Next Friday, August 27th, come catch myself and Tanlines in a pay-what-you-want party at The Whitney Museum.
[some guitar band at the Whitney]
James Franco was trying to get on the bill with a new indie garage cumbia electro project he’s working on, but the Whitney people had to tell him no. Which is just as good, because with Tanlines, myself, and you, together we are well-equipped to build a DANCE PARTY, possibly the Last Fun Party of the Summer, and let me repeat: it’s FREE. 6-9pm = pay-what-you-wish for museum admission. Grapes will not be served, despite internet rumors stating otherwise.
Yes, today is my birthday! I survived last year (barely). Hugs, large bills, mp3s, and gift certificates to the crematorium all accepted…
big birthday post over at MuddUp! includes an old Rupture mix excerpt, chopped & screwed Nicki Minaj, free software for turning Biebz into Hopelandic ambience, 16 minutes of Algerian chaabi, GIFT OPTIONS, and, as always more.
Eat, drink and consume media, for tomorrow we get deleted.
On today’s radio show, I’ll be joined by special guest Matt Shadetek! The top-notch producer (& my partner in all tings Dutty) just released his debut solo album, Flowers, and he’ll be treating us to a live DJ set followed by talk about production, new bizness strategies for creative folk, family man music, and more.
Check us live: Monday Aug 16th from 7-8pm EST, 91.1fm WFMU, streaming on internet & iPhone. If asynchronous event participation is yr thing, delve into my show’s deep archives or catch the podcast a week later…
In the meantime, here’s ‘Nightshade’ – I first used this in last year’s mix album, Solar Life Raft, and it resurfaced on Flowers – Matt’s instrumental album built from fresh beat momentum and a playful post-grime melodic sensitivity.
As part of our ongoing commitment to ‘pulling back the curtain’ and openly discussing our creative/collaborative processes as well as our financial situation in the hemorrhaging music economy, I’ve uploaded a few images of the Dutty Artz’ Brooklyn studio:
Aaah, Rita Indiana. I feel weird explaining what’s up to people since the easiest thing would simply be to wait — soon enough she’ll be as well-known in the US as she is across the Dominican Republic. But here we go-
Rita’s a former model who first enjoyed fame as a writer. Her two novels, La Estrategia de Chochueca and Papi, enjoy cult status among fans of contemporary Caribbean lit. Her innovative writing straddled pop and street, leading to her current stint as screenwriter for Grammy-winning reggaeton group Calle 13’s upcoming movie. But she’s spent the last year taking over her hometown of Santo Domingo via a musical project, Rita Indiana y los Misterios. With effortless swagger, Rita has achieved the holy grail: cutting edge musical & lyrical innovations that draw on local roots and enjoy populist success (read: capacity crowds at 1000 person venues).
[Rita Indiana y (algunos de) Los Misterios]
Rita’s powerful sound – which includes choreographed stage dancers, daring outfits, and a 5-person band – creates a space where old school merengue fans, new-school mambo thugs, hiphop kids, rockers, and fashionistas can all party together.
to continue reading this post, head over to Mudd Up!
So the music of Abidjan’s CIAfrica crew does sound a bit like a grimey, glitchy elephant staring you down as angular new-money architecture burns or smolders or looms in the background and the sky’s color stumbles from white to black with a few lasers for good measure, because we’re not living in the future, they are.
Sometime last year the visionary ringleader, Amadou aka Green Dog (RZA to their Wu) gave me access to their deep hard drives — packed with singing, rapping & fwd-thinking beats. Thrilling material. I pulled out my favorite 17 songs for a CD which will be released later this month, DJ Rupture presents CIAFRICA. This coincides with CIAfrica, Nettle, and myself performing at Gotenburg’s Sweden Way Out West festival next Friday, August 13th. I’ll be DJing separately from them, in a party with Sleigh Bells and Fool’s Gold (the band). It’s a 3-day affair, with folks like Wu-Tang, M.I.A., Jay Electronica, The xx, etc performing, so if yr in Scandinavia, might be worth the trip… & I’ve found that drunk Swedes tend to still be really nice, at least in Gotenburg.
It will be the first time the CIAfrica MCs and vocalists perform outside their Côte d’Ivoire/Ivory Coast home base! They have this awesome Pam Grier video for one of their female MCs, Nasty, but it keeps getting censored by YouTube. So here’s a vid from one of the guys coming over, Manusa:
For three years now I’ve hosted a show on WFMU (it’s rebroadcast weekly on a number of stations in Europe, such as Marseilles’ incredible Radio Grenouille 88.8 FM). FMU is a very progressive FM radio station when it comes to extending outward into the often-confusing world that Mr and Mrs Internet are building around us like an airy cage. WFMU’s archives are formidable – including the very useful accuplaylist function. Many shows (such as mine) are podcast, and our FREE iPhone app is, to put it humbly, utterly kick-ass. Now there’s a new version!
The biggest feature in version 2.1 is the ability to download shows for offline listening. For the cloud-averse among us, this is very good news. I like being offline (despite appearances to the contrary). In fact, I rock a jailbroken iPhone with a ‘regular’ phone service precisely so I can get the fun trix/touchy user interface and *not* have to buy an AT&T constant internet “data plan.” Because the idea of constant internet is vaguely terrifying. Because data diets can be as sexy/healthy as real diets. Because everything deserves an off-switch, or at least a pause button, especially if huge undersea cables and wireless beams of zeros & ones and post-panoptic auto-surveillance is involved. #JustSayin.
There’s also some twitteration & facebookability built in, plus the ability to leave live playlist comments, and a few other delightful whistles and useful bells. So.
The WFMU iPhone app. Always free, newly updated. Read about it on the WFMU blog, get it here (iTunes). Carry my show on the go, anywhere in this hot wired world, into the clouds… into the world of Applelicious DRM hell… and beyond…
I had a grueling fight with Windows Movie Maker last night. Wasn’t pretty. In the end, we reached a compromise, a Pyrrhic victory: I can use Microsoft’s near-useless tools to hack together video, but I cannot spice things up with animated GIFs. So this clip isn’t quite as bugged out as it’s meant to be…
That said, enjoy rare, behind-the-scenes footage from the very 1st week of Dutty Artz “radio“! Later in the episode Kayne West came in (mistaking us for an antique furniture dealership) but by then my flipcam had run out of space.
This Saturday, July 31st, I’ll be closing out the Wooly Fair in Providence, Rhode Island with a midnight set. They call it a “Providence-born DIY art carnival”, and it looks to be a very fun time. Creative grassroots events which aren’t necessarily focused on music are often the best places to DJ. Wooly Fair runs from 1 in the afternoon to 1am.
Lately I’ve been squeezing more Arabic moments into my sets. Here’s a clubby/rootsy gasbah flute track from Algeria:
The image below is a drawing of a temporary/permanent/growing installation, centerpiece of this year’s Wooly Fair. It’s “the Flower Tower, a pyramid of container gardens that will be distributed after the July 31st event to hospitals, schools, and other organizations.”
This Saturday, I’ll be DJing at MoMA’s PS1 Warm Up series out in Queens. Also playing: Kalup Linzy (fresh from his life-imitates-video art-imitates-soap appearance on General Hospital!), Le Tigre’s JD Samson, and “surprise guests.” Weather right now says it’ll be 94 degrees with possible thunderstorms, but at this point in the summer, New Yorkers are used to that. This particular Warm Up is part of the Greater New York show.
Event runs from 3-9pm, I’ll be playing toward the end of the day. Hot weather music. Like maybe this tune but pitched down to compensate for heavy humidity and sunstroke conditions?
July 24th
MoMA PS1 Greater New York presents:
JD Samson / New York (DJ set)
MEN / Brooklyn (live)
Kalup Linzy / Brooklyn (R&B, Soul, Disco DJ set)
Kalup Linzy and the Sweet, Sampled, and LeftOva / Brooklyn (live performance set)
DJ /rupture / Dutty Artz, Brooklyn (DJ set)
With surprise guests!
Sometimes we refer to Dutty Artz as “the family” or “a family. I realize this might cause some confusion. America is a complicated nation. Lamin’s not from here, I spent most of the decade living in a magical place called Europe where the doctors don’t mug you, and Matt has red hair. Point is, when we say “Dutty Artz is the family!”, this is what we mean:
I’d forgotten that I have a Soundcloud page. Remembered. Pasted up a set from the good ole days of January 2008 – the cumbia mix I did for Rob Da Bank’s BBC1 radio show. You can stream or download below. Enjoy! & feel free to send me trax.
I can’t remember exactly, but tomorrow, July 4th, we Americans celebrate our Independence from Microsoft, or the Constitution, or Google, or the British, or the RIAA, or Illegal Immigrants, or Apple products, or People Around The World Who Hate Our Freedom, or maybe Slavery or the Absent Birth Certificate itself. It’s an important holiday, especially if you like to eat dead animals.
So what better way to join the festivities then hunched over my laptop, carpal tunnel syndromin’, listening to incredible new Mexican music of the 1st decade – or is this already the 2nd decade? (Is it true that time isn’t circular but tubular?) – of the 21st century!
Erick Rincon from Monterrey gifts us with a sublime tribal guarachero refix that wraps hypnotic playful voices around some ill tubas. Deep sonic multitasking from northern Mexico. As the 16-year-old producer says: “Bueno pues ahora, Dejandoles algo de Tribal, Mezclandole algo de Norteño!! que suene la tubaaaaaa!!” Let the tuuuuuubaaa sound out!
I just listened to this two-minute song a dozen times in a row, now you can too:
Eyebeam Open Studios, this Friday 3-6pm in the Chelsea space. I will present a cumbia research project I’m working on as one of Eyebeam’s resident artists this season. La Congona New Cumbia will culminate in a mixtape CD + bilingual poster, and be documented on our blog of the same name.
So feel free to drop by and see/say what’s up. A very diverse group of people will be showing their work-in-progress. For example: while I’m doing weird cumbia distribution/circulation mapping & hotwiring bootleg networks, Ted Southern, pictured below, is building honest-to-God astronaut gloves. (the last pair he designed outperformed NASA gloves on NASA’s own tests). Astronaut gloves!
Open Studios continue on Saturday, although I won’t be able to attend.
