Segunda Mordida is putting Chilean underground punk on the map

Segunda Mordida's debut album MUNDO is a one-of-one digital-punk project that strangles listeners with aggravated samples, distorted guitars, and poignant neurosis. On his song "me cais como el pico de una forma que no te explico," the Chilean artist-producer shouts depressively about the future in Spanish, “The TV people talk too much but say nothing/ They’re saving your future for tomorrow / Take my hand, let’s go for a walk / Say your goodbyes and plan your funeral." Even though Segunda’s music may sound like it’s trying to kill you, or at least your eardrums, its lyrics suggest otherwise. The album, Segunda says, is his way of making sense of the frustration surrounding the aftermath of Pinochet-era dictatorship, which only ended in 1990.

Even though the dictatorship is long over, trauma lingered in the vivid memories of the generations that lived it, and has been reified in a younger generation through subsequent years of severe economic inequality and the privatization of public systems. This turmoil left artists like Segunda Mordida with what he describes as a pervasive paranoia about the state of the world, evident in his lyrics and song titles.

Ten years ago, Mordida built his tight-knit label Medio Oriente and now sings to a cult-like fanbase of roughly a thousand monthly listeners who resonate with his anxious melodies so much that they’ll follow him to the outskirts of the city to party in abandoned train stations.

Ahead, we called up Segunda Mordida to get to know the artist at the center of the Chilean punk underground to chat about the Santiago music scene, growing up in the shadow of Pinochet’s dictatorship, and remixing Tay-K songs.

The FADER: Can you describe your life building a music career in Santiago?

Segunda Mordida: It's been a long road, I would say. I've been making music for 14 years. I started my label Medio Oriente in 2016. I used to make ambient music when I first started, mainly instrumental. I always tried to play in bands with friends, but it would never come to fruition. Eventually I decided that I wanted to be a frontman, and a solo artist. I wanted to hold the mic and perform live, so that's what I did with Segunda Mordida.

What's the music scene like in Santiago?

The scene here is pretty varied. When I first started doing shows and putting out music 10 years ago, there weren't any electronic music organizations or projects. The few that were happening were very underground. People from the outside always think of South America as a very inactive place culturally, you know? Like they underestimate what happens here a lot. And I think our scene is smaller compared to the one in the US, but it's still very active.

We see familiar faces all the time because there are people that just love going to shows all the time. We've made shows in so many different places I can't even remember right now. Two years ago, we did a show at an abandoned train station in a part of the city that's called Quilicura, and I guess we didn't calculate the time well enough, because it started at 6 p.m., and it was just pitch black, and it was all ambient music playing in this abandoned place. It was fucking spooky as hell.

We usually play in warehouses ‘cause there aren't many venues in Santiago. That's the thing, there's a couple of large venues that are reserved for big shows, but when you're doing DIY stuff like us, you have to conform to smaller things.

For artists, there's a lot of them here that I love a lot. My friend C6, whose house I'm at right now. There's a label that's really close to us called Aglomeración, and they mainly put out ambient electronic music. It's really good. Anthony1 is also my friend, and there's lilen, who put out an EP last year that's really good. We all love screamo and post-hardcore and stuff like that.

Do you play shows with them?

Ironically, not that much because the punk kids are very dogmatic in a way. So not a lot of them listen to electronic music. They're very averse to it, you know what I mean? But I love the hardcore scene, I'm a hardcore kid since I was very young.

What is the story behind your album Mundo?

I started making it three years ago. It took me a really long time to make and to put it out as well. It first started in a period of intense political chaos in Chile. In October 2019, there were these protests happening, with so many things happening all at once. They set a curfew at like 8:00 p.m. It was this looming fear, of the Pinochet dictatorship that we went through 40 years ago. It was a very scary time for everyone, and people were very anxious and paranoid about everything. I guess I started this project as a way to express that anxiety that I was feeling. The first remnants of what became the album MUNDO.

Did the music help you reconcile with that turmoil?

The dictatorship happened before I was even born, from '73 to '89. But there are lingering effects of the dictatorship in people's identity and culture and the way we relate to each other. People older than me are generally very reserved, and scared to connect with others. And I think people in Chile assume that fear is a cultural reality, and that's just how we are. But a lot of younger people, we can see that the dictatorship just traumatized everyone. If you were somewhat left-leaning, they would grab you, and they'd kill you; they'd make you disappear whenever they wanted. That happened for 17 years straight, so obviously that affected everyone.

I feel like growing up with hardcore and punk at a very young age, I always saw a very deep value in expressing negativity in a way that's healthy and in a proper context. I think some negative feelings should be brought up in spite of what Chilean culture tries to tell you.

Do you see your music as a vehicle for that change, or is it more of an outlet?

I would like to say it can affect change eventually, but that's not my focus. My main focus is for it to be an emotional outlet, and I hope that eventually that can transfer into a bigger thing. In a way, my anxiety and my feelings of discomfort in the current political climate, or in the world at large, those feelings do reflect the state of how others are feeling. My personal discomfort can be other people's discomfort, and we can all make sense of this craziness that is happening in the world.

Earlier artists like Víctor Jara and like Violeta Parra were centered around activism. Would you say the contemporary music feels shifted towards frustration?

Yeah, Víctor Jara, Violeta Parra, plus Los Prisioneros, I would say, are the foundations of Chilean music in general, across any genre. You can ask anyone: from DJs, to producers, or anyone who plays in a band, and they'll all tell you how important Víctor Jara, Violeta Parra, and Los Prisioneros are. But since they were activists, they had very upfront methods. Even if you don't listen to them, you've listened to them. [laughs] It's crazy ’cause Los Prisioneros were speaking out against Pinochet during the dictatorship, at a time when Pinochet was making people disappear and killing people for saying the wrong thing. And they were outright protesting, which is so crazy to me. It's very admirable. But I also see how the current wave of Chilean bands, have this sense of frustration.

The frustration of things not going the way we were promised, you know? Because after the dictatorship, when we went back into democracy, um, there was this song that used to play a lot, and it said, "Chile, la alegría ya viene," like "Chile, the happiness is coming," something like that. Our parents grew up with this expectation that things would be better in democracy, but it never happened. The poverty rates in Chile, the police brutality that happened since the protests in 2019, it's been a lot of turmoil. So, yeah I kind of expect young artists to be frustrated honestly.

Can you explain the internet imagery around MUNDO?

I grew up back when the internet wasn't such a horrible place. Back when it was more community-based. I remember when I was like 12, I used to hop into pop-punk forums online and talk to people from all over the world about music. I remember this one guy, he was like, "Dude, why are you even listening to Blink-182 anymore? This is for kids! You should listen to this!" And he would show me Circle Jerks or something.

And then as I was growing up, I saw the internet become this monstrous, predatory thing that's trying to control you. It's always about the ads. It's always about selling something. It lost this natural sense of community that we had. It's such a fake place nowadays. You don't even know if you're talking to real people anymore on the internet.

Even talking on video, we take this for granted. These things weren't normal 15 or 20 years ago, whereas now they're kind of mandatory. That you have to be on your phone all the time. You have to be accessible at all times. That's one of the main forces that drove me to make music like this.

What made you want to do that Tay-K remix?

I loved Tay-K. I've always been into trap and, but it was just crazy that this guy was real. It's conflicting. The fact that we were witnessing how he was making it big, and the very same day he went to prison for killing people. It's like one example of how quick culture is moving nowadays. You can literally be the biggest star in the world one day, and then you're fucking in prison the next. So, since I started TEAM MEKANO, I always loved doing remixes stuff. I have a bunch of remixes that I haven't put out. Maybe I should.

What are people misunderstanding about music in Chile?

You know what I hate? A little unrelated, but I hate when people from North America announce they're doing a world tour and they're only touring Europe. Like, dude, the world also includes South America and Asia.

I would say to people outside of Chile or South America that there's a lot of important music happening here at the moment. In Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, a lot of places in South America, Brazil. There’s a huge creative urge in Chile, a huge craving for new things. There's a younger generation that's very keen on doing new stuff and finding new sounds, which is very encouraging. You should be paying attention to what's happening here because in five or 10 years, it's going to blow your fucking mind.