hough maligned upon its release (and somewhat even today), Herb Alpert’s Rise wasn’t the bending of Tijuana-influenced jazz towards a disco/downbeat environment, nor was it a disco/downbeat album festooned with brass frills, but an exhibition of the styles’ concomitance. Opting for a slower tempo, Alpert avoided Rise’s dissolution into a cacophonous wave built solely on one idea’s gimmickry and gracefully produced one of the more timeless mash-up LPs. All this, and a timeless stature as a lode of catchy, intelligent samples (see Notorious B.I.G’s “Hypnotize”).

Tijuana Sessions Vol. 3 essentially follows the same route as Alpert’s 1979 classic, though the members’ facility with electronic music and advanced sampling skills mean that the results are tinged with more knack than novelty. It should also be noted that the Nortec Collective aren’t dealing specifically with Norteño (literally “North” Mexican music) but flirt the line between Norteño—using accordions and bajo sexto—and Banda, which replaces the accordions and bajo sexto with horns. They also manage to almost completely ignore the music’s roots in polka for the sake of salvaging the electronic angle’s more straightforward personality and supplement the album with samples that aren’t based on Norteño at all (the piccolo that runs throughout). Like Rise, Nortec Collective’s Tijuana Sessions isn’t out to revise anything.

Volme 1 was the same way, but the territory was manifestly new for the musicians behind it. Fueled almost solely by Bostitch’s “Polaris,” that compilation seemed only to amass (good) replicas from the likes of Panoptica, Fussible, and Hiperboreal without any other goal but a nice experimental hybrid. Volume 3 differs precisely because of an apparent vision to it, one that even led the musicians involved to adopt the Nortec Collective appellation as a full-fledged group rather than a guild. Ironically the songs sound as if they have different personalities even if adhering to the same rubric. While pieces like “Tijuana Makes Me Happy,” with its blithe refrain and interweaving accordions, and the ambient dub “Esa Banda” adhere strictly to a downbeat template, others like the percussive-heavy “Tijuana Bass” and the slyly silted “Autobanda” are punctuated by a bigger emphasis on the Banda elements—in their cases a tuba which playfully plods along.

Elsewhere they sneak in elements of Volume 1 into the mix—like the tempered tuba on “Tengo La Voz” or “Almada” or the accelerated rhythm of “Colorado”—but still manage to not upset the downbeat motif. I suspect the decision to call their second album Volume 3 (there isn’t a Volume 2) signifies a symbolic move beyond an intermediate step. Luckily for us the music itself confirms their preemptive intent and portrays an equilibrium that’s never forced or dishonest. If any fault exists it’s the occasional tendency for the album to dip into boiler-plate downtempo (“Bar Inferno,” “Narcoteque”), but those are definite exceptions.

Claims of genre bending or “fusion” have historically been specious, mostly because the results have been desultory and lack nuance. The strange thing is that such failures usually result from an attempt to preserve the constituent parts (Miles Davis’s Doo-Bop). No doubt some will bemoan the Nortec Collective’s efforts as a dis to Norteño, a myopic judgment that ignores their work in question. And if what they’ve done does flagrantly ignore tradition, I’m content with their impressive deviation.