MUSLIMGAUZE

“Muslin Gaze”, an essay I wrote on Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze was just published in the summer issue of Middle Eastern arts & culture magazine BIDOUN. The print version is reliably lush and well worth seeking out.

You can read the essay online here.

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nice to have words in print. expect more soon: this blog post = me procrastinating from another long piece for a journal… i’m so late for deadline that i’m terrified they’ll deploy their intern-assassin to my home.

Here’s a Muslimgauze tune I reference in the article, from his 1996 album Gun Aramaic.

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Muslimgauze – 8 A.M., Tel Aviv, Islamic Jihad

BOSTON BOUCE

both me & Nettle will be playing in Denmark soon, but i’m lookin’ fwd to this, as DJing on the radio & w/ friends in Boston was how my life in music began. plus, on the December US tour w/ The Ex, Boston/Cambridge was BY FAR the rudest place we encountered, especially the bouncers at the Middle East Downstairs, and so it’ll be nice to bounce that bad taste out of my mouth with W&W, Flack (currently on tour in Australia), and more..

The image “http://babel.massart.edu/~flackett/bounce2web.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

cut n pasted promo text: “The first-ever Bouncement at the Linwood transformed a metal venue into a booming dance club, and Part 2 won’t be much different. Headlined by such an accomplished and Boston-bred artist as DJ /Rupture, we expect madness.

Basstown and Beat Research present:
BOUNCEMENT 2
Featuring:
DJ /rupture (Decks n EFX)
Wayne and Wax (Beats and Rhymes)
Baltimoroder (DJ Set)
w/ DJ Flack (DJ Set)
& Daviday (DJ Set)
Visuals by Zebbler

@ Great Scott
1222 Commonwealth Ave, Allston, MA 02134
MBTA Access: Harvard Ave. Green Line “B”
(617) 566-9014
Saturday July 28th 9pm-2am 21+
$5.00

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/deejayrupture
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/basstownpresents
Website: http://www.mashit.com/beatresearch

POPULAR GOODZ

a popular guide to unpopular musickennyg

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if you haven’t been paying attention to the Genre Known as Grime lately, i’d recommend checking Durrty Goodz’ new 9-track EP, Axiom. It’s shockingly good. (Has he always been this on-fire?)

As a grime MC, Durrty’s taste in backing beats is unbeatable: riddims by Bass Clef, Coki, Fireworkz, and more. haven’t had time to absorb lyrics & digest his mic-persona-aura, but there are some virtuoso, challenging flows around those beats. Case in point:

Durrty Goodz – Axiom

blubber!

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while i’m an advocate of self-released music — don’t eliminate the middleman, become him/her — my brothers in grime should either spend more time with photoshop or hire a designer. Goodz loses points for his X-Files / Star Trek cover, which feels like wack German techno from 15 years ago:

DurrtyGoodzEP

Yes, that is a red fingerprint in outer-space.

4th SPECIAL

Tune in today, no excuses, play it loud, make new neighbors: Dissident Bar-B-Que Special .

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– – –

a year or two ago i wrote:

RZA wipes angel dust off the sampler and stares into his computer monitor. Star simulation screensaver. He thinks about sticky rope. What was that that Mingus was playing with? Maybe it was a bundle of cotton that looked like rope. Whatever it was he could rip it so easily. He was strong… but it was sticky, wasn’t it?

White wife and a shotgun in the studio. Life isn’t funny, it’s true, and great people get evicted. Can you clean computer screens with Windex? Can you drink Windex? Where’s my damn cellphone? How old would Mingus be if people didn’t die? Maybe it was rope-looking type wax & age wouldn’t matter so much. He’s gone and we can’t ever ask him anything.

We can only listen around the corners.

– – –

Mingus, the film that inspired this entry, plays at Brooklyn’s BAM this weekend

MAGHREB REREAD

Today’s song is the title track from Gaâda Diwane de Béchar‘s album Ben Bouziane. The France-based musicians hail from Béchar western Algeria, btwn the Sahara and the Atlas (mountains), natural setting for their afro-Maghrebi sound. Usually i’m burnt-out on anything that could be considered gnawa fusion, but Gaâda, at least on this cassette, nail it consistently with crisp original arrangements and tight playing (“le groupe a conçu son monde autour d’une relecture moderne de presque toutes musiques africaines” explains their MurdochSpace blurb).

Which reminds me: anybody know of a good cheap place to take French lessons in NYC? I’m tired of bluffing my way thru francophone websites & conversations…

 

Ga̢da Diwane de B̩char РBen Bouziane

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They namecheck Nass El Ghiwane & Tinariwen as influences (Tinariwen also namecheck NeG as an influence), partaking in north Africa’s excellent tradition of what you could call ‘cosmopolitan roots’: bands repping the local (one amazing travel web writes “Béchar is the largest town in the western part of Algerian Sahara, and the administrative centre of the Saoura region. That’s more or less it. A place to stop, use as a base, stock up on food. But there is nothing at all to see here.”) while doing a self-conscious ‘relecture moderne’ (modern rereading, right?) of various relevant musical traditions, played on acoustic instruments, but wired into MySpace & the French world music market.

Local is good, but French concert revenue and arts funding is better. These are non-exclusive entities, and we are the richer for it.

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(Homage to Germaine Tillion, Southern Algeria, 1938-39, Dr John 2005 creativecommons flickr.)

Also check his Migrados series, “A current project documenting the experiences of migrants in Spain, the spaces they occupy, their journeys, and the traces that they leave behind”. from which comes the following, Immigrant Wall Drawing, Madrid, Spain, Nov 2003. Lavapiés no less:
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