Ángel Mosqueda and Jesús “Chucho” Báez have known each other since they were teenagers. In those years, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where they lived, their fun was making up songs.
“We are old acquaintances,” Ángel said in a telephone interview from Mexico City. “From a very young age we took classes [de música] and we experimented with four-channel cassette recorders; more than music it was making songs”.
Chucho on the piano and Ángel on the guitar are still together, but now as members of Zoé, a rock band that has already been founded for two decades. Only now, after extensive touring over the past year, he’s taking a career hiatus.
This break from the group has been the ideal opportunity for Ángel and Chucho to work on their side project, an electronic music album that they had been working on for a long, long time.
“With ‘Interior Astronomy’ we are showing another type of music”, he said. “[Son] things that we wanted to show for many years, […] Now is that we have the necessary resources, time and collaborators”.
Ángel and Chucho, who baptized their project with the initials AI, explore themes such as the idealization of love and relationships in their lyrics. However, Ángel stresses that the band’s true intention is to make songs that the public can decide what interpretation they want to give them.
For now, AI has plans to tour several countries in America and Europe. For now, he already has a reserved space on his agenda for two festivals of great relevance in Mexico, Vive Latino and Pal Norte, both in March of this year.
“The idea is to take it to the whole world,” said the musician.
In 2024 there are plans to record another album because, said Ángel, there is still a lot of music in the pipeline. Nine songs were included on this album, but the band has so much more.
“It doesn’t stay on one record,” he said. “It was a great experience and it left us very satisfied and eager to continue showing what Chucho and I do.”
As for Zoé, a band completed by León Larregui on vocals, Sergio Acosta on guitar and Rodrigo Guardiola on percussion, there is nothing to worry about, since it continues to be the priority for the AI project. Ángel acknowledges that before Zoé there was “a lot of stone to break” until the band managed to position itself.
“Zoé continues,” Angel said. “He just has a planned quiet break in every way; necessary to take a breather and in the not too distant future make a record and tour”.