Melbourne to Mexico, Animalia connects two underground worlds

It’s spring equinox on a Friday night in Mexico City, and the stars are aligned in more ways than one.

In the heart of the city, the golden dome of Palacio de Bellas Artes glows under a clear night sky. The fine arts museum is one of Mexico’s leading cultural institutions, home to subversive murals from national icon Diego Rivera.

Opposite sits a five-storey abandoned building from which a thudding bass emanates across the quiet square.

It’s almost midnight as Australian Kia Sydney hops out of a car and joins the queue outside the venue, before quickly being identified as the headline DJ and being whisked into an elevator to the fifth floor. Moments later, the doors part on a smoky, cavernous room packed with dancers and music thumping from a German-made sound system at the northern end of the room.

The address was publicised last minute, and it’s the first time this DIY space has been used for an underground event. The late location drop serves a dual purpose — building excitement with partygoers and enhancing security.

The event is hosted by local promoters Discos Movimiento and the international festival group MUTEK, who have invited Kia for a label showcase of her preeminent Melbourne export, Animalia. This stop is one of several on Kia’s North and South America tour alongside collaborator and counterpart Lucas Hatzisavas, aka Reptant, with headline shows in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Colombia.

Rodrigo Valles, founder of Discos Movimiento, first heard the two Naarm-based artists at Waking Life in Portugal.

“I was super drawn to their music and to this new approach of being still deep and serious but in a way also making it fun, playful and trippy.”

After two years of planning and a couple of postponements, the night is a landmark event for the growing friendship between Australia and Mexico’s underground scenes. The next milestone is just one week away, this Saturday, 13,000 kilometres across the globe at Miscellania.

Kia has arrived at the venue just in time to see Mexican Jamaican DJ and producer Andy Martin start his set. He plays his song Afrofuturism, one of four tracks on his forthcoming Animalia vinyl and digital release, 'Tierra de Nahuales', announced in the lead-up.

Andy has curated his playlist to showcase “the sound of Animalia”.

“In my perspective, it’s this kind of avant-garde, break beats, techno, even dubby and kind of left-field, psychedelic influences there. Australia and Mexico are so far apart, but at some point there's this connection between the sounds in the underground,” he says.

Andy casts a tall and engaged silhouette over the decks. He is beautifully backlit by the fine arts museum across the square.

“To have Bellas Artes as the background of the party is a big symbol,” Andy says. “For us as Mexicans, this is one of the most important venues in Mexico, especially for arts.”

“We haven't achieved electronic music being seen as a fine art, as is probably happening in other countries like Germany, the UK, even Australia or the USA,” he says.

Reptant’s live set is up next, receiving rapturous whistles and cheers as he cranks out Beat Seeker, released on Animalia under the pseudonym Ulo S. Then Kia takes over the floor as dedicated dancers cluster behind her, their shadowy figures cutting shapes across the vista.

Over two and a half hours, Kia delivers a signature set of atmospheric and psychedelic dub techno, creating an intimacy on the dancefloor. She plays the title track of the new Animalia release, her favourite. “We love Kia here,” says a local fan who is seeing her play for a second time.

As a hazy orange sunrise emerges on the horizon, Kia and Reptant head home for a few hours of sleep before they fly to LA later that day for the final leg of their tour.

Four days later, Kia is back home in Melbourne and reflecting enthusiastically on the night in Mexico City.

“It's crazy that you can go anywhere in the world in the music scene and there are people doing similar things for the same reasons,” Kia says. “I feel like that crew is definitely the Mexico City equivalent of what we're doing in Melbourne, but with their own context and challenges.”

This weekend is Kia’s opportunity to play host. Andy Martin is playing two shows in Sydney and Melbourne at Chinese Laundry and Miscellania. The Naarm show, hosted by Animalia and Temporal Cast, will see Kia and Andy share the same bill for the second time in two weeks.

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“I don't have any expectations of what it will be like,” Andy says hours before his flight on Monday. “But I have heard that right now it’s probably one of the most interesting scenes going on in the world.”

It’s an Australian debut for the Guadalajara-based producer, who is building an international name for his unique brand of futuristic dub techno with Latin and Jamaican influences.

“The concepts of techno and house are very standardised all over the world,” Andy says. “But I feel like I had the chance, because of my context, to be influenced by other kinds of songs — conscious or unconscious.”

His Jamaican father introduced him to dancehall, reggae, and dub, while his upbringing in Mexico exposed him to reggaeton and Latin sounds daily, with music blasting “from drugstores, grocery stores or even on the bus.”

“I was not aware that I was making music with that influence until some other people started telling me, ‘Hey, these songs kind of resemble a little bit of dancehall or dub. So, after a long time, I kind of discovered myself through the music I was doing,” he says.

Andy was developing his distinct sound, but breaking through into the international electronic music circuit is especially challenging for Mexican artists.

“Usually the circuit is very much based between countries like Europe, USA, UK, and Australia,” he says. “If you are not from those countries, it's very difficult to break through. It took me like a lot of years to really be able to be seen in that scene.”

Earlier on in his career, Andy says local and European audiences weren’t really picking up what he was putting down.

“It was not as techno as Europeans expected and here in Mexico, it was not as Latin as they were expecting. So I was in this kind of lost space, you know?”

Kia first met Andy in 2024, the night before UFO Camp, a boutique electronic music festival near Guadalajara, where they were both on the lineup. They were already fans of each other’s work, leading to what they both describe as an “organic connection”.

“I already knew Kia, of course, because of magazines and podcasts and seeing her name in very big lineups and very interesting festivals,” Andy says.

Meanwhile, Kia had played Andy’s song Revolution, featuring the late, great Lee Scratch Perry, in her Golden Plains set a couple of months earlier. “It's such a good, big room song and it's just really authentic,” Kia says.

Andy shared a copy of his unreleased track Afrofuturism with Kia, one of a handful of songs he was sending to DJs across the globe as promos at the time. “I was instantly like ‘Oh my god, this song is crazy’, and I started playing it all the time, and I was like ‘I would love to build an Animalia EP around it,’” Kia says.

Andy started sending Kia some songs, building the EP around the concept of Nahual, a mythical figure in the belief systems of ancient Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

“It was really incredibly easy, I basically gave him zero feedback, he just slowly sent me some things, and I liked everything,” Kia says.

Sonically, the EP was a perfect fit for Animalia, but what’s more, the concept allowed Kia to “directly reference” her core inspiration for the label for the first time.

“We've become good friends, and we always send each other stupid animal memes, and he knows how much I love animals, and it's become a theme of our friendship too.”

The same summer, Rodrigo was living in Berlin and planning a Discos Movimiento party at OHM with Andy Martin as the headliner, but a spanner was thrown in the works when Andy got an unexpected call-up.

Berghain was offering him a set on the same night.

“I was like, ‘Okay, it's a no brainer that you're playing Berghain and not our party, in terms of the importance this could have for your career and for everything you've worked for,’” Rodrigo recalls.

The Berghain set changed the trajectory of Andy’s career, Rodrigo says.

During that summer, the two close friends heard Afrofuturism played at festivals and clubs in Europe by DJs including Objekt, Mama Snake, Pariah, and Batu.

“I'd be at a club anywhere around the world, and I'm like ‘That's the Animalia release!’” Kia says. “It was really crazy.”

The convergence around this song was palpable, leading Rodrigo to push for an Animalia event in Mexico City.

“There was this connection between our relationship with Andy and then also the connection of this release with Animalia. At some point, we were like, ‘Okay, it makes total sense that we do this party.’ Doing the Animalia night in Mexico and then him going to Australia this week, it does feel like a full circle moment,” Rodrigo says.

While Andy’s music was a little unorthodox for some Mexican and European listeners at first, he says Australians have been consistent fans of his work.

“In some festivals or venues, I have encountered Australian people who are in Europe for the summer or whatever, and they really like my stuff.”

Kia says there’s some crossover between Mexico and Australia that might not be realised at first glance.

Kia points to a less-defined historical club culture in Australia, as well as a climate similar to Mexico's, which gives Andy’s genre-bending productions a natural home at bush doofs and inner-city park parties.

“I think the music is appealing, especially in the modern day when people are moving away from more purist attitudes, which still exist in a lot of places and clubs that Andy plays, like Berghain, for example.”

During his time in Australia, Andy is looking forward to meeting DJs and producers he’s been in contact with, including Tangela, Sleep D, Pugilist, and Cousin, to name a few. Danza Mart by Sleep D is a mainstay in Andy’s sets at home.

As fate would have it, a last-minute scheduling change will see Sleep D join the bill on Saturday night at Miscellania.

“I’m excited to be able to hang around with the local artists and local people and see how they live and really experience the local scene,” Andy says.

As for the blossoming connection between these two scenes, a world apart, both parties are keen to explore the potential.

“I’m hopeful this very unexpected intercontinental connection keeps going,” Kia says.

“I'm super excited about this whole movement that is going on,” Andy says, “and I think there's like this new generation and new sound that is going to be really, really great in the future, and it's already happening.”

Back in Mexico City, the Palacio de Bellas Artes basks in the sun as it has for the past 90 years, positively more connected to the sound of today’s underground.

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Tickets to Andy Martin's appearances at Animalia and Temporal Cast's Miscellania takeover, as well as his Chinese Laundry show, are still available.

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Hugo Hodge is a freelance writer, originating from Naarm/Melbourne and recently acting as a reporter in the Asia-Pacific, but now enjoying a sabbatical in Mexico City. Find him on Instagram & X.