From Brussels, Memo Pimiento revisits a Mexican rock standard with an electronic cumbia lens. His version of  “Triste Canción” reinterprets the original by El Tri, written by Alejandro Lora Serna, through slowed tempo, analogue synthesis, and a vocal duet that turns its 1980s heartbreak narrative into a commentary on digital-era love.

Memo Pimiento has lived in Belgium for more than ten years. His performances centre on real-time interaction with hardware, turning Latin rhythms into electronic form. With Manon, his musical and life partner, he builds live sets that mix synth performance, cumbia structure and punk attitude drawn from Mexico City’s underground scene. Their shows have travelled across Europe, America and Asia, including Boom Festival in Portugal, Japan Cumbia Festival in Tokyo, Fusion Festival in Germany, Oerol in the Netherlands and La Noche de Primavera in Mexico City.

The new version places the rock standard inside a slowed rebajada frame. Two voices replace one, carrying the lyric “Ella existió solo en un sueño, Él es un poema que el poeta nunca escribió” — “She existed only in a dream, He is a poem the poet never wrote.” The dialogue highlights romantic illusion and distance, preserving the melancholy of the original song.

Filmed in downtown Brussels, the accompanying video mirrors this narrative. Two characters, a tourist from Mexico and a local dance student, maintain an imagined relationship through AI-generated images and online affection. Both live in the same city but never meet, embodying the distance and illusion at the heart of la triste canción de amor.

You can stream and listen to the single HERE