NYC SONIDERA

cumbiaGer5

La Congona continues serving your cumbia needs (check my recent post on Tepito & the Superflex book), but MuddUp! wouldn’t be the same if i didn’t post up some jams here too.

Here’s an excellent NYC sonidero track. It’s basically a big advertisement enhanced by ill synths and that stomping sampled beat.

[audio:Formula5_LaCumbiaMaestra.mp3]

Formula 5 – La Cumbia Maestra

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I’m really into La Vagancia and their vibe – dark dark dark. This song is about… The collapse of love across distance. Dwindling remittances from folks working in foreign countries (nearly 24 billion was sent home to Mexico by workers in America last year!).

Bleak realism, crisp percussion, minor notes stuck in the throat. “Urban cumbia… from town to city”

LA-VAGANCIA2-004

y de la plata que el mando ya no queda nada / “and now nothing’s left of that money he sent”

[audio:LaVagancia-La_Historia_de_Linda_y_Roberto.mp3]

La Vagancia – La Historia de Linda y Roberto

BUENA ONDA NUEVA JORK

NYC’s latin radio was killing it this weekend. I’ve got evidence (mostly culled from La Mega).

Exhibit A starts off w/ ersatz Brazilian bassline then goes into a Max Romeo (Prodigy sample-source) edit which moves into a Mavado ‘So Special’ speedy house/baltimore remix thingy, and on. Heavy ‘buttbending’ mixology throughout. The Don Omar “Cuando yo me muera” jam – can anybody ID this?

[audio:2009-02-28_01h37m47.mp3]

MuddUp Radio Rip – Exhibit A

If that’s not enough – to raise the bar a few notches – here’s 18 minutes of merengue de la kalle / mambo violento / Dominican gabba. Omega owns this session.

[audio:2009-02-28_00h31m20.mp3]

MuddUp Radio Rip – Exhibit B

TONITE’S PARTY INFO

party might ram up. Just finished debating w/ Geko Jones (check the interview & minimix) about the # of bassbins to bring.
Also: A new Rupture cumbia mix CD will be on sale for cheap: K-K-Kumbia!
……………………..

The Dutty Artz family is back with another installation of its tropicaliente beats and bassline party: New York Tropical. Residents Geko Jones, Matt Shadetek and DJ/ Rupture will be joined by Brooklyn’s hometown heroines Bunny Rabbit. This is your last chance to chance to check B.R. out before they head to Easten Europe and spread the Cult of Miracles gospel. Bed Stuy get ready!

NEW YORK TROPICAL 3: OUT N’ BAD
FEB 20th @ Kodeez
834 Myrtle Ave @ Marcy (G Train to Myrtle-Willoughby)

DJ/Rupture (Soot Records, Dutty Artz)
Geko Jones (Que Bajo?! Dutty Artz)
Matt Shadetek (Dutty Artz)
+ special guests Bunny Rabbit!

$3 PBR, $4 Mixed Drinks, $4 Wine
$2 Hotdogs, $3 Hamburgers, $4 Cheeseburgers (yes, cheeseburgers)
Doors @ 10pm – $10
Reduced $8 dollar before 11pm

DUTTYARTZ.COM

BROOKLYN HEATER UPPER

a last-minute late winter celebration:

NEW YORK TROPICAL: OUT & BAD. friday feb 20th.

Bunny Rabbit, DJ /rupture, and Geko Jones. holding it down at some Greenpoint basement, where we’ll bring Grimm’s reggae bassbins to up the bump. como si fuera un house party!

details & flyer in a bit. I will play this song

[audio:Schlachthofbronx-We_Nah_Fraid_Baby_Cham_Demarco.mp3]

Schlachthofbronx – We Nah Fraid (Baby Cham & Demarco)

and probably this one

[audio:Madera Limpia_la lenta_schlachthofbronx_remix.mp3]

Madera Limpia – La Lenta (Schlachtofbronx remix)

A few months ago Geko Jones tipped me off to the above Bavarian heat – Schlachtofbronx, a name we’ll eventually have to learn how to pronounce, because they’re so great. Who knows what tunes he’s got now.

Bunny Rabbit and the Cult of Miracles are bringing “a drum kit”.

THIS IS REAL BECAUSE WE BELIEVE IT IS, they say:

real1

TWENTYFIRST

this Saturday New York, you’re invited to the opening of “Twentyfirst”, a group (art) show I’ve got a collaborative piece in.

Other artists include: Fritz Haeg – the greatest gardener of our time (no joke !), The Center For Land Use Interpretation, Haegue Yang, Rocío Rodríguez Salceda, Mariana Mogilevich, and more.

Twentyfirst @ the Silver Shed on 119th W. 25th st ph.

Says the gallery:

“Jace Clayton and Rocío Rodríguez Salceda’s collaborative piece takes on generic file attribution and authorship issues of obliterated audio & visual meta-data, reflecting on the potential of cumulative knowledge and the information ecology of memory, erasure, and the recirculating of digital cultural offerings via global formats of compressed data. Clayton is giving away a limited edition CD containing all of his commercially available audio – each bearing the same title (DJ_Rupture.mp3), as Rodríguez Salceda prints found images (all titled “foto_02.jpg”) on edible strips of rice paper, for public consumption. “

T21 meagher back7

NOCHE DE CUMBIA

tonite, Tues November 11, Williamburg, I’ll be joining residente Geko Jones @ the new QUE BAJO party. Cumbia fans come through!

QBajo RuptQBajo RuptQBajo Rupt

I’ll be playing exclusively cumbia colombiana and cumbia sonidera (read: no crunk cumbia, no mashups, etc). Just that sweet slow shuffle.

I’ve been digging deep into sonidera lately, finding a lot of El Hijo de la Cumbia production on CDs floating around the Mexican sonidera scene in Brooklyn shops. They never list the producers, but his style stands out. Here’s one I found last week. Vox by La Contra.

Says El Hijo: “de donde lo conseguistes ? jajajaa ya ni me acordaba de el .. ”

[audio:LaContra_CumbiaDeLaContra.mp3]

La Contra – Cumbia de la Contra (prod. El Hijo de la Cumbia)

THE FOURTH LANGUAGE IS SILENCE

we’re in the middle of Ramandan (“they” are in the middle of Ramadan), so – among many other things – it’s a decent time to catch Arabic music performances around the world. That’s the good news.

The bad news: many Arabic and “world music” events in New York City target an audience who can afford $40 tickets. For example: Damascus sufi Hamza Shakkur with the Al-Kindi ensemble and The Whirling Dervishes of Damascus, this Sunday, $37-42. Steep!

Here’s what we of the hungry wallets will be missing:
[audio:Al-SalamAl-RabiTaqsimHuzamTaqsimSikahMawwalSikah.mp3]
Hamza Shakkur – Al-Salam Al-Rabi (14.5 MB) [via]


whirling dervishes and hamza shakkur

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

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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

THIS WEEKEND IN BASS

fiesta soot sept 13

this Saturday in Manhattan, the Soot gang’s all here. (a real accomplishment considering we’re nonstop touring and live on 3 different continents).

then on Sunday I’ll be setting up shop alongside other “Superstar DJs” at the Brooklyn Flea and selling some choice records from my collection.

info on both events:

FIESTA SOOT – Sat Sept. 13th @ Bowery Poetry Club. 308 Bowery, NYC
$5 b4 11pm, $8 after. 10pm-late.

“to celebrate the release of Maga Bo’s debut album, Archipelagoes (in stores on September 22nd), we’re uniting the world-travelling Soot gang to a Manhattan rendezvous on Saturday September 13!!

Maga Bo from Brazil will unleash a special live/DJ set incorporating material from Archipelagoes. Come find out why his live sets are so in-demand (Turntable of the Hudson, London’s Fabric, and Berlin’s Transmediale all came knocking on his door this month). Fresh from their successful Europe tour, DJ Rupture & Jahdan Blakkamoore will present their dubbed-out soundsystem set for the first time in the US. Be sure to check Rupture’s new video for his upcoming mix album, Uproot.

Pirate-turned percussionista Filastine is gonna unveil material from his forthcoming album on Soot, and DJs Geko Jones & Eliel Lucero will round things out with the latest in guaracha y bass, cumbia, and dubstep.

last minute special guest — La Yegros, one of our favorite vocalists for Buenos Aires hopping scene, will bring her special flavors of Arabic-tinged beats + vocales for a live PA.”

NO TE LO PIERDAS

then we eat a very nice breakfast or maybe even brunch and meet up at Fort Greene’s mighty Flea:

Record Fair Flyer 1

PORQUE SOY SONIDERO

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My new mix CD, Porque Soy Sonidero Y Voy A Muchos Lugares (made for this last tour) is now available exclusively at Turntable Lab. An hourlong blend of now-thing summer bump.

[audio:DJ_Rupture_GO_BUY_THE_MIX_SWEETHEART.mp3]

DJ Rupture – Porque Soy Sonidero excerpt (Shinehead riffing on Sting into a brand-new DJ Lengua refix)

I’ll have copies with me at live shows as well. Live shows? Like this one.

fiesta soot sept 13