mudd up!

SPIN premieres an Old Money track today in anticipation of their mixtape Fire In The Dark. “Doctor Doctor” – best Robitussin-themed song you’ve heard in a decade or your money back. #SYRUP #HEALTHCARE #CREAM.

[Auto-Tune matriarch Cher, age 13]

On Friday May 17th, I will be speaking at Performa’s LOUDSPEAKER: A Symposium on the Voice. I will discuss Auto-Tune — check my 2009 Frieze essay — as well as Gbadu and the Moirai Index, my upcoming performance for four vocalists and the stock market. LOUDSPEAKER is free with email reservation.

They say:

An Experimental Event on the voice in contemporary performance featuring artists and musicians Joan La Barbara, Jace Clayton, Florian Hecker, and Alex Waterman.

Friday, May 17, 2013
4:00 – 6:30 pm

The Cooper Union
Frederick P. Rose Auditorium
41 Cooper Square
New York City

Free admission with reservation, rsvp@performa-arts.org

more info

Last Mudd Up Book Clubb, the Naked Singularity meetup, was a great one, as Sergio De La Pava and his wife made a gracious appearance. Sergio was a passionate, funny, and generous guest, sharing insights which made our experience of his excellent novel even better. There was discussion of moral concern, conservatism of the publishing industry, drunk Russians wrestling bears and the plight of the farmers, what trials really read like and lots more, including Lee Ann’s homemade cardamom & pistachio bread. Delicious.

And now, as Endless Winter reluctantly starts to consider Spring — and now that I’ve got my personal piano month out of the way– we turn to our favorite hilarity-inducing Austrian misanthrope, rhythm master, one-paragraph-book-writer par excellence and italicist of exquisite conviction: Thomas Bernhard!
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On Sunday June 2, we’re meeting in Manhattan to discuss a splendid pair of losers — Thomas Bernhard’s 1983 novel The Loser, about Glenn Gould and two failed virtuoso pianists, and Gay Talese’s 1964 Esquire essay “The Loser”, about boxer Floyd Patterson. Talese published 37 articles on Patterson — THIRTY SEVEN! — which makes him arguably as obsessive as Bernhard’s unnamed narrator.

This inspired pairing comes courtesy of clubber Brad. The Talese is collected in his Silent Season of a Hero (along with 7 other Floyd Patterson pieces). If you’d like to join the Mudd Up Book Clubb, you can sign-up – please read the fine print there, especially since we’re near/beyond capacity, OK? OK.

& remember: be the Steinway, not the person playing the Steinway

& here’s the Mudd Up Book Clubb reading list in reverse chronological order:

Sergio De La Pava, A Naked Singularity

Shelley Jackson, “A Report on Certain Curious Objects, Believed to Be Words in an Unknown Language of the Dead”

Rita Indiana Hernandez, Papi

G. Willow Wilson, Alif, The Unseen

Michal Ajvaz, The Other City

Carmen Laforet, Nada

Patrik Ouředník, Europeana

Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber

Michael Taussig, My Cocaine Museum

Tatyana Tolystaya, The Slynx

Augusto Moterroso, Mister Taylor

Vladimir Sorokin, Ice Trilogy

Lauren Beukes, Zoo City

Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Juan Goytisolo, Exiled from Everywhere

Cesar Aira, How I Became a Nun

Maureen F. McHugh, Nekropolis

It’s true: the Mudd Up Book Clubb lives increasingly offline, but these posts form a useful public record, tracks in the mud, if you will – so here we go:

This Sunday, April 28th, we’re meeting to discuss Sergio De La Pava’s wonderful, humane, laugh-out-loud funny, 689 page novel involving a public defender in New York City: A Naked Singularity (2008 ex libris, 2012 U Chicago Press). The opening chapter is a thing of wonder – try it and you’ll be hooked.

Book clubber Dan put me on to this; I recommend his thoughtful review from back when it was self-published. Dan writes:

“while the book is long, it’s never imposing. . . This is a book deeply concerned with the preterite: those who don’t have the resources to get themselves represented by others. It’s refreshing to find a recent New York novel that doesn’t bother to mention Williamsburg or Park Slope; the Upper East Side or Upper West Side might be mentioned in passing, but the Village, the East Village, Chelsea, the Lower East Side, the neighborhoods of New York that are seen in movies and literary fiction are absent from this book. There’s plenty left over; but we don’t usually read this. And this also stands out in that it’s a novel of work: Casi is a public defender, and spends most of his time at his job. The job isn’t lionized here: the protagonist is actively trying to be a good man, but he is decidedly not a hero by virtue of his work alone: the other occupants of his office are noticeably flawed, as he is. . .I’m also struck by how the book, comical as it often is, never has recourse to anything resembling magical realism.”

Also, boxing.

So! A Naked Singularity. Sunday. Book Clubb. Next up: sweet dumpling Thomas Bernhard. Stay muddy.

Here’s the Mudd Up Book Clubb reading list (you join by recommending a book, although we are somewhat full…) in reverse chronological order:

Rita Indiana Hernandez, Papi

Shelley Jackson, “A Report on Certain Curious Objects, Believed to Be Words in an Unknown Language of the Dead”

G. Willow Wilson, Alif, The Unseen

Michal Ajvaz, The Other City

Carmen Laforet, Nada

Patrik Ouředník, Europeana

Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber

Michael Taussig, My Cocaine Museum

Tatyana Tolystaya, The Slynx

Augusto Moterroso, Mister Taylor

Vladimir Sorokin, Ice Trilogy

Lauren Beukes, Zoo City

Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Juan Goytisolo, Exiled from Everywhere

Cesar Aira, How I Became a Nun

Maureen F. McHugh, Nekropolis

My new album — the first under my own name — was released last week! The Julius Eastman Memory Depot. There’s been a wave of great, thoughtful press: an action-packed feature on my work in The Guardian, a 7.8 Pitchfork review, a spot on NPR, and lots more. If you’d like to buy the album, Bandcamp offers downloads & physical CDs for the best price/money-to-artist ratio, or you can use iTunes | Amazon etc. This WQXR album-of-the-week profile is an excellent introduction to the project.

I’m doing 5 performances of The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner this April, accompanied by a dream team of talent: pianists David Friend and Emily Manzo, vocalist Arooj Aftab, and special guest Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. Arooj wrote the closing song with me, and it gives you a taste of the additional scenes included in the live performance version. These shows are not to be missed! Two grand pianos and electronics makes for lovely sonics, the musicians are top-notch… plus my actorly debut?! April dates below:

April 5 + 6 – world debut! Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati.
April 21 – MoMA PS1, New York City.
April 25 + 26, Liquid Music series, St.Paul Chamber Orchestra space, St. Paul Minnesota. w/ additional pianists deVon Gray and Bryan Nichols.

OTHER EVENTS THIS MONTH!!!

Tues April 2 – I’ll be speaking on ‘Rights, Rogues, Refugees’ panel at FFFFFAT LAB’s Gold show @ Eyebeam. I intend to explain my ideas of NON-LINEAR LEGAL POWER via cumbia sonidera, stop & frisk, and copyright’s cold watch
Wed April 3 – talk at intermedia class @ U. of Cincinnati/DAAP 1:30-3:30pm. JEMD/Sufi Plug Ins. Open to public!
Fri April 5 – unofficial JEMD afterparty in Cincinnati
Fri April 12 – DJ /rupture at Zemos98 Festival in Sevilla, Spain !!!
Wed April 17 – Keynote talk at Brooklyn College’s Caribbean Studies Conference.
Fri April 18 – ‘Migrant Locals’ all-star panel at EMP Conference, NYC, moderated by Wayne Marshall

This Saturday March 16th, I will join L.A.’s contagiously fun latin roots dance band Very Be Careful for a welcome-the-spring-with-a-sweat-sacrifice party at Brooklyn’s Littlefield! VBC specialize in fast accordion jams throwing in vallenato, cumbia, and more. For this special set, I’ll play mostly NYC cumbia poblana, joined by Oaxacan malandrín Talacha on the mic, sonidero style. For a taste of what we’ll bring, you can pick up our mix CD with Sonido Martines available only Tacos Zaragoza in the East Village (ask for it!), or check the excerpt below.

Saturday March 16: DJ Rupture & Very Be Careful @ Littlefield, Brooklyn.

today at 7pm I am moderating a talk on global hiphop in times of social change at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, speaking with Amkoullel, Deeb, El General (the Tunisian one), and Shadia Mansour.

tomorrow, Friday March 8, I’ll be at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, DJing the opening party of their ‘ON! Handcrafted Digital Playgrounds’ exhibit. My first time playing in the city, so come on through!

Early April I’m returning to the Contemporary Arts Center with pianists David Friend, Emily Manzo, and vocalist Arooj Aftab, to debut the Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner performance! More on the JEMD tour soon; here’s a nice preview feature from Cincinnati City Beat newspaper.

Saturday, March 16th, I’m doing a special all-cumbia set @ Littlefield, with L.A.’s premier roots latin rabblerousing band, Very Be Careful! I’ll have Talacha on the mic sonidero style, too. Info.

Sad but true — after 5 & a half years of weekly broadcasts, today marks the last episode of my WFMU radio show, Mudd Up! I rarely played the same song twice, so rather than ‘miss’ the show, I suggest that you use WFMU’s incredible archive to stream/podcast approximately 300 hours of Mudd Up! The show was as much about exploring ideas of music as playing any single sound. To all the listeners who got muddy over the years — it was never easy listening, which is precisely why we were there — y’all are awesome and quite literally none of this would have been possible without your support. Thanks too, to the dozens of incredible guests who, like me, volunteered their time to come share what they do. Likewise the production assistants. I never mentioned it on-mic, but Mudd Up! was re-broadcast by a number of great, like-minded radio stations across Europe, airing weekly in Marseilles, Brussels, Berlin, and more…

Why stop? Every end gifts a beginning. This year I’m working on several exciting large-scale projects that are taking me in new directions. If you dug the mudd, you’ll be more than ready for what comes next!

First up: I’m releasing an album on New Amsterdam Records in late March, followed by an April tour with myself, pianists David Friend & Emily Manzo, vocalist Arooj Aftab, and writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. That’s just the tip of the iceberg…

I encourage you to sign-up for my email newsletter to keep in the loop. Things are just getting started.

Internet, what internet? My new mix CD is available only at a taco shop in Manhattan.

Yes — Sonido Martines & I each made a 30-minute mix of “cumbia cumbia, not nueva cumbia” for your listening pleasure. The hourlong CD is available exclusively at Tacos Zaragoza in the East Village (14th + A), $8. Treating MUSIC as FOOD.

NOTE: some people have had problems with corrupted CDs. If you’ve purchased a CD and it doesn’t read well, leave a comment with snapshot of the CD. Be sure to include your email address in the field (only I can read it) and we’ll make things better…

For my half-hour I used all cumbias purchased in Brooklyn , so it skews heavily towards cumbias poblanas, mexican cumbias, tunes make in the States. Shoutouts include: Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, New Jersey, Virginia, Baltimore, Las Carolinas, Ellay… kinda functions as a map of where Mexicans are strong in the US! There’s no tracklist but that’s OK because everyone is always shouting out their name anyhow, and my man Talacha comes on as sonidero. Here’s the 1st 10 minutes of my mix.

This Saturday I’ll be playing a very special show with Zs as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival here in NYC’s lovely sounding Merkin Concert Hall. (I recorded the twin pianos on my upcoming album, The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, at the Merkin.) Saturday will open with 2 half-hour solo sets from the Zs & I. Then — after an intermission! — comes an hourlong collaborative piece. This is where thing’ll get really interesting. Some notes from our brainstorm/plotting session:

It’s been a long time since I’ve had an opportunity to do a semi-improvised semi-structured collaboration with musicians. Despite the much-lauded (and real) dancer-DJ hive mind, it’s hard to shake off the legacy of DJ as perpetual soloist. In other words: it’s great fun to explore the turntables as an ensemble instrument & that’s why Saturday’s concert is so appealing to me.

In addition, you can do all sorts of things (like play with quietLOUD dynamics) at a seated venue that would be literally impossible (or at least inaudible) in da club. While this sort of experimental festival arrangement can happen fairly frequently in Europe, it is a true rarity stateside. So I strongly encourage you to come out & support. Damage is $25 but it’ll be worth it, and it’s my last hometown gig as DJ /rupture for awhile.

SATURDAY KEYWORDS: Wolf Government, Sufi Plug Ins, Needlework, Cloud Mechanic, Empty Gymnasium.

BONUS: I’ll have my hands-on-mixer projection setup going (photo above), which is like free DJ lessons for turntablists and follow-the-chaos/demystification for everyone else.

FUN FACT: Zs drummer Greg Fox (who is involved in 6 thousand cool projects including Guardian Alien, Ben Frost, former Liturgy etc) uses Sufi Plug Ins in this wild arpeggiated way, which you’ll get to hear.

Here are two images I instagramed while recording @ the Merkin this December: