HEATWAVE FM

theheatwave-masterg

Tonight’s radio show – special guest Gervase from London’s Heatwave crew! He’s coming straight from the airport to share “some uk and caribbean sounds – bashment, funky, grime, soca. new tunes. tropical via east london! and we can talk about funky, grime, bassline and so on. that crookers/cudi tune has been no 2 in the charts here for the past few weeks…”

Gabriel Heatwave came on the show back in August 07 (streamable as realaudio) and we’re excited to bring another crew member through. For an appetizing earful, head to their blog.

upcoming guests: Telepathe, Feb. 25.

PITCH IMPERFECT & THE GEKO JONES SHOW

the flip side of auto-tune’s robo-correction is bad/out-of-tune singing, as timeless at auto-tune is new. (I find both performance styles quite compelling, to be honest.) Cumbia Sonidera is filled with folks who just can’t hit those notes – and sing anyway! How can you not appreciate that?

I posted a version of this song a few months ago, by Grupo Ginnsu. This is the Kumbia Sonicos’ pitch-imperfect rendition (debe ser guapo dice R!):

[audio:Cumbia de los Patos.mp3]

Kumbia Sonicos – Cumbia de los Patos

one of my favorite cumbia sonidera subgenres is the injured lover jam. You hurt my heart, she sings (in-tune).

[audio:Tu Heriste Mi Corazon.mp3]

Majeza – Tu Herista Mi Corazon

+ + +

geko jones

on today’s radio show – “Latin/Caribbean music expert & DJ Geko Jones will be joining Rupture. The Colombian-Puerto Rican digger will share with us some of his latest finds from the cutting edge of tropical soundsystem and street music culture, from Mexican tribal guarachero to freshly made ragga-bass mutations and Afro-Colombian soul gems. A deep live mix from Geko Jones — ¡¡No te lo pierdas!!”

if yr in NYC, catch Mr Geko Jones (Que Cojones) live @ APT tomorrow – FREE – holding it down w/ Uproot Andy:

BUT LISTEN ANYWAY

Princess Music at 6919 5th Ave in Bay Ridge (Bay Ridge: R stop) is the best Arab music shop in Brooklyn. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not good. It simply happens to be the best, because the competition is even worse. Princess has some headless black Sambo/Aunt Jemima style ceramic figurines too, although they’re not for sale – they’re decoration.

Good thing Beur.Fm has internet streaming!

beurfm

(Beur = verlan for ‘arabe’ ; verlan = we’ll eat this language from our side out)

Beur Fm is a powerful nationwide FM station in France with a satellite broadcast so family back the in the bled can listen in. They have 5 internet streams: the main station, 100% Maroc, 100% Rai, 100% Kabyle, 100% Orientale, and a new one called Ramadan.

Song and artist (metadata) info on all channels except 100% Maroc… That said, I can tell you that the song right now is by Jil Jilala… with Moulay Abdelaziz Tahiri on guembri. I recognized his stride immediately… so clear. This moment arrives bookmarked by music I can neither recognize nor remember // beauty dovetails drift, also the way smoke works, hope rolled up and burning. to know little. to listen.

ALL WE HEAR IS RADIO GOO-GOO

tomorrow on Mudd Up! radio, tune in for the Eid al-Fitr/Ramadan Special! from breathtaking old recordings of religious music to brand-new celebratory beats from the Muslim world.

upcoming guests in Oct/early November include: banjee bass visionary Kingdom

kingdom

[Kingdom at home in technicolor]

and the amazing & engaged artist Paul Chan. Check this NYT article on Paul & ‘Waiting For Godot in New Orleans’ for background.

Zeitgeist, people. It’s our age – we may as well haunt it.

front

[Paul Chan, from nationalphilistine.com]

and funk carioca MPC wizard Cabide DJ, straight from Rio to do a live sampling/baile funk mayhem set. Seems like his homemade ‘fire sampler’ won’t be allowed in the station. Or the country:

STELFOX AND AN OUD FROM SANAA

A taqsim clears the space. It sweeps to the edges of what’s possible in what’s to come. He coughs – clears his throat. Then begins.

[audio:Vocals+Sanaa_ud.mp3]

Hassan Aoni al-Ajami – Vocals and Sanaa ‘ud

the Mudd Up! Ramadan special radio show will be moved to next week, this song is an appetizer. Lyrics below.

…because today we have a very special guest on the show: British music journalist Dave Stelfox! Widely regarded as one of the leading writers on reggae, Stelfox covers reggae and regional US hiphop for a number of publications, including The Guardian and Wire. Here’s his farewell ‘This Month in Reggae’ column for P-fork, and a Guardian piece on the end of vinyl production in Jamaica (!)

Today Stelfox will share a special selection of British ‘deejay’ music, “lots of fastchat and maybe a little grime”. Expect: wow-thing tunes, deep crates, and the writerly insight to match.

lyrics translation :

13

13

NYC AIRWAVES

NYC Radio airwave sweep, Sunday Sept. 14th.

radio-tower-full

here’s the first selection. Think about this recording in situ: three days after the September 11th commemorations (most visibly, the twin spotlights in the sky marking the World Trade Center’s absence with their enormous shafts of white-blue light, often framed with Olafur Eliasson’s waterfalls in sight – waterfalls which, lovely though they may be, intimate some large dysfunction: impossible waters, the urban landscape disobeying natural law, and then you see that the stated purpose is that of aiding gentrification and tourism, another kind of ending) on an ominously hot and humid mid-September eve, with the commentor talking nonstop about the end of the world, asking you to contemplate it, call us and tell us what you’d do if the world ended tomorrow.

Then he plays a chilling autotune minor-key violence anthem from the hornets’ nest that is Kingston Jamaica, in a post-hurricane Carribbean (there are also commercials asking for aid to Haiti). This Mavado-inspired tune cuts immediately to a Wal-Mart advertisement (“save money, live better: it’s Wal-Mart!”). One type of destruction sells itself attached to another. Adjacency is aid, which is another way of saying that on corporate NYC radio, Wal-Mart ads and Mavado darkness come to us wrapped in the same blanket. The space that is radio here = the system where these things intertwine. So I think to myself: this is what – and how – capitalism sounds like. This music is, to me, incredible; Mavado has hit a nerve, and he and his followers keeping hitting it… And when a station like Hot 97 asks you to call in, they want listener feedback, they want marketing demographic information, that are externalizing the city’s nervous system as they simultaneously hotwire it with the bizarre combination of advertisements (for: usurious ‘debt relief’, the military, used-car pickup, concerts, etc) alongside the latest entertainment offerings from record labels who can afford payola in today’s hemorrhaging (music) economy, palming it on us as populist, which it is, but skewed more towards top-down than ground-up.

After Wal-Mart comes Yankee B’s amazing live performance of Christian dancehall with a strong anti-materialist stance, rhetorically executed so it sounds just like the badman chat it condemns. I’m tempted to get (more) Jamesonian but let’s put that elegant thinker and awkward writer on pause and listen to the radio, which I recorded with my cheap Chinese mp3 (and Ogg, FLAC, etc) player:

[audio:nyc_radio_2008-08-16_20h48m40.mp3]

NYC Radio rip pt 1 – DUPPY KNOW WHO FI FRIGHTEN

+ + +

this next section is notable for 2 reasons: the first piece, about teenage mothers, is the quietest I’ve ever heard Hot 97 – a whole five minutes with just women speaking, without any background music!(in a weird way we may have Palin to thank) Then, its Di Genius, Mavado (singing “we shall overcome”) & others over new Stephen MacGregor.

[audio:nyc_radio_2008-08-16.mp3]

NYC Radio rip pt 2 – TEENAGE MOMS + WE SHALL OVERCOME

MR BOK AND MS MANARA GO MUDD

 

bokbokandmanara

For tomorrow’s radio show (wed. 7-8pm EST) 2 verrrry special guests visiting town will stop by to do some bass damage: Bok Bok & Manara! we’ll chat about what’s bubbling in London then the duo will serve up a likkle mix of things that go bump in the night.

+ tix giveaways to the Skream DubWar, me saying “um”, & high quality realtime FM decentertainment as always.

this Friday B&M are playing Kingdom’s new party (go Kingdom go!). the following they’ll be throwing down @ Trouble & Bass.

Look how nicely we New Yorkers accept total bass invasion by the Brits! There’s something in their water that isnt in ours.

Bok Bok sinks into the bog over at Low End Spasm, whose recent mix starts with a MIDIlicious interpolation of Big Pimpin and/or Abdel-Halim Hafez and sports WATERMELON GRAPHICS.

lespasm

RADIO & LOW-SLUNG MIXES

today’s show will be from 6-8pm! i’m sick but 7 Second Delay is sicker, so i’ll be filling in for their slot. next week: special guest MAGA BO. click for his North American tour dates.

here’s the first of 3 DIY on-location videos Maga Bo did for his upcoming album (myspace for preview), this one in Dakar with Xuman of Pee Froiss fame:

[youtube: Maga Bo – Fire ft. Xuman]

& 2 low-end mixes, fresh from my inboxxx:

Squinchy Jones – Nintendub (a dubstep / rap / 8bit mix from Houston )

Ruff E Nuff – untitled 6th birthday mix (dancehall / raggajungle/ dubstep / rap crew mix, shout to Geroyche)