On Saturday October 11th, we bring the Julius Eastman Dinner to Los Angeles with a performance at REDCAT! Very excited for our West Coast debut. Eastman fans are in for a rare treat: the evening begins with Amy Knowles presenting her interpretation of Eastman’s “Crazy Nigger” for looped electronic percussion.
Two days before that, on Thursday October 9th, I will speak at the Art Center in Pasadena. The talk is free and open to the public. info PDF. OK gang — see you in the sunlight.
Today, EarthDay, Thursday April 22, I’ll be DJing in Pittsburgh @ The Brillo Box. details.
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The cat pours the dog a stiff drink. The dog longs for opposable thumbs so he can reload the shotgun. His furry hindquarters rest on a handmade stool imported from Japan; the animals like it here because everything’s sized for them. But maybe this bar is in Japan (that would explain the good lighting) and the stools are locally sourced and it’s the liquor that’s imported. The cat and dog aren’t talking so we can’t get any clues from their accents. Honestly, we could be anywhere. Even Los Angeles.
Very Be Careful are an L.A. band who play Colombian vallenato with a hardcore purist aesthetic. Which of course is totally impure, willfully anachronistic, and leads to strangely dry album production yet their live shows are meant to be quite lively. I am suspicious of people who are suspicious of “remixes” and “synthesizers” although I do love accordion, voice, percussion, and respect this band for zeroing in on that, channeling OG vallenato heroes like Alejo “Big Black Man” Durán, writing new songs in an old style and keeping the VST plug-ins switched off even though they’re recording & mixing with computers just like everybody else.
VBC disdain ‘the contemporary vogue for hybridity’. They say: “[Ours] is a purist style that strives to pay tribute to the classics, and we aim to compose in the same vein. This is a greater achievement for us than dropping in some obscure unrelated beat to the music.”
An unauthorized cumbia remix of VBC (“Mi Fantasma”), stripped of identifying meta-data, achieved popularity in Buenos Aires bailantas against the band’s wishes. The remixer didn’t do much, this is the power of laziness!
And here’s the original version of Very Be Careful’s “Mi Fantasma”, an eerie, powerful track (someone have time to post a quickie translation in the comments?) whether or not a young Argentine has slapped a guacharaca-and-kick loop on top:
Today on Mudd Up!, 7-8pm, WFMU, we will be airing an exclusive all-vinyl mix from Los Angeles’ DJ LENGUA! It’s cracking, full of latin crate-digger gifts, visionary cumbia, overdriven Colombian psychedelia, and more.
For an intro to Lengua, check his rebajada-style Mota mix or this nice interview… and tune in tonight.
In a few weeks DJ Lengua will be joining us in-studio for a live interview to discuss the music and his participation in the Museo del Barrio’s Phantom Sightings show.
Lucky Dragons’ performances overturn conventions of electronic music with generosity and grace. Today, Monday October 12 7-8pm on WFMU 91.1fm, they will join me to share sounds and discuss the relationship between social and sonic experimentation, Los Angeles, erasing the barriers between performer and audience, and more.
Lucky Dragons opened for Thom Yorke’s new band debut (both nights) in L.A. last week!! You know, that new band with Flea of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. So we expect 73,365 new L.D. fans will tune in. On Tuesday Lucky Dragons will perform @ Industry City out in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
For a taste, check the incredible Fader TV episode where the editors gather around LD’s setup, making music by touching each other while handling Luke’s cables (with hand-knit sleeves) and freshly-gathered rocks, as he explains what’s happening (although the description/demystification doesn’t make it any less magical):
Says Light Industry: “Lucky Dragons, whose participatory performances jam 21st century musique concrète with the fervor of a tent revival, will play around and variously in dialog with five films by Rose Lowder, a leading light of French experimental cinema. Rigorously composed through single-frame 16mm shooting and elaborate in-camera editing, her work creates complex and rhythmic explorations of perception and its limits. The evening will run up digital against analog, silence against noise, and promises to be a heady a/v experience.”
Subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast if you want downloadable versions: , Mudd Up!RSS. Listen, get involved, throw in comments, questions. Again, Mondays @ 7 PM. For those outside our FM broadcast range, WFMU offers live streaming and even has its own free iPhone app!
A ridiculous amount of things are happening in Los Angeles this weekend (so many that I’m afraid I won’t be able to return to Mashti Malone’s for more faludeh & rose saffron ice cream).
I can’t believe I’m A) back in America B) back in LA and C) still awake.
But all these things seem to be true.
Postopolis kicks off today, and tonite I’m playing WILDNESS. BOTH EVENTS ARE FREE, LA.
Today’s ‘Postopolis pick’ is Fritz “Edible Estates” Haeg, who will be our very first speaker, at 5pm. Fritz’s long story made frightfully short: imagine if American lawns were transformed into food-bearing community gardens?
him & more… to come.
Then from 10pm-2am. join us @ Wildness! myself, Tammie Brown, and the Wildness crew @ SILVER PLATTER 2700 W. 7TH. They say: “Wildness is a self sustaining event. our mission is to invent new ways of visualizing, physically experiencing, and talking about complex identity politics that surround our queer lived experience through late night art-making and party having.” free forever libre para siempre
vallenato is like cumbia’s speedy cousin. tune into my radio show tonite to catch a live interview with Arturo of L.A.’s acoustic vallenato ambassadors, Very Be Careful!
VIVA LOS ANGELES!
Mudd Up! 
