What kinds of sounds and musical influences are you going to be experimenting with at the London Jazz Fringe Festival?
Electroacoustic music, brain dance, world music, rock, classical contemporary and traditional Mexican music (in other words all music) are currently our most important influences.

"...a native Mexican point of view, without national identity playing the front role in the music, working happily aware of our 'personal' perspective in contemporary music

The sounds themselves are all kinds of samples and electronic processes, ranging from real drum samples to environmental sound and using common sound transformation tools such as distortion, chorus, pitch bend, transposition etc... plus other high quality ones such as GRM tools.

We also play using multi-channel surround systems, at least quadraphonic sound (venue permitting), because we believe this is an outstanding aspect of music technology not currently explored properly, or not as much as we think it should (multi-channel surround sound is in fact old, but only recently affordable and easy to use).

How did you get involved with the festival?
Due to a concert at the Ritzy in June 2004 for a LatinAlternativa night, where we met Ed Simpson, the organiser of London Jazz Fringe Festival, who believed in us, helped us to get some more concerts, and with whom we have developed a special link.

If anyone is unfamiliar with your work, can you give them a description and some musical career highlights/hype?
Live laptop and percussion music plus video and video performance. Sound design, experimental music combined with strong and irregular rhythms, incorporating into the music our built-in ability as humans to localize sound (multi-channel surround sound), plus fixed and live art video performance by a specialized visual artist, who is 'part of the band'. All of the above from a native Mexican point of view, without national identity playing the front role in the music, working happily aware of our 'personal' perspective in contemporary music.

We are musically educated in contemporary 'classical' composition, up to doctoral level, and as individual composers the members of this band have achieved international prizes in contemporary and electronic/electroacoustic music such as the 'Prix de la Region de Aquitaine 2000', Bordeaux, France, 'Luigi Russolo 2001', Italy, Residence prize IMED Bourges 2001, France, and the 'Under 30' project for Kronos Quartet 2003, USA.

Name one essential non-jazz record that everyone should listen to and tell us why it is so special.
'Repons' by Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble InterContemporain. This is dense contemporary musical language at its peak, creating a coherent and mature proposal in new music. And just to break prejudices on 'classical' composers as being old, this work employs the best music technology of its time and has the vision to use sound localization as part of the music and live-concert concept. Finally, all this without mentioning the outstanding level of performance by Ensemble InterContemporain.

If Bono is ill and needs someone to stand in for him the next time he is asked to address the world's leaders, what would you tell them?
Next time it would be better to be honest and say 'yes we want to take over the world, dominate it fully and get even richer, making everyone believe we are the good ones and the rest (4/5ths of the world) are the very bad ones' than using the cheapest strategies to try and fool all of us. Thank you.

Manas open the London Jazz Fringe Festival at the Ritzy Cafe on 13 November, 2004