Calling all fans of Moz, mariachi and mash ups: Mexrrissey is coming to Auckland Arts Festival 2017.
 
Celebrating Mexico’s delightfully surprising obsession for all-things-Morrissey, Mexico City-based DJ and producer Camilo Lara (Mexican Institute of Sound) assembled Mexrrissey, a six-piece super-group of musical gunslingers from Mexico’s finest bands, paying homage to the iconic Smiths front-man.
 
In Mexico, Morrissey has always been considered somewhat of a prophet. His songs of love, loss and longing, with their powerful imagery and metaphors, have found a huge audience and resonated with generations of Mexicans.
 
Mexrrissey’s award-winning recipe takes the Sage of Salford’s back catalogue, adds a dash of The Smiths, translates it all into Spanish and presents it with lashings of Latin sparkle. 

Vibrant rhythms of ranchera, mariachi, danzón, mambo, norteño and cha cha cha reinvent the melodrama, sarcasm and dark humour of Morrissey’s anthems, producing a hot-mix that has audiences jumping, laughing, dancing wildly and shedding happy tears. 
 
The band has had an incredible trajectory from their first try-out show in Mexico City, April 2015. It was swiftly followed by a sold-out mainstage debut at the Barbican in The La Linea Festival in London, a UK tour (including an emotional sell-out Manchester gig) and triumphant shows at BAM in New York and The Regent in Los Angeles.
 
Live, the band performs as a seven-piece with a revolving and evolving line-up of the who’s who of the what’s what of the new Mexican music scene.
 
The first of the gang is Lara, the force inside Mexican Institute of Sound, who put the band together and provides vocals.
 
In Auckland he’ll be accompanied by Ceci Bastida (Tijuana No!) on keyboards/voice, Alex Gonzales on trumpet/vihuela (Twin Tones), Ricardo Najera on drums (Furland), Chetes Garza on guitar (Zurdok) and Jay de la Cueva on guitar/bass (Moderatto).
 
Andy Wood, Director of the La Linea Festival in London initially approached Lara with the idea to bring Mexrrissey together. Wood says, “I had a sense of the feeling for Morrissey in Mexico and the way that his music could connect with so much in Mexican music. It was time to return the love and Camilo was the man who could round up the right posse of dirty pretty things.
 
“I always thought that there were these invisible lines between what Morrissey and Manchester represents and what Mexico City and Mexican pop culture has. And if these are tiny coincidences, we’re making them a little bit bigger on this occasion with a concert of broken hearts and forgotten dreams.”
 
The band’s debut album, No Manchester, released in March 2016, was recorded in Mexico DF and Tucson Arizona. The album was produced by Camilo Lara with arrangements by Lara and Sergio Mendoza. The album was mixed by Jack Lahana, winner of multiple Grammys for his work with Phoenix and Daft Punk.
 
Mexrrissey

Thursday March 16th: Spiegeltent, Festival Garden, Aotea Square, Auckland

Friday March 17th: Spiegeltent, Festival Garden, Aotea Square, Auckland

Tickets via Ticketmaster