society as a whole. If we see that the underground scene is struggling, or that middle-class artists and the independent music industry are disappearing, it’s not so different from seeing the corner shop replaced by a Starbucks. The interconnection between these things is super important. We shouldn’t forget that what happens in our scene is related to what happens in society.
For me, that means resistance against fascism, basically.
PAN M 360 : I’ve seen that you’ve collaborated with artists from many different musical and cultural backgrounds throughout your career. I imagine there must be something to learn from those encounters, not only as a musician, but also as a listener. Are there collaborations or moments that particularly changed the way you listen to others?
Matias Aguayo: On the one hand, if I choose to work with people, it’s usually because I think we share similar values, because they’re good at what they do, and because it’s fun to work together. But when I think about listening and opening up to others, one experience comes to mind.
It happened at the Centre Pénitentiaire de Meaux during the pandemic. We were celebrating after a rehearsal and I felt very much the need to play music and make people dance because there was a festive mood in the room. Many of the inmates were of Algerian descent, and I had some Rai music from the 1980s on my computer. We talked about it together, whether it would be cool to play this song, and everybody agreed. So I played it.
Suddenly everybody started dancing. Everybody knew the lyrics. Even from the cells you could hear people joining in because there was suddenly this little party happening in a place that isn’t very festive at all. One of the inmates came to me and told me, “This is the first time I’m dancing with friends in ten years.” It was emotionally very touching.
But it also made me realize something. I thought, okay, this is actually the work. Bringing a song at the right moment to the right place. In this case, bringing festivity into a place that isn’t very festive. Moments like that inspire me a lot.
Songs like Sentimientos Encontrados on Anénoa, or El Internet, are also inspired by talking to people on the dance floor in these public-space parties in Mexico. The idea of speaking over the track and delivering content in a poetic but concrete way comes directly from having your ear on the dance floor and on the moment we’re passing through.
PAN M 360 : That’s beautiful. I watched the music video for El Internet, and what struck me was how central the voice is, not only as a musical element, but almost as a theatrical presence. Listening to Anenoa, it really feels like the voice becomes the central instrument.
Thinking about this new record in relation to Support Alien Invasion, how do you feel you’ve evolved between those two albums?
Matias Aguayo: I think they’re very much reflections of different moments.
Support Alien Invasion was kind of a desperate record. It was 2019, and I had the feeling that a lot of things were about to happen that were not so cool. It was almost a call: okay, please, somebody from outside come help us. Let’s try a new communication. That’s also why the album is instrumental, although there are elements that remind you of vocals in the communicative or melodic sense.
It was an important statement for me at that moment.
Anenoa feels different. I took my time with it. It works in its own timeframe and space. Whereas Support Alien Invasion was almost like a warning, Anénoa feels more open. I don’t want to say the previous record was dystopian, but it was certainly darker and more alienistic. And it’s true that in Anenoa there’s a strong sense of joy and freedom.
PAN M 360: There’s a real sense of joy throughout the album, and in today’s cultural climate that almost feels like a political gesture in itself.
Matias Aguayo: Yes, absolutely.
Freedom is a word that has been very much co-opted by the political right and deprived of a lot of its meaning. But I try to live musical freedom. If you ask me what I would like to preserve, it’s definitely that: a deeper meaning of freedom.
And dancing is part of it. The joy that dancing creates is a regeneration of energy that one needs in every process of resistance. It’s an answer to dystopian times. A lot of music right now is very hard and very dark. For me, it often feels like an amplification of the things we’re already going through rather than an answer to them. I think of minimalism in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It wasn’t an amplification of information overload; it was a response to it. Answering anxiety with more anxiety doesn’t really work for me.
PAN M 360: It’s been quite a while since you’ve performed in Montreal. What can audiences expect from your set at SAT’s anniversary?
Matias Aguayo: It’s been quite a while, I think maybe 2018 or something, almost ten years ago.
I always try to arrive early at gigs, catch a bit of the vibe, see what people seem open to, and what not. Then I decide very much at the last minute what I will play.
I’ll obviously play things from the record, but also other stuff. I can only decide in the moment, really. So I guess it will be a surprise.
PAN M 360: And my last question… Do you have any rituals before going on stage? Something that helps you get into the right state?
Matias Aguayo: I stretch a little bit, and I change clothes shortly before playing. I like that moment of changing outfits because it feels like I’m getting into the zone of a performance.
It’s more of an inner thing. I don’t really have a fixed ritual that I follow every time, but maybe that’s it. Just being a bit grounded, and then going in.
