SONORA DINAMITA

cumbia, cumbia

the more you look the more you see. what group?

[audio:Grup_Kien_Cumbia_Nueva.mp3]
Grupo Kien? – Cumbia Nueva

& then there’s tropical kitsch cumbia from the heartland – ZAP! POW! aburdist Colombian pop enjambs comic-thrash breakdowns. The chorus, a self-fulfilling sentence echoed in the first song as well, poses between statement and command: Y bailaremos la cumbia. Y gozaremos la cumbia.

[audio:LaSonoraDinamita_Batman.mp3]
La Sonora Dinamita – Batman

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at the Spain show this Saturday a Venezuelan girl with Colombian parents called her mother so that she could hear the cumbia i was playing. “This doesn’t happen in Madrid!!” An honor to have reached someone down those circuits.

500 kids came to the party! Madrid sube. foto nicked from Sr. Atlantico’s flickr.

rupture+jd madrid

DREAM ISLANDS

luke

go Luke go! years ago he was in a very nice quiet band called Maya Deren that played at a few of our Toneburst parties in Boston.

[audio:Lucky_Dragons_Mirror_Friends.mp3]
Lucky Dragons – Mirror Friends

LD will perform in NYC this saturday. “Lucky Dragons shows are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures– creating equal-power situations in which audience members cooperate amongst themselves, to build a fragile network of digital signals connected by touching on the skin.”

Their new album, Dream Island Laughing Language, is made in other ways, but the live show process sounds fascinating.

& & & &

fairuz

Fairuz. Why not? from the live album Dabkat. (in-depth wikipedia article on the Lebanese megastar)
[audio:Fairuz_Addouara.mp3]
Fairuz – Addouara

COLUMBUS ON HOLD

Columbus, a man of action and intelligence, did not court frivolity. One hand directed Johan to keep swabbing the deck while the other pushed buttons on a tiny Korean phone that didn’t need recharging.

“You said the boat would run on biodiesel!” he shouted into the mobile. A starboard breeze brought tears to his clear blue eyes. At times like these the infinite ocean around him felt like the edges of his mind. Any thought was possible, but everything looked the same in every direction. Canvas sails creaked in the wind. The crew – mostly illiterate – had begun to vandalize the sails with crude drawings of genitalia and caricatures of their captain. The doldrums made everybody restless. The corn oil wasn’t working. And the possibility that he had he been swindled out of all that royal gold filled Columbus with rancor, which in turn exacerbated his heartburn.

“How do you expect me to reach India if my ship has no fucking fuel!?” It was a legitimate question. Rebecca Stead, a sallow-faced English girl staffing Eco-Go’s Bangalore call center two days a week to support her outrageous heroin hobby, didn’t know how to respond. She pushed a yellow button and quietly cradled the phone on its receiver. Eco-Go BioSolutions couldn’t afford wireless headsets yet – at least not for their sales representatives. But the pay was okay. Ten thousand leagues away tinny music poured out of the phone. Rebecca sighed, requested a bathroom break, and went to snort a line. Needles mean habit. This was a hobby.

In the perfumed Iberian courts everything had seemed so easy. Too easy thought Columbus bitterly. Look at him! Columbus stood stranded in the middle of an unknown ocean populated by monsters and mermaids and mannish seals with humanoid chest hair that sang like castratti, unable to control his crew, sick of tuna casserole and vitamin C tabs and dried cod, lugging around 200000 litres of potentially useless corn oil. On hold.