Mexican rockers Café Tacvba returns with old school sounds

For their seventh studio album, “El Objeto Antes Llamado Disco (The Object Formerly Known as a Record),” Mexican rockers Café Tacvba went back in time.

Instead of sticking to their established production method — the band members showing each other their compositions in rehearsals, making arrangements and cutting demos before entering the studio — they decided to record the songs live and play all the instruments themselves (they don’t have an official drummer).

Just like in their first performances in Mexico City in the early 1990s.

“In reality, it’s a very simple record,” says Café Tacvba’s leader and main singer, Ruben Albarran, 44, while on vacation in the Caribbean before the band’s upcoming U.S. tour that will bring them to Hammerstein Ballroom on Sept. 16.

“When we showed the demos to (producer) Gustavo (Santaolalla), he said, ‘I like it the way it is.’ And then we also said, ‘Right, this is the way it should be,’ ” Albarran adds.

“Because that’s how it was in the beginning: Just the four of us with our drum machine and our sequencer.”

Never one to miss a chance for an adventure, Café Tacvba (pronounced “Tacuba”) decided to record their new songs in front of intimate — and completely silent — audiences in Los Angeles, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile.

The result is a studio album with their trademark blend of rock, folk and electronica, delivered with the subdued energy of a late-night, secret performance.

“We expected for some of (the audience’s) energy and thoughts to remain there, in the music,” Albarran says.

“And we feel that it helped us reach a different result — a very fresh record, very fluid. We didn’t put a lot of thought into it; we put more heart and enjoyment into it.”

The album’s title — a comment on the state of the music industry that winks at Prince’s famous name change — is but another playful game by Café Tacvba, a band whose leader has adopted countless personas.

“We wanted to acknowledge the moment that the music industry is going through,” says Albarran.

“For us, the comment is that, more than the state the music industry is in, the relationship with the music is untouched. Our relationship with the music remains untouched, healthy.”

Being playful is an essential element of that healthy relationship with the music. According to Albarran, when the band started, they set open rules when it came to making music. In “El Objeto Antes Llamado Disco,” those open rules allowed for the musicians to sing each other’s compositions.

“It was my suggestion,” says Albarran. “While searching for new sounds, new relations — because in the end what we do is all about the relations between the different elements we play with — I found it very interesting to create new relations between the compositions and their performers.

“And that’s how Joselo came to interpret ‘Espuma,’ a song by Meme, and Meme sings ‘Aprovéchate,’ a song by Joselo,” says Albarran of bandmates Joselo Rangel and Meme del Real.

“We loved the result, because they are different feelings. If I had sang those songs, they would have gone to a different place.”