Mexico City based Male-Female duo CASUAL SX is formed by N·A aka Nina Alanis & Alex Galvan. For them making music is about giving. Their sound oscillates between house & techno adding Latin vibes, organic instruments and mixing classics with contempo. The duo is about to release their latest original production, their own house version of the all-time classic ‘Besame Mucho’. We caught up with them to chat about their history, musical vision and upcoming song.
WWD: Hi guys, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. Can you let us know where are you now and what are you up to?
Thanks for inviting us. Right now it’s 12 o’clock and just woke up with this interview in my WhatsApp, having a cup of coffee in Mexico City in our apartment. We are not morning people (laughs), and we’ve just received the good news that we are playing at a POP-UP party with the XDM Records Crew in the Mexico City subway.
WWD: Can you give us some insight on how you got involved with music?
From both sides, our lives have been surrounded by music, so when we got together we started to create beats since day one.
WWD: Moving to more recent stuff, how did you guys meet and when did you decide to work together?
We know each other from a long time ago, since the College days, but we connected in 2013 when Alex was playing in Monterrey. We had some mezcales and started to get along.
Long story short, on June 7th, 2014 we moved to Mexico City. We were both DJing individually in the country circuit, and one night as we were chilling at home we decided to create CASUAL SX. We started brainstorm to define our musical identity.
WWD: Nice. So you’re about to release a very special EP titled ‘Besame Mucho’ on XDM Records. Where did the idea come from to recreate this timeless classic?
It all started on September 15th, 2017. It was almost Mexico’s Independence Day. Nina was walking through the subway listening to Mexican Classics and came back home excited with the idea of recreating ‘Besame Mucho’, 5 minutes later we were in the studio singing and dancing the song out loud!
WWD: Can you elaborate on the production process? Location? Equipment? And Team involved?
The process was 1 year to finish the project, all done in Mexico City.
First we produced the base of the track with drums, bass & percussions. Then we had the idea to do trumpets instead of vocals, so we invited to our studio our talented friend Alex Guardiola, a well-known trumpeter from Cuba to record the melodies.
As for the production process, we had the support and feedback of great friends as Broz Rdz, Roderic and Koko who helped us with the last details of mixing and mastering.
WWD: We would love to see you guys play. Is there a tour tied to the release?
Yes! We are working on the ‘Besame Mucho Mexico Tour’ with our new home agency MDX Underground. All dates will be announced next month but we can give you a sneak peek that we are going to be playing in the Caribbean, Mexico City and the North of Mexico. Stay tuned in our social media channels.
WWD: What’s your studio set up like? Do you have any favorite pieces of equipment that you can’t live without?
Our studio is very basic and functional. We have a MacBook Pro with Ableton and bunch of plugins, a pair of Dynaudio monitors, Apogee Duet, Microphone Condenser, Korg Taktile Controller, TC Helicon VoiceLive and Acoustics. We think you don’t need that big fat studio to make magic.
WWD: Moving forward. Can you share with us any future plans production-wise or any top secret projects that we can get a sneak peek?
We just finished a free track called ‘Acapulco Golden’ featuring some great guitars of our friend Filizola and we are also working on another Latin classic.
WWD: There are so many young artists trying to make it in the music industry. What would be your advice for aspiring producers?
As we say in Mexico “No quites el dedo del renglon” which means… never give up! So follow your dreams because there’s only one life to achieve them.
WWD: What’s your favorite part of being an artist?
Our favorite part of being an artist is that we can be creative all the time, sharing our passion and inspire others.
Buy the new track here
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