In 2000, Tijuana was the city of the future. The rise of Nortec Collective and records by Fax and Murcof put it on the electronic music map, and Static Discos was a highlight among the continent’s independent labels.

At the turn of the millennium, Tijuana’s culture benefited from being one of the busiest border crossing in the world, where rock bands from the US passed through, while locals travelled in the other direction into San Diego to see concerts, or buy synthesizers and records that took much longer to reach Mexico City and the rest of the country.

The aim of Static Discos was to release electronic music from the sovereign state of Baja California. Together with Murcof in Ensenada and Fax in Mexicali, Ejival set up the label in the style of Warp or Mille Plateaux, but in Tijuana. Its latest release was in October 2024, making a total of 128 releases in 23 years. The border became more difficult to cross in 2001, following the 11 September terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, but the label’s work continued from Tijuana in different directions, musically, aesthetically and geographically.

Fax
“Mir2”
From Resonancia
(Static Discos) 2002

Rubén A Tamayo is the sleeve art designer for the Static Discos label, with a portfolio of around 130 releases. As Fax, he also made the label’s first release. “Resonancia was the first record we made at Static Discos,” he recalls. “My memories are like it was last month. I had such a good time; I don’t feel like 23 years had passed.”

Pepito
“Julio”
From Everything Changes
(Static Discos) 2004

Pepito is José Márquez and Ana Machado. Though of Cuban and Mexican origins respectively, the members of Pepito are based in San Francisco. Pepito makes dance punk with English and Spanish lyrics: these are well crafted, optimistic songs with a pop sensibility.

Macario
“So Far, So Fast”
From My Own
(Static Discos) 2011

Macario is the alias of Mauricio Urbina. Macario started life as a fictional character developed for a hiphop show on a college radio station in Puerto Vallarta. The name of the project is also inspired by a character in the fairytale of the same name by novelist B Traven. My Own is his debut and first release for Static Discos. “As fast as this track wants to go, it kind of stops; it gets mired in melancholy – very much like Static Discos,” says label founder Ejival.

Kampion
“Flash”
From Acoxxpa
(Static Discos) 2014

Acoxxpa is Guillermo Guevara’s first album as Kampion, released in 2014, a decade after he started the project. “Flash” was the first single to be released from the album and is based on a radical recontextualisation of micro-samples of Mexican popular music that feels more akin to plunderphonics than to the referential use of samples more usually found in hiphop and house.

Microhm
“Stargazers”
From Eternal Night
(Static Discos) 2018

“This album is a kind of sound detox for me,” says Leslie García, also known as Microhm, referring to Eternal Night. “It was, in a way, an exercise in which I employed a lot of sonic influences as an homage to shoegaze, minimal, electronica, triphop and all those references that in one way or another marked my adolescence, my nightlife.”

Murcof & Fax
“Static Discos 100”
(Static Discos) 2019

Made to commemorate the 100th release on Static Discos, this single brings together the sounds of Fax and Murcof (co-founders of the label, along with Ejival). This 100 second track charts a compact ambient electronic journey.

Concepción Huerta
“Invasion”
From Personal Territories
(Static Discos) 2020

This album is the soundtrack to an imaginary film. Concepción Huerta, from Mexico City, comments that, “I am looking for a subliminal language, and I am saying something subliminal in terms of this denunciation of violence against women. In Mexico there is misogyny, violence, and femicide, so I wanted to reflect on this idea of invasion, which was also colonisation, imperialism.”

Aye-Aye
“Everything Popular Is Wrong”
From Everything Popular Is Wrong
(Static Discos) 2020

Aye-Aye, aka Carlos Reinoso, is the founder of Horrible Registros and half of seminal Chilean noise duo Mostro. “Everything popular is wrong from the point of view of how music has become homogeneous,” he says. “Everyone producing with the same programs, same tools, burying risk, prioritising the mainstream, showing the attitude of normalising the opinions of current music via streaming and algorithm... Almost no one has a life of their own anymore.”

Ismael Pinkler & Nicolás Bacal
“Senderos”
From Nocturnos
(Static Discos) 2024

Discussing Nocturnos, Ejival explains: "We seek to release records that have been through a process; a road travelled. The Pinkler/Bacal album was a very long process, it took about four years to record. [So much music is made] quickly ... so taking the time to do it is something of great value. You listen to the album and you feel how long it took to make it.”

Space Test Program
“Reunión En Catalhoyuk”
From Space Test Program
(Static Discos) 2025

Formed by Nancy Samara (vocals, drums, drum machine), Piaka Roela (guitar) and Tania Pomar (synthesizer, post-production), the Space Test Program project emerged organically from a shared love of experimentation. The self-titled EP is a collage of abstract sounds born of improvisation, for which each member brought their own perspective to the table. Ejival says: “I really like that randomness that the recording seems to have. You never know where the sounds are going to come from, and the intention is strangely in the air, very much in the spirit of CDMX [Mexico City], where this musical relationship was formed.”

Read Juan San Cristóbal Lizama’s full report on Tijuana's underground electronic music scene in The Wire 493. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital magazine library.