Since launching Terror/Cactus in 2017, Martín Selasco has built an undulating body of work that treats Latin American musical traditions as evolving forms. The Argentine-born producer and multi-instrumentalist filters the folk of his homeland, Peruvian chicha, Colombian cumbia and other regional styles through a shape-shifting patchwork of psych/rock guitars, dub textures, field recordings and electronic embellishments.
Where 2024’s Forastero explored identity, itineracy and belonging from a more personal perspective, the new Colapso (Share It) turns its gaze outward, examining cultural memory, urban life and the constructive byproducts of disruption. Selasco’s music is informed by a life of moving between Argentina, Miami and the Pacific Northwest and a family history in the music industry. His grandparents founded Argentina’s influential Music Hall label, and his father introduced Latin American music to new ears through his Miami-based ANS imprint.
In keeping with Colapso’s pivotal themes of migration and resistance, Selasco is donating 10 percent of proceeds from album sales to the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
In a recent chat with MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland, Selasco discussed the role of field recordings in storytelling, the importance of honoring tradition without succumbing to nostalgia and why “collapse” doesn’t have to mean the end.
Terror/Cactus incorporates traditional Latin American styles in a way that feels more personal than academic. How do you honor the culture while still pushing experimentation?
I don’t think of musical and cultural traditions as static things from the past but rather living expressions that understand and honor their roots. In many ways, experimentation can help keep a tradition alive—as long as it’s approached with respect, awareness and an understanding of where it comes from. For me, that means not just learning different rhythms, instruments and song forms. It also means learning about the history, communities and people who helped shape them, and collaborating with artists who are actively keeping those traditions alive today. From there, I try to bring my own experiences and influences into the conversation, blending traditional elements with contemporary production to reflect modern lived experiences, rather than treating these traditions as museum pieces frozen in time.
Your family history is deeply tied to recorded music. How has growing up around archives and other tangible media shaped the way you think about sound and cultural memory?
I remember digging through CDs in my dad’s warehouse in Miami, where I discovered traditional music from across South America. It felt like a portal into the past. The stories about my grandfather’s record label in Argentina helped make that connection feel real and showed me that I was part of something larger than myself. Living far away from my family and my family’s history in Argentina, music became an important connection point. It helped me stay connected to cultural traditions that might otherwise have been lost through immigration and assimilation. It showed me that recordings are more than just documents of sound; they’re containers for memory, identity and belonging.
Colapso is more outward-facing and political than the last LP. Why the shift?
Forastero was very much about exploring sounds that were more introspective, mystical, nostalgic and melancholic. It reflected some of my personal experiences as an immigrant and the feeling of existing between cultures. While making Colapso, I felt pulled to create something with a greater sense of urgency. My goal at first wasn’t necessarily to make a political record, but I did want to push back against what I was seeing in certain corners of the Latin electronic-music world, where Latin American culture was often being reduced to a kind of aesthetic backdrop for wellness retreats, luxury travel or consumer-driven party culture. At a time when immigrant communities were being attacked and so much of culture felt increasingly commodified, I wanted to create something that reflected the chaos, beauty and contradictions of real Latin American life. I was inspired by the energy of cities, underground movements and the sense of possibility that emerges when people create culture outside of the mainstream.
Field recordings and fragments of urban life play a major role on the new album. What do those real-life sounds add emotionally that instruments alone can’t?
Field recordings can really help transport the listener and bring the listening experience into a more tangible realm. Those sounds carry history, memory and a sense of place. They become part of a larger narrative around the music, connecting it to real environments, people and experiences. In some of these songs, field recordings were actually the starting point for a composition. Some moments can contain such a specific feeling or atmosphere that it becomes the inspiration for everything that follows. I’ll build a track around that, and the original recording stays in the final piece because it grounds the listener in that experience in an essential way.
You’ve described music in terms of both inheritance and discovery. Were there specific musical memories from your childhood that resurfaced while making Colapso?
There were more recent memories from spending time in Latin American cities. I found myself drawing inspiration from experiences like riding trains through Buenos Aires, watching graffiti-covered walls scroll past lush landscapes or walking through the city late at night. I thought a lot about places like Mexico City and Bogotá, and the feeling of standing at the edge of these massive cities filled with beauty, chaos, history and possibility, all nestled within dramatic natural landscapes. These are the kinds of memories I tried to capture in Colapso in an impressionistic way: the movement, the texture of a place, the tension between nature and urban life, the feelings that linger long after.
See Terror/Cactus live.
