The Mess is a new column from journalist Richard Villegas, who has been reporting on new, exciting sounds flourishing in the Latin American underground for nearly a decade. As the host of the Songmess Podcast, his travels have intersected with fresh sounds, scene legends, ancestral traditions, and the socio-political contexts that influence your favorite artists. The Mess is about new trends and problematic faves whilst asking hard questions and shaking the table.
We’re going there. We’re talking about it. Even if things get a little messy.
In August, somewhere in downtown Santiago de Chile, I found myself in the basement of a century-old palace for an emo and hardcore showcase put on by the label Unisono Records. In the dimly lit cavern, I caught blistering sets from bands La Estrategia del Caracol and Cámara Chilena de la Destrucción — the latter reminiscent of American emo-pop icons Jimmy Eat World — while the crowd was peppered with local indie rock heroes, like Niños del Cerro and Asia Menor. The show’s fever pitch came when Destruyendo Autos played their popular song “Beyblade,” prompting fans to open a mosh pit. But instead of slamming into each other, they produced a small plastic rink and began dueling using the ubiquitous battle toys.
Later, I sauntered to another showcase featuring an eclectic lineup including the lo-fi grunge band Monitos Chinos and ethereal alt-pop chanteuse Idea Blanco. Warming up the crowd was a DJ called aguaderosas, who warped EDM throwbacks and Javiera Mena classics over ferocious digicore. Behind her, a large LED screen displayed an ongoing Mario Sports tournament, while from the audience buzzy Argentine producer Heartgaze swung a controller to demolish each new snowboarding challenge. The night was odd and hilarious, making me feel ancient yet excited about how a new generation is experiencing live music, finding common ground over internet brainrot and hunger for human connection rather than strict musical categories.
“We’re all artists exploring niches we learned about virtually,” says Heartgaze, whose glitchy, emo production style has become a favorite of Chilean trap and reggaeton stars Akriila, Young Cister, Gianluca, and Princesa Alba. Describing the zeitgeist’s creative free-for-all as “freaky, Latino, non-binary internet music,” the outrageous sequence of descriptors captures the mutant flux of Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z as nourished by videogame lingo and dystopian memes.
Platforms like TikTok, Roblox, Rate Your Music, and high-profile Discord streams are young people’s new trusted sources of musical influence. Meanwhile, Stiffy & AgusFortnite2008’s (aka Swaggerboyz) mix of free YouTube beats and drill flows, the bachata-jerk of NMNL, and the vaporwave indebted perreo and plugg of Asra3 and Mikeanyway, suggest that humor and ear-splitting production are the sonic tentpoles of our convulsive present.
“Electronic music is just a vessel of expression to create whatever we want,” adds Heartgaze. “The Swaggerboys put shoegaze on their 40 MINUTOS de TEMAS FILTRADOS tape. [The medium] doesn’t matter anymore, and part of that is born from our experience on the internet.”
Heartgaze’s 2023 debut LP Casi Ángeles <3 blurred the lines between hyperpop, R&B, and drum&bass, experimental waters charted by the likes of Jean Dawson, Arca, Jane Remover, and SOPHIE. Their fingerprints are also traceable in the kaleidoscopic cool of Ralphie Choo and Rusowsky, in Spain, and the saturated crooning of Latin Mafia in Mexico, confirming the internet’s promise as an open source of information and inspiration. Heartgaze’s tight collaborative relationship with Akriila culminated last year with her breakthrough LP, Epistolares, where blenderific hybrids of trap, reggaeton, and SoundCloud chirping anointed him one of the hottest young producers in South America. His forthcoming sophomore LP, Tutorial de Como Creer, contrasts downtrodden digital introspection with club thumpers and tropical bursts that dovetail into another irreverent electronic music wave: Latincore.
“Our whole thing with bootlegs and edits, deconstructed and reconstructed fashion, and interpreting Latinidad through Anglosaxon vocabulary, is rooted in aesthetics and motifs that try to express something greater,” says Colombian producer CRRDR, co-founder of the irreverent label MUAKK. On his new album, Latincore Legend, out Oct. 17, Dominican colmadones meet English grime clubs for the unbridled swing of “Te Gusta Mi Bachata,” while the track “Luigi Mangione” melds dembow, geopolitical discourse, and Chilango slang by way of rapper Chzter into a whirlpool of ass-throwing madness.
“Latincore doesn’t even need to be music,” suggests an amused CRRDR. “It can be someone in the city selling candy, or tangled electrical wires on the street. We fuse references from memes and internet culture, political satire, and super fast music like donk, nightcore, and guracha, adding lots of chipmunk voices.”
CRRDR is among Latincore’s best-known exponents, injecting roadrunner beats into thrilling thumpers from MJ Nebreda and Nathy Peluso. He launched MUAKK in 2022 alongside production cohorts 2AT, Aleroj, and Nacidmiento, emerging from a thriving Colombian electronic underground where fellow labels like TraTraTrax and Paria Records foster club bedlam and question rules of class and cultural ownership. Through compilations and constant cross-pollination, MUAKK’s ranks swelled to include club agitators Isablu, Nixss, Genosidra, and Yajaira La Beyaca – the latter two collaborating on one of the year’s raunchiest and most sonically adventurous club epics, CARACTER ANAL.
However, much of this noisy debauchery is laced with a generation’s underlying loneliness. Kids who came of age during the pandemic’s apocalyptic isolation were left with few tools for interpersonal connection other than the electronic devices flashing in their hands since birth. The desolation of perpetually online youth is manifest in nihilistic records from Colombia’s Sa!koro, Spain’s Rojuu, Argentina’s Saramalacara, Chile’s LonelyFriendly, and Venezuela’s weed420, oscillating between trap, reggaeton, techno, and ambient sound design that reflects a visceral melange of anger and sadness. In separate conversations, both the Swaggerboyz and the Chilean emo band Estoy Bien told me that mosh pits have become crucial spaces of catharsis as well as physical connection, and the same logic applies to the dance realm.
“We’re all artists exploring niches we learned about virtually… Electronic music is just a vessel of expression to create whatever we want.”
“I wasn’t very hopeful about my music at first, but I’ve realized there are people who need these types of songs,” says rising Paraguayan singer 411y, whose recent performance at Asunción’s Festival Pop Bruto sparked waves of teenage pandemonium. Her new album, KENOPSIA, is a prime example of the crossover potential of this jagged digital scene, echoing Pinkpantheress on her U.K. garage namesake “Pantera Rosa” and getting racy on the Six Sex-flavored “Chapamos en el VIP.” 411y’s strobing sweetness is mirrored by the hyper-R&B of Guatemala’s aLex vs aLex and New York-based Dominicana Jaswiry, further outlining a community-based antidote to solitude.
“I go to events and I’m surprised that someone always comes up to say hi and talk about my songs,” reflects 411y. “I wondered if it was because Paraguay is so small, but no, there are people looking for this sound and for artists taking chances to create something new and different. I’m 24, but there are 16-year-olds that love my album, and that’s precisely what it’s for. To break with the idea that nothing is happening in Paraguay, or that if you dress differently, people are going to look at you weird. It’s to let go of all that fear.”
At a time when war, hatred, and AI fakery cross our line of sight at the swipe of an Instagram story, it’s inspiring to see young people evolving, surviving, and ultimately finding comfort in each other, even if uncs like myself can’t always relate to their methods. Last year, my colleague Agustín Wicki, of the essential Argentine media site Lúcuma, put me onto the Swaggerboyz’s paradigm-shattering Murió La Música LP, saying, “If you don’t like it, it’s ok. [The album] is designed for you not to like it.” I loved it; blown out audio and sacrilegious barbs towards sanctified rap and rock icons, and all. But the album’s lasting sentiment comes on “COF COF,” when DJ Smokey announces, “Murió la música, nació la música 2.0.” Not only does the uproarious adlib skewer the virulent rocker dogwhistle for dunking on música urbana, it also exposes people who chose to stay behind, while the Swaggerboyz — and other artists of their ilk — are forging the future.
It’s as simple as that. The past is dead; get with the new shit or go the way of the dinosaurs.
