PROVIDENCE

Today, Friday nov 16, i’ll be DJing at the Sonic Focus event in Providence, Rhode Island. 9:15-10:15pm. We can all be in bed by midnite.

S called this morning. “Do you mind if I follow you around for a day?”

And below, an unwatchable video from a recent gig I did w/ Andy in Geneva, filmed by a kindly Russian fan. He’s responsible for those craaazy effects.


DJ Rupture & Andy Moor [Live in Geneve]

BECKETT’S HALO

machinima — filmmaking using video game footage & voiceovers — was new to me until W&W showed me this 2-minute piece a few night’s ago… Godot-infused punchline existentialism in the theater of war. apparently Red vs Blue is a massive phenomenon, but if you haven’t seen it:

Machinima makes inevitable sense. It is economically & creatively liberating. Fantastic cinema/animation on the cheap! Episode 1 of Red vs Blue: the tip of an enormmous potential iceberg (they didn’t need those other 99 episodes, in many ways this one did all that needed to be done)…

between machinima & DIY youtubery & stuff like videojockey translators in Uganda, I’m feeling vaguely optimistic about local art & reverse Ikea & maybe even the elimination of the middleman. (& imagine these hackery concepts taken into the realm of politics, a million kid editors not making flash-in-the-pan entertainment but using their fluency in new tools to break or build things in the name of economic equality?)

Elimination of the middleman: when the story becomes not ‘talented youth get bought up by major label when their viral video sparks local dance craze’ nor ‘talented youth spark local dance craze, bypass label, get rich on micro-income from 1.7 million other kids viewing their viral video’ (although this would be an improvement) but when the story becomes not ‘the story’ (or Slate’s) but your story and the cultural heat generated by it turns into money in your pocket and they don’t even need to hear about it or attempt to explain it.

MP3s and money always travel so much more freely than people.

In a few years, most American children will live inside video games or have microchips for virtual world wireless connections implanted into their navels. Drug dealers, old people, and winos will finally get run of the parks and playgrounds they deserve. Only the poor kids will read books; rich parents won’t dare risk their children’s success in a postliterate society by teaching them to read (Brunner). The adjective ‘virtual’ itself will fall into disuse, describing a quaintly archaic and increasingly irrelevant concept.

Wayne’s delicious points towards the 1st hit when searching for “I’m a african” on youtube. big up Eka.

Blackness has always been virtually real and really virtual, so hearing Dead Prez (a virtually political music group) rap while machinima video-director Eka lip-syncs their lyrics as his Grand Theft Auto videogame edits depict what’s being said makes future-now sense:

 

EL PROGRAMA DE HOY

today from 3-6pm (EST) I’ll be hosting Maria’s show on WFMU. The three-hour slot will give me the chance to stretch out & air some sweet long-playing records. including gorgeous vintage Salif Keita material.

bonus: today I’ll be ‘accuplaylisting‘ which means that if you listen via WFMU’s internet streams, you’ll be able to get realtime track + artist info. Tally may even pick up the phone if you call!

Then at the regular hour, I’ll have Sonido Martines in to the studio for a bilingual interview follow-up to his Las Rebajadas Van a Brooklin mix, which aired a few weeks ago on the show.

Today “DJ Rupture welcomes Argentinian producer/DJ Sonido Martines, who will discuss las cumbias rebajadas and other unexpected mutations of cumbia in South America, as well as the contemporary electronic scene in Buenos Aires.” More info on that.

below, relevant youtubery courtesy of Sonido. “te mando una de Andres Landero, uno de los mas grandes artistas de la cumbia de y el vallenato colombianos , y en mi opinion uno de los mas originales, tenia algo muy especial, mucha locura. puedes verlo aqui tambien, es la misma cancion, interpretada ya viejito pero super salvaje”

(lots more on vallenato colombiano in the weeks to come)

ZOHRA

secret google keep codes

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zohra.jpg

take country music which already seems psychedelic to the urban audio mind, add dramatic video effects, multiply by the bad-math pile-up of several compression codecs.

this is first Algerian Berber material i’ve posted here, all the other stuff has been Moroccan Berber. Clip Kabyle a top-notch videoblog for Kabyle pop. This next video comes to us from 1989, a few years before the videographers tamed their landscape with a sense of scale.

the clip below features the same artist, Hamidouche, in concert. Note the live mix levels: the rock drumkit is buried, you can’t even hear the cymbals. the galloping, tonal darbouka playing is foregrounded. it’s a nice alternative to standard rock sound-level conventions.

ATLAS IMPRESSIONISTIK

“Don’t ask me about any of these Berber cassettes,” said Rachid’s asssitant at Nassiphone (BCN’s best shop for Maghrebi sound) as he hefted a milkcrate from behind the counter. “I know as much as you do.” Meaning: very little.

the cover of this cassette depicts Mr Tamount seated, a capoed & fretted banjo loose in his hands. The orange photoshop blur behind him anticipates vocoders and drum machines coded into Berber patterns. Imazighen.

Idriss Tamount – ? (Box Music)

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For those who prefer less processed roots…

Amazigh band and dancers in the Atlas foothills, scattering timeless sound into the air with generator-powered amps. I enjoy watching the notion of a mainstream dissolve into a trillion scattered data-bites. Let’s dance on a red rug in wilderness!

The best part about YouTube is the impressionistic quality of its compression algorhythms… YouTube is always more storytelling than documentary. Suggests, does not inform.

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In this clip, a string player & vocalist the size of Godzilla perform over a rich evergreen forest while alien geometries intersect the landscape. Visuals a strange but not unsatisfying partner for the ensemble’s Berber folklorix.