Author: jace

DISORIENTED

in next weeks’ news– my band Nettle will perform at Berlin’s Transmediale this wednesday jan 31., with renaissance badboy Daniel Perlin on joining us on video.

the night, Crossings, looks promising:The A-Trio (with everyone’s favorite Beiruiti cartoonist/blogger/free improv musico, Mazen Kerbaj), the Sublime Frequencies crew (why yes, SubFreq used my friends’ music and images on their Radio Morocco CD with no attribution or permission or payment whatsoever!), and the Staalplaat Soundsystem.

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& i’ll be in Hamburg on Feb 2 (golden pudel. w/ DJ Nron), and Barcelona on Feb 3. Reboot party @ Can Kadena.

here’s a song from Sublime Frequencies’ Choubi Choubi! Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq compilation. The blown-out cassette compression/distortion gives it a raucous, strangely solid sound. For fans of Muslimgauze! Muslimgauze’s Bryn Jones orientalized the Middle East, yes, but he also fetishized the poor (re)production quality of its cheap tapes, re-creating that sound quality obsessively. The two activities seem related. Ventriloquism. Distortion & distance, tapes loops & tiny strings. I’ve been guilty, too.

Bawn – Ya Binaya Goumi

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MO’ AFRIQUE

Ghislain Poirier’s Mix Afrique generated quite a bit of traffic here so I’d like to direct y’all to Matt Yanchyshyn’s equally generous assortment of African hiphop. Won’t be up for long!

Matt’s tastes tend toward the smoother end of the spectrum, laidback lush productions a nice complement to Ghis’s Afrocrunk selection. One hand can’t clap, one turntable can’t mix…

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W&W introduces me to juke (via these embedded flash players that crash my win2k firefox)

what have you done?

(some of DJ Clent’s productions have that strange synth-fluttery grime feel, yes, bring it.)

RUPTURE SAMPLERS & DJ DRAMA DRAMA

In today’s news, a French rap crew has sampled me with great results. Listen to La Route es Longue. V-System do a wholesale chop on the synth/bass/beat of ‘DJ Rupture- Dem Nuh Know Me’. I’ve been calling the RIAA to see if they can dial-in some sort of long-range missile attack, or at least get a crack team of French Legionnaires to arrest all members of V-System for copyright violation. Bang!

the official unofficial Mudd Up! position on the DJ Drama drama is that a major label executive who couldn’t place his rapper on one of Drama’s Gangsta Grillz mixtapes snitched to the RIAA, using the RIAA’s brute, twitchy unintelligence against itself.

the official Mudd Up! position is that we don’t give a —.* But Free the DJs does, and they look poised to continue examining legal aspects of the Drama drama after mainstream analysis subsides.

* if we want to talk about American legal system injustice, inept RIAA mixtape squads are the least of our worries… and if we want to condemn archaic ideas about intellectual property/copyright, lets hit pharmaceutical patents and generic AIDS drugs etc first…

GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOW

Estrella Morente has been having a bad day. One of the worst in months. Her country house is filled with scorpions. They have come crawling out of a nearby ravine whose creek now smells metallic. This land isn’t fertile. That’s what yerma means.

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her new album is called Mujeres, and her new audience is called people who saw Almodóvar’s Volver, for in that film she sings the title song while on-screen Penelope Cruz lip-syncs it. Everyone wins!

This song, Zambra, harkens back to the flamenco sound of a hundred years past (note geriatric Grupo de Laúdes del Albaicín in the video)

Quitate de la ventana porque voy a suspirar,
mis suspiros son de fuego y te pueden abrasar,
¿que quieres de mi, que quieres de mi,
si hasta el agua que yo bebo te la tengo que pedir?

Get away from the window, because I’m going to sigh.
My sighs are fire and I could roast you.
What do you want from me, what do you want —
must I even ask you for the water I drink?

Estrella Morente – Zambra

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MATSULI GEM DELIVERY SERVICE

Matsuli music, a blog of “music african and otherwise” has been unearthing gems lately…

vintage afroyoutubery & album rips. from late 70s Jah Shaka dance footage to a Syliphone compilation of Guinean bands from the 60s & 70s — a period i love — replete with hefty label discography.

(in the past, i’ve upped Syliphone tracks here, here, and here).

the Vieux Farka Toure solos are worth watching. He’ll be touring east coast USA in february.

Uncanny, amazing, casual. The talent has passed so completely from father to son it seems as if he’s channeling… also, Vieux makes it appear unbearably easy. Tuning-up becomes the intro to a massive solo, he smiles, looks, twists about (why is the lens round?). Sparks!

I’M STARTING TO SEE SPACESHIPS

announces Bohagon, a rapper with a name from a sci fi novel.. or something. And, as screwed and chopped by DJ Michael Watts on the Swishahouse Before Kappa 2k6 mixtape, you can kinda believe it. Vibrating spaceships with too many lights & alien observations.

Watts’ sense of restraint as a DJ is phenomenal. It’s harder to not touch a record than to touch it. Harder still to touch it with inertial haiku. Why escape the gravity? Spaceships are here, unearthed. courtesy Quieto.

Swishahouse – Bo Hagon – Wuz Up ft Crime Mob and D4L

so in Houston they slow things down. some people come from places where they speed things up. London grimesters Ruff Squad crank up Fantan Mojah’s heartbreakingly beautiful acoustic ballad one-drop ital-liturgical megahit “Hail the King” into…

Ruff Squad – It No Take Nothing

Rinse radio rip courtesy of Brooklyn’s Mode Raw (who designed Timeblind’s Ghostification EP, among other things). M. Raw tidied & indexed Ruff’s recent show (dec 15), two more excerpts

weighty

Ruff Squad – I’m from a place ft. Maxwell D

IN THE MOMENT, AGAIN

another last minute announcement concerning TONITE: “This week at Pure Fire, we have a slew of dope guests. First, DJ Rupture will be tag-teaming with labelmate Maga Bo promptly from 10 – 11 p.m. If you missed his sold-out Bunker show last Friday, here’s another more intimate chance! Later that night Brooklyn’s Funkworthy crew will be spinning dancehall alongside the normal residents. Come early, stay late, dance in-between!!!

HAPPINESS IN A MUG OF WARM TEA

He was fanatic for green tea.‭ ‬In particular a Chinese brand whose name translated to‭ “‬Proud Countryside‭” ‬which,‭ ‬unfortunately,‭ ‬was sprayed with American-manufactured pesticides,‭ ‬pesticides containing trace amounts of a known carcinogen‭ ‬–‭ ‬this is why the U.S.‭ ‬was pushing them on China‭; ‬in‭ ‬2003‭ ‬they became illegal to sell to American farmers so the factories simply exported‭ ‬–‭ ‬which would later give him an operable brain tumor,‭ ‬manifesting itself as acute memory loss and an aversion to commas‭ ‬or any sort of pause in his speech or writing. This made for a mesmerizing damaged monotone,‭ ‬words evenly spaced,‭ ‬devoid of intonation,‭ ‬even when excited,‭ ‬even when shouting in anger,‭ ‬which he did more often now that nobody noticed.

For even then he sounded like a robot on heroin.‭ ‬Word got around.‭ ‬People started to pay good money to hear him read Anaïs Nin books.‭ ‬B‭ = ‬O‭ = ‬R‭ = ‬E‭ = ‬D‭ = ‬O‭ = ‬M reserves a stab at the sublime.‭ ‬Back and forth,‭ ‬back and forth‭ ‬–‭ ‬but it’s hard to live in a world where you know exactly what will cause your cancer or disease.‭ ‬He didn’t then,‭ ‬in his tea-drinking days,‭ ‬and this is what explained his happiness.

MIX AFRIQUE

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just a week into ’07 and our Montreal point-man Ghislain Poirier kicks it with a powerful 30min. mix of hiphop from Africa.

Ghislain Poirier – Mix Afrique

ingredients

1. 37mph – All In The Name Of Fun ( South Africa )
2. Tuks – Clap ( South Africa )
3. Xplastaz – Msimu Kwa Msimu (Tanzania)
4. Peter Miles – Owango RMX ( Uganda )
5. Awadi – Stoppez les criminels feat. Tiken Jah Fakoli ( Senegal )
6. 994 Crew – Bad Boy ( Mauritania )
7. Unathi – Sgubhu Sam’ ( South Africa )
8. Abass – Zibi zibi zaba ( Senegal )