Pidgins

Pidgins is an experimental percussion duo based in Mexico City featuring percussionist Milo Tamez and vocalist / electroacoustic musician Aaron With. The group transform the oral and rhythmic methods of traditional trance rituals by phasing metric, melodic, and rhetorical phrases. These pattern systems form the grammar Pidgins use to construct linguistic puzzles: productivity mantras, guided anti-meditations, and hypnotic induction sequences. Pidgins speak in these tongues in order to interrogate contemporary trance states—managerial class dogmas, self-help literature, and new age therapies. Percussionist Milo Tamez's drumming is informed by a decades-long study of polyrhythm. His work employs melo-rhythmic percussive textures within multidimensional patterns. Vocalist and electroacoustician Aaron With chants the "refrains of the day"—jargon mantras of the technocratic elite. As rhythmic trance takes over, With reorders these expressions, shifting their meanings. He also narrates "un-Zen koans"—mysterious incantations and troubled visualizations. Their debut record "Refrains of the Day, Volume 1" garnered critical acclaim in The Quietus, Bandcamp Daily, and more.