Plastilina Mosh

In 1998, when rock in Spanish was still working out what it wanted to be, two men from Monterrey released a record that sounded like nothing else. "Aquamosh" mixed hip hop, jazz, lounge, rock and jokes, sang sometimes in English and sometimes in Spanish, and came across as though someone could not care less what was supposed to be done. It put Monterrey on the map and it still has not aged. To understand how something like that came out, you have to look at the two who made it, because they are near opposites.

The collision

Plastilina Mosh are two people. Alejandro Rosso studied at the Monterrey conservatory and at university, started piano at four and trained in jazz and baroque music, part of it in Austria. Juan José "Jonáz" González came out of a noise band. A man of written scores and a man of distortion, shut in the same room.

Everything comes out of that collision. Elegance and disorder at once, the studied groove and the stupid joke, the cocktail lounge that suddenly breaks apart. It is not that they tolerated their differences: they used them as material. Half the record lives off that tension between the one who knows too much and the one who wants to know nothing.

Beck's producers, not the Beastie Boy

Here is the fact that has been told wrongly for thirty years, and it is a very good joke. Everywhere you read that "Aquamosh" was produced by Money Mark, the keyboard player from the Beastie Boys. It is not true, and you can point at exactly where the error came from.

Two tracks on the record carry four surnames between writers and producers: Borrell, Fuentes, Harris and Marks. That "Marks" is Grace Marks, a member of Sukia, a Los Angeles band that did produce those two tracks. Someone read "Marks", understood "Money Mark", and the claim rolled on for almost three decades. The Beastie Boy who produced "Aquamosh" was in fact called Grace.

The confusion did not come from nowhere, mind you. When Jonáz and Rosso first travelled to Los Angeles, they caught the attention of a handful of heavyweights from that scene — Money Mark among them, plus the Dust Brothers and Butthole Surfers. There was interest. There was no production. The ones who actually recorded the album were Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf, the sound behind Beck and Elliott Smith. That two men from Monterrey debuted with those names behind the glass already tells you the level they were playing at.

The scene nobody knew existed

Monterrey, in the mid-nineties, threw out an absurd number of good bands at once. The press gave it a name: the Avanzada Regia. Rosso took it apart in 2025 with a sentence worth a whole essay: that none of the so-called avanzada regia knew there was an avanzada. And Jonáz finished it off with what explains why it worked: that he loves that it was that way, because each band had its own identity.

There is a truth in there about how good things get born. A scene is something you see from outside, and afterwards. From inside there are only groups rehearsing nearby, each minding their own business, with no idea they are founding anything. The journalist supplies the name; the music is supplied by the ones who never noticed.

The best moment of their life is now

And here is the part almost nobody knows: Plastilina Mosh are in the best stretch of their last decade, thirty years after starting.

In April 2026 they filled an eight-thousand-capacity venue in Mexico City celebrating three decades. In August they played "Aquamosh" whole and in order, start to finish, for a room that knew every second of it. They have just finished their first European tour in about twenty years, with dates in Spain and Italy. And a new record is coming, recorded in California, with a detail that closes the circle: the advance single was produced by Tom Rothrock. The same man who produced "Aquamosh" twenty-eight years ago.

They started with him and they came back to him. It is not nostalgia; it is a conversation that never quite got cut off.

What to remember

Plastilina Mosh are two men from Monterrey — one from the conservatory, one from noise — who in 1998 made a record that sounded like nothing else, with Beck's producers, while rock in Spanish was still looking for itself. They were part of a scene none of them knew was a scene. And three decades later they are filling rooms, playing their masterpiece in full and recording again with the producer from the beginning.

Oh, and the famous Beastie Boy who produced "Aquamosh" never existed: he was called Grace Marks, and he was in another band.

Remember it this way: the collision between the one who knew too much and the one who wanted to know nothing ended up being one of the most original records Mexico ever produced, and its authors are still on stage, better than ever.

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Sources

Plastilina Mosh, a Mexican duo formed in Monterrey on 4 February 1996 by Juan José "Jonáz" González (vocals and guitar) and Alejandro Rosso (keyboards); both are alive and active. Their debut album, "Aquamosh", was released on 30 June 1998 by EMI Mexico, with an American edition on Capitol and a Japanese one on Toshiba-EMI. Production was handled by Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf on most tracks, with Sukia credited on "Monster Truck" and "Aquamosh", Café Tacvba on "Bungaloo Punta Cometa" and Jason Roberts on "Mr. P. Mosh". The attribution of involvement to Money Mark, keyboard player of Beastie Boys, does not appear in the album's credits, in his discography or in the group's interviews; the credits of the two tracks produced by Sukia include G. Marks, corresponding to Grace Marks, a member of that band. During their first trip to Los Angeles the duo attracted the interest of Money Mark, the Dust Brothers and Butthole Surfers, without this leading to any involvement in the album. Alejandro Rosso studied at the Monterrey conservatory and at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, and completed training in jazz and baroque music; Jonáz came from the noise band Koervoz de Malta. In an interview in July 2025, Rosso stated that none of the musicians of the so-called Avanzada Regia was aware of belonging to a movement. The group was nominated for the 2004 Latin Grammy for best alternative album for "Hola Chicuelos" and for the 2003 MTV Video Music Award Latin America, winning neither. There is no record of an album titled "Bataclán" or of their participation in the soundtrack of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" (2005); their tracks do appear in the video games "Street Sk8er", "True Crime: Streets of L.A.", "FIFA 07" and "FIFA 09". In April 2026 the duo celebrated thirty years with a concert before some eight thousand people at the Pepsi Center in Mexico City; on 11 August 2026 they performed "Aquamosh" in full at the Foro Indie Rocks, and between August and September 2026 they undertook their first European tour in some two decades. Their April 2026 single was produced by Tom Rothrock, and the duo is preparing a new album recorded in California. Beastie Boys have their own profile in this series. A Rebobinados rewrite of previously verified research; interpretations are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Discogs, MusicBrainz, Rolling Stone en Español, Excélsior, La Jornada, uDiscover, Warp and other coverage.