GET MAD GET CRAZY

in more uplifting news, Ghislain Poirier unveiled a new video for his Soca EP (which I describe in my Mondomix top 10). Directed by Gabriel Poirier-Galarneau, this video is composed of over 12,000 still shots of Montreal. I love the silent airhorn moment, although the entire video is impressive, great narrative & visual execution. City portrait on fast fwd, tropical bounce cut with snow-covered streets:


[ GPG : GHISLAIN POIRIER – GET CRAZY feat MR. SLAUGHTER ]

from Gabriel Poirier-Galarneau on Vimeo.

Track : GET CRAZY feat MR. SLAUGHTER
Artist : GHISLAIN POIRIER [http://ghislainpoirier.com]
Label : NINJA TUNE [http://ninjatune.com]
Director : GABRIEL POIRIER-GALARNEAU [http://gabrielpg.com]

YOUTOMB

daisies

YouTomb – a fast-growing archive of removed YouTube videos. An online anti-library. A bibliography of absent, missing, deleted texts, videos eliminated from YT-Googlelandia due to alleged copyright violation. blog too.

“The index is currently 192233 seconds out of date.”

AND IT GOES A LITTLE SOMETHING LIKE THIS

DJ /rupture end of set @ Telefónica in Lima, Perú. December 5, 2008. thanks to Sonido Martines for the video!

In the green player below, an enchantingly beautiful new song, “Fitnah”, from Filastine’s upcoming album debuts on the Pitchfork-cast! Stu ups another new Filastine track over at Discontent.

and if you want more, Maga Bo did a piece on me as part of his mini doc series (check Bo’s youtube channel for chats with Diplo, Xuman of Pee Froiss, etc)

and if you want more (of everything), try the Extra Music blog [via]. Dubstep, techno, grime, etc. Pirates stuffing our stockings, bellies, ears.

Now let’s talk about value in a post-scarcity music environment.

GIRA SUDAMERICANA / BENETTLED

2 weeks ago we learned that the program that was bringing my band Nettle to the U.S. next March was cancelled – terminated – due to financial crisis. ‘It’s no small irony that a program inspired by 9/11 as a way to (re)connect with the wider world now finds itself without support thanks, if indirectly, to the disastrous policies of the Bush administration.’

It was quite a blow, especially as we needed something like this to make a US trip possible; people with Arabic writing on their passports are having a worse time than ever entering America, even with serious visa sponsorship.

This unpleasant notice gives us renewed determination to put the album out during the week when we should have been doing shows in America, Abdel & Khalid’s (& Wren’s) first time there. Strangely enough, the cancellation gives a new heft to it’s working title: In The Heart of the Heart of the Country . Plus, at some core level, it’s music about friction, at least to me.

THE GOOD NEWS is that i just confirmed a Rupture South American tour for late November/early December. Events in Bolivia (La Paz, El Alto) and Lima, Peru. Details TBA.

img15

[Joaquín Torres-García]

elsewhere on the continent, Rukula directed me to a full-length, embeddable version of the Musquito animation, thanks!

VIRAL REEF

to quote Matt Shadetek: “Thanks to the people at YouTube for putting us on the front page and getting us thousands of views, dozens of inane comments and spam and friend requests from random people in the past two hours of it being up there. The internet is a wild and wonderful place.”

like i mentioned before, this video is for a tune on my new Uproot mix CD, produced by 2 young’uns from the Dutty Artz camp, Baby Kites & Nokea, and directed by PanOptic. The only thing different is that 60,000 people have seen it in the past 10 hours.

and another T-Pain autotune vid, this time an animation:

MEIZU

I just finished editing 7,000-8,000 words strung across two articles – wait, I only handed in one of them, I have 5,000 words to go. Sigh.

But some stuff needs addressing:

1. a lot of people (read: less than 12) have taken my music and made videos. Here’s the latest, made by kids in Guatamela doing an animation workshop! It’s one of my favorites, for its sweetness.

Menos Basura! Compadres, aquí van algunos ejercicios que hemos preparado con la muchá en el taller de animacion. Seguimos con ello hasta final de septiembre. Practicando, jugando, avanzando. La musiquita es del colega Dj Rupture.

2. the mp3-player that UMemeCompetitor and a few others asked about. It feels like product endorsement, but let’s go. I currently use the Meizu Dane-Elec 4GB thingy. Here’s what I needed in a portable mp3 player:

  • the ability to play MP3s, WAV/AIFFs, and FLACs. FLAC = lossless compression. FLAC files are about half the size of full-audio (mp3s are roughly a tenth) and support metadata (WAVs/AIFFs dont)
  • an FM tuner that can also record. This is critical I think iPods/iTouch without FM tuners are pathetic, possibly immoral. Radio! as public space!
  • charging + transfering data via USB cable. I don’t deal with stupid proprietary plugs.

the tiny, thin Meizu does all that. It costs around $80 for a 4GB version with a big video screen. It has its wonky elements (namely taking minutes to rebuild library after you add new songs), but it does all the above inexpensively. Few other mp3 players do (if you know of alternatives, tell us in the comments). The Meizu is almost too small – these are earbuds, you can get an idea of its size:

meizu

& while we’re at it, I use free windows app Foobar2000 to play back audio files. Foobar can natively rip FLACs & mp3s. Its most unexpectedly useful component is the ability to play songs inside ZIP & RAR files.

I’m a nerd, but you’re reading this: you are too. It’s ok.

3. T-Pain vs the Vocoder!!!! (autotune as robot consciousness?)

via Fader blog

STREET SOUND SPECIAL

on the radio tonite: Street Sound Special with Filastine
Wednesday, September 10th, 7pm – 8pm
Filastine SubtonicNYC

“Barcelona-based musician Filastine joins DJ Rupture to discuss field recording, street music, and the transformative political possibilities of sound in public space. Filastine will share with us on-site recordings he has made from India to Morocco, not to mention outside the Republican National Convention.”

Filastine is in NYC for Saturday’s Fiesta Soot. He’ll be debuting lots of new material from his upcoming album (i’ve heard it , its great- out in January). Here’s edited footage from a concert in France:

Filastine Live (hi quality, edited)

FREEING UP CHORDS

my WFMU radio show will not be broadcast (or podcast) today, August 20th – because WFMU’s Free Music Series + Lincoln Center are presenting a FREE CONCERT at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch park from 6-10pm, featuring good friends The Ex & Gétatchèw Mèkurya (famous Ethiopian saxophonist with a contagiously great sense of humor). wow! also on the bill: Extra Golden (not that Benga – the other, far more popular Benga), and the Either/Orchestra with Mahmoud Ahmed & Alèmayèhu Eshèté.

last time i hung out with The Ex & Gétatchèw it was like this (… except that by the time I got backstage, Gétatchèw – a giant in the world of Ethiopian jazz, as chronicled in part by his Ethiopiques release – had crowned Andy with his monkey-skin headdress in exchange for Andy’s guitar)

the last time we all played together was in Flemish Belgium. I was slotted after The Ex & G̩tatch̬w, set changeover took awhile, and by the time I got onstage most of the crowd had left. I DJed to an emptying room. But then I realized: exactly one person had begun to dance Рa tall, gorgeous Ethiopian woman in short-shorts (who was there with her parents I think).

So that was a new, very interesting situation: playing to exactly one person instead of DJing to the kinetic volume of a dancing crowd. And that one person liked the cumbia/afro-colombian stuff. After several songs a few more people joined in (not that there were more than 15 or 20 of us) – by the end even Kat was dancing, and Afework Negussie the masenqo player kept passing me tunes from his mp3-thingy to blend in. That night became a strange, reassuring, ego-free ‘open secret’ afterparty in the heart of Flemish country, where our contingent reality was not only possible but present, embodied, aglow.

Sometimes you play a big rave-type event and you make a bag of money but it feels spiritually vacant. Sometimes you play for a handful of people and you don’t simply ‘strike a chord’ as we say in English, you find yourself within one.

I think this is what, from my perspective, makes The Ex so special: their ability to conjure up meaningful situations and community in ways that are no less natural or moving for being completely unexpected. (Gétatchèw asked them to be his backing band.)

This song came from the Afework’s mp3-thingy. Hulum Zero Zero. He is singing about the Ethiopian government…

[audio:HulumZeroZero.mp3]

Solomon Tekaligne – Hulum Zero Zero

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)