With a shared passion for synths, shoe-gaze, post and indie-rock, Amor Amezcua and Estrella Sanchez met in high school in the Mexican border town of Tijuana, getting to grips with their instruments, and developing a sound built upon organic processes. Their debut release, the EP Primeras Salidas, was a fascinating glimpse into their early development, a springboard for them to tour their native Mexico, and the US, as well as earning themselves a place on the bills of both Coachella and SXSW.

By the summer of last year they seemingly had a clearer idea of what they wanted, and travelled to Detroit to record with producer Christopher Jolty, whose extra tools and production know-how helped them achieve this vision. It’s a musical vision that involves organically creating spacious, enveloping post-rock and dream pop textures – that recall a more experimental Warpaint – using guitar, bass, drums and synths. It’s at once melancholy and invigorating, and nightmarish and dreamy, as they constantly toy with tension, the push and pull of feelings and emotions as translated into a musical sound. Sometimes they jam on a riff, but rarely do they over indulge in noise or repetition for its own sake. Behind their sound is both an artfulness and song craft that has been thoroughly thought through, as they strive to explore sonic possibilities.

The brooding ‘El Parque Parecia No Tener Fin’, and its use of classic My Bloody Valentine pitch shifting guitar is the starting point of an (overlong) album that is primarily instrumental; the angelic voice of Sanchez really only there as an instrument in itself, the words (albeit in Spanish) lost in the mix, and often purposefully pushed way back in the process. In that way it’s similar to the voice of the Cocteau Twins’ Elisabeth Fraser, whose words were very rarely decipherable when she fronted the kings (and queens) of etherealness. Indeed, there’s a glacial Cocteau Twins quality to ’Ojos En El Carro’, a track that perhaps best represents what Mint Field are about: an ethereal vibe sitting next to the rawness of the stuttering drums, and slithery bass, before Sanchez piles in with her angelic voice and over-driven guitar. It’s powerful, bewitching stuff coming from a pair of 21-year-old women.

Meanwhile, ‘Ciudad Satelite’ also floats along chiming guitars, a snaking bass melody and a mildly propulsive snare, before a strident rhythm guitar propels the song along a slow and claustrophobic highway. Then there’s ‘Temporada de Jacarandas’ which is based around a kick drum beat, space rock effects, chiming guitar, and a burbling bass-heavy synth, before it neatly segues into a choral-inspired shoe-gaze second half.

One of the best tracks here is the Neu-inspired punchy grooves of ‘Quiero Otoño de Nuevo’ the repetitive nature of the rhythm enlivened by bouts of upfront drum rolls. It’s matched by the dark and deep guitar and bass stoner riffage of ‘Cambinos Del Pasar’, representing the album’s peak before things start to drift a little aimlessly after that, the album largely treading the same pathways the first half inhabited, albeit with some interesting variations. There’s the deeply brooding ‘Nada Es Estático Y Evoluciona’ which has a Joy Division feel via the doom bass and the simple yet expressive guitar of Sanchez, a holy mix of ‘Day of the Lords’ and ‘Shadowplay’, while ‘Para Gali’ provides a little relief, the relative sunny vibes and dream pop glow momentarily pushing aside the musical heaviness of Mint Field. While final track ‘Parpados Morados’ takes the sadness down a further notch or two, but never allowing itself to wallow in the gloom. Within every Mint Field track, there are chinks of heavenly light.

Using instruments to transmit feelings of nostalgia, sorrow, love and healing, and expertly mixing up repetition with underlying melodies from all instruments, and changes of pace and atmosphere, there is an overriding, if superficial, ghostly ambience throughout Pasar De Las Luces. Its basic minimalism is injected with an uncomplicated enveloping layering of sounds, that alternatively compete and unify with one another. Fluid bass and inventive drums provide the foundations for their otherworldly, subtly fragile world that nevertheless invokes strength and, at the end of the day, optimism.

Jeff Hemmings

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