Hobbs & Ron Mexico

It all started, as many life-changing events do, with a seagull, a stolen USB stick, and a mislabelled crate of Camembert. Hobbs, a lapsed botanist turned rave historian, was holidaying in Saint-Étienne attempting to “rediscover his inner groove” via a strict diet of rosé wine and VHS recordings of Top of the Pops 1987. Ron Mexico was there on less noble terms, apparently trying to “buy back a cursed synthesiser” from a travelling psychic named Jean-Luc who only spoke in riddles and Kraftwerk samples. Their worlds collided in a flea market. Hobbs was bartering over a vintage Roland drum machine shaped suspiciously like a croissant, while Ron was performing an impromptu DJ set using two dictaphones, a bicycle horn, and a baguette as a crossfader. A thunderstorm rolled in. Electricity surged. Time stood still. They both reached for the same copy of Les Rythmes de l’Amour Vol. 3 on cassette. The rest is barely believable history. Since that fateful day, the duo have become staunch advocates of 130bpm disco-adjacent house music with a heavy-handed pour of French filter. Think Daft Punk locked in a sauna with Maurice Fulton, sipping Chartreuse and playing Who Can Sample Cerrone the Most Subtly? It’s sweaty, swanky, and unashamedly silly. Just how they like it. “Making music with Hobbs is like wrestling an eel made of velvet,” Ron once said, possibly in a dream. “We don’t make tracks. We channel them. Like spiritual mediums, except drunk and dressed in velour,” Hobbs told a confused cab driver once, unprompted. Their musical mantra? “If it doesn’t make you wiggle your left eyebrow involuntarily, it’s not finished.” They once attempted to record an album entirely inside a sensory deprivation tank. The experiment was abandoned after three hours due to “extreme horniness and a rogue echo.” Another time they submitted a demo to a label entirely in Morse code using a laser pointer and a piece of smoked haddock. It was signed immediately. No questions asked. The name of their latest project, Disco Infiltrators, was inspired by a mistranslated cereal box and a joint fascination with French distance learning. Expect shimmering pads, wobbly basslines, and vocal snippets that sound like they were recorded in a 1973 Peugeot boot sale. They tour rarely, preferring instead to “let the music travel astrally,” but if you do catch them live, expect laser harps, preposterous hats, and at least one track named after a type of cheese. As Hobbs once muttered under his breath after three espressos and a minor existential crisis: “When the lobsters rise, only those who disco shall be spared.”