From AAAA to Murcof, Here's the Six Best Sets We Caught at MUTEK Mexico 2016

This year's MUTEK MX once again attracted a diverse range of top international talent, including Richie Hawtin, The Field, μ-Ziq, Holly Herndon, and others, but its organizers also paid tribute to the exciting electronic scene that has been slowly gathering steam over the past decade in Mexico itself. Started in 2003, the music festival was the first MUTEK to be held outside of Montreal, and its success has lead to worldwide events in Spain, Japan, and elsewhere.

The 2016 edition took place Oct. 18-23 in various new galleries and historic venues—many of them sold-out affairs—across Mexico City, or as the locals call it, "D.F." (short for Distrito Federal). From minimal techno veteran Murcof, to rising producers such as AAAA and Me & Myself, here's the six best performances we saw by Mexican artists over the course of the week.

Gabo Barranco, aka AAAA, is an emerging producer from Mexico City who blends second wave acid techno with even darker sounds, reflected through the prism of a gritty urban core. This was his second time at MUTEK, having previously played a Boiler Room event with acid revivalist and mentor Tin Man in 2015, and he held the stage confidently. Drawing on influences including UK grime and banging Berghain techno, his early set at the historic Casino Metropolitano—a stunning marble and wood-finished building in the heart of the city—focussed less on the often gnarly side of his work, and more on the playful side.

Live modular sets can often be overly introspective and technical, coming off as a little dry, but that wasn't the case with D.F. residents Alias616. Their dance-oriented performance was one of the highlights of the second official night of MUTEK MX, held at Casino Metropolitano. Although their sound palette would have pleased gear nerds, the duo of ERREOPEO (aka Rodrigo de León) and Trasto (aka Luis Berrón) played driving beats with plenty of 80s references and little noodling, that had the audience moving in no time.

Hailing from the northern city of Tijuana, and inspired by filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr, pianist and sound artist Gaspar Peralta's work treads the line between free improvisation and contemporary classical composition. His set on the rooftop room of Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos, a photography exhibition space and event venue in an industrial part of the city, was stunning, even managing to draw a temporary hush from the chatty crowd. Weaving together delicate ambience and lush textures, Peralta stood hunched over his gear bathed in blue light, filling the intimate space with vibraphone-like Rhodes sounds. Although his music may seem too colourful and delicate to recall the brooding violence of Tarr's 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies for example, his slow-moving performance evoked the best of Eastern European long form cinema by allowing plenty of natural breathing room and suggestions of narrative.

Taking his alias Líneas de Nazca from a series of ancient geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert of southern Peru, Mexico City's Luca Ortega's music is fittingly mysterious and ominous. His Saturday night set at Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos filled the warehouse-like downstairs room with a jarring and immersive energy, the bespectacled producer holding an intense expression on his face as he navigated his equipment, punctuating ambient drones with grinding, metallic noise spikes and barely audible vocal snippets from movies. The first part of the set managed to hang precariously on the balance between menacing and inviting, with Ortega taking a good half hour to build seamlessly into a fun, danceable techno workout that set the bar high for the rest of the evening.

Me & Myself is the moniker of Alfredo Ramírez, an up-and-coming D.F. producer and member of electronic duo And the End of Everything, who also played this year's MUTEK Montreal. For his opening night set at Casino Metropolitano, he built a subtly layered trance reminiscent of The Field, with heavily cinematic orchestral elements, glitchy, UK bass-style production and chopped vocal snippets. Treading the line between washes of hypnotic sound and fractured beats, the result was warm, engaging, and thought-provoking all at the same time.

Barcelona-based Fernando Corona was the first Mexican artist to perform at MUTEK Montreal in 2002, making him an unofficial ambassador of sorts between the two festivals. While the minimal techno veteran performed twice this year, including once as part of a 3D sound installation with Intorno Labs (also of Barcelona), his Friday night appearance in Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos' packed-to-the-gills rooftop room was a clear standout of the week. Dressed entirely in black and half-submerged in red stage lights, his tense, drone-filled set made full use of the sound system's bass capabilities, beginning with a teasingly slow build heavy on improvisation, before slowly rising to euphoric peaks.

Vincent Pollard is on Twitter.