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Last night’s radio show is now streaming. You can listen to it on your computer or cellphone!

WFMU – independent, listener-supported, FM radio with incredible live internet streams and endless archives – is nearing the end of our first silent fundraiser. If you like Mudd Up! radio and feel like sharing the love, please consider a donation – all the on-air DJs volunteer their time (as do our amazing guests). All funds raised go to keeping WFMU afloat and free.

As always, you can subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast for downloadable versions, issued about a week after FM broadcast: , Mudd Up! RSS. Also useful: WFMU’s free iPhone app. We also have a version for Android (search for “WFMU” in the marketplace).

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[originally posted at Mudd Up!]

Times square red times square blue

The Mudd Up Book Clubb marches to Manhattan with a tender, challenging work by one of the most important authors around: Samuel R. Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. The book takes Delany’s 30+ years in the porn theaters and gay bars of Times Sq. on the eve of its mid-1990s Disneyification as a grounding point for an extended examination of public space, interclass contact, polymorphous intimate pleasures, the regulation of bodies and behavior, and lots more. Sex & urbanism in Delany’s hands — you can’t go wrong!

The humanity that animates his intelligence is inspiring, as is the deft ease with which Delany flows from frank, considered anecdotes about former lovers & friends to more sociologically-minded writing. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue is built from two long essays, which are themselves quite different: the longer one more personal, the 2nd one more theoretical — it includes a powerful section on contact vs networking that is more relevant now than ever, and uses a two-column layout to play with marginality in a direct way and further shake things up.

This is the Clubb’s first nonfiction selection (not to mention our first selection by a black author), and it will give you a lot to think about. The New York Public Library stocks a handful of copies, including a nonlending one up at the Schomburg. The Manhattan location for this Clubb edition is secret, but suffice to say it’s awesome and will be familiar to those who’ve seen Delany doc The Polymath. The tentative date is November 15th. If you are interested, please join the mailing list.

dfisheye

If you only know Delany from his sci-fi or fantasy, then you are in for a real treat! If you don’t know Delany at all, then perhaps short story collection Aye, and Gomorrah or its earlier incarnation, Driftglass, is a good place to start – “The Star Pit” is one of those rare stories that haunts me to no end. (I wouldn’t recommend starting with Dhalgren, only because I know a handful of people who couldn’t get into it and then didn’t investigate Delany any further.)

But Samuel R. Delany’s work has many, many entrances…

OK. Let’s keep those pages turning! For more online reading about this selection, Steve Shaviro wrote an excellent review of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue — indeed, all Steve’s Delany writings are great.

Stay muddy.

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This trill cannot be duplicated says Venus X — and Drake retweets! — but it can be streamed. Last Monday’s radio show with special guest Venus X had the future turned up real high, just the way we like it. She did two fantastic, imaginative, busy-on-the-decks sets that put y’all lazy/conservative/chase-the-genre-of-the-minute DJs to shame. During the interview section we learned all about the American Gothic, Venus’s DJ roots,and lots more.

Check it out:


WFMU — independent, listener-supported, FM radio with incredible live internet streams and endless archives — is in the middle of our first silent fundraiser. If you like Mudd Up! radio and feel like sharing the love, please consider a donation – all the on-air DJs volunteer their time (as do our amazing guests). All funds raised go to keeping WFMU afloat and free.

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Sound written in stone plastic!

I just shared the memory of my favorite record-hunting find in a piece for MTV Hive, on the occasion of the 4th annual Brooklyn Flea ‘Superstar DJ Record Fair’.

Here’s an excerpt:

…I used my time off in Istanbul to simply wander the streets, ending up in one of those dusty record shops where the entropy is turned up really high. There I rescued a Cymande LP that was being slowly asphyxiated under sleeveless 45s. The Fugees had sampled the Caribbean-British funk band to great effect, now I could, too. But that was a digger find. It’s value was obvious, external; a truly special record is one you create your own value for. Ebay of the heart. I don’t care for mint-condition first-editions (Recording my “Gold Teeth Thief” mix, I accidentally stepped on one of my most valuable records, an original pressing of the Winstons’ single “Amen, Brother”, whose fierce rhythm break has been sampled by precisely nine million drum & bass songs).

——-

I don’t have a rip of the Houssein LP I discuss later in the article, but here’s a 1-2 of Cymande and the Fugees, plus $400,000 copyright lawsuit backstory.

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Next Monday, September 10th, I’ll be hosting a very special guest on my WFMU radio show: Venus X of Ghe20 Goth1k! Tune in from 8-9pm to hear Venus discuss shaking up NYC’s party scene with the groundbreaking Ghe2o Goth1k parties, her unique DJ/production approach, and — if we’re lucky — what it’s like schooling Shakira on dance music. I would embed this crazy edit Venus did last week, fusing old skool drum&bass to Islamic chanting, but Soundcloud isn’t happy at the moment, so here’s A$AP Rocky’s Peso — featuring a cameo by Venus. Harlem’s finest takin’ over:

And this Monday night’s radio is now streaming! I was (and remain) under the weather and the music reflects that — soft, strange, a bit dreamy:

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Fantastic, ear- and mind-opening radio show this Monday, thanks to special guest Chris Kirkley of SahelSounds and the Music for Saharan Cellphones comp (among other projects).

Got some great feedback from this show, like this email: “your interview with Chris Kirkley was inspiring …great job ..its amazing because each time he played something i wanted to ask him a question and you asked the same question right afetrwards…i like his method of finding weddings by taxi ..what an optimist !! I love the idea that music ends up being spread by whatever technology is widely available in this case via the shitty speaker of a cell phone …soundwise not so different from transistor radios 40 years ago …some great music he found …hes a brave man”

you can listen up here :

As always, you can subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast for downloadable versions, issued about a week after FM broadcast: , Mudd Up! RSS. Also useful: WFMU’s free iPhone app. We also have a version for Android (search for “WFMU” in the marketplace).

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[reposted from Mudd Up!

As Pitchfork announced on Friday – We’ll be releasing the new Nettle album on October 25, on avant-garde/experimental powerhouse label Sub Rosa! (Sub Rosa has been publishing quality weird for over 20 years, from archival material by James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp to albums by Pauline Oliveros, Luc Ferrari, and Tod Dockstader).

For this album, we imagined a remake of Stephen King/Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining set in a luxury hotel in Dubai, U.A.E. El Resplandor: The Shining In Dubai is our soundtrack for that nonexistent film.

Nettle-El Resplandor SR324

I produced and arranged El Resplandor, working with musicians Abdelhak Rahal, Jennifer Jones, Khalid Bennaji, Andy Moor, Brent Arnold, and Lindsay Cuff. Artwork is by Emirati photographer Lamya Gargash, taken from her incredible Presence series documenting “unwanted houses and structures in the United Arab Emirates that have been abandoned or left for demolition.” Architecture writer and Studio X co-director Geoff ‘BLDGBLOG’ Manaugh gave us some mindbending liner notes.

What else can I say? I put a lot of time into making this album & I hope you enjoy it. October 25 is the U.S. date; it should reach shops in Europe about 2 weeks before that.

This Wednesday I’ll be at the Decibel Festival in Seattle, giving a free, all-ages presentation of my setup for concerts with Nettle (laptop/gear/instrument- and vocal-processing): real talk about strategies to make live electronic music more dynamic and flexible.

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El Resplandor tracklist:

01 El Resplandor
02 Radio Flower
03 There Is a Hole in the Middle of the World Filled With Languages That Don’t Have Names
04 Espina
05 Empty Quarters
06 Nakhil
07 Simoom (Wasp Wind)
08 Red Masque Ticker
09 El Resplandor: In the Marsh
10 Shining One
11 Khalid’s Song

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[reposted from Mudd Up!]

Christopher Kirkley

[Chris Kirkley sketch by Isabel in Mauritania]

One of my favorite musical investigators will be joining me live on Mudd Up! a week from today: Chris Kirley. You may know him from the Music from Saharan Cellphones compilation, or the Ishilan n-Tenere LP on Mississippi Records, or his TOP LEVEL blog, Sahel Sounds. As I was working on Beyond Digital this summer, Chris was (relatively) nearby in Mauritania doing all sort of amazing & related work, and I can’t wait for him to take us through it.

Chris will be coming to the WFMU studios on Monday September 26th, stopping by Mudd Up! from 8-9pm. In a recent email, Chris details what we can expect:

I’ve been looking over the music I have and putting together a rough collection of stuff to bring. The music is representative of some of the local popular styles and genres, often the synth / drum machine / DIY PC aesthetic.

I’d also like to talk about the work of sound archivist/producer and the different ways of collecting, be it old school field recording style or searching for mp3s. One of the fascinating things to me with the whole cellphone project has been how music exists in the sahel — its creation, propagation and experience, via cellphones or cyber cafes — and how this creates these p2p networks that exist similar to but independent of the internet.

In terms of specifics, I’ve got Mauritanian synth wedding recordings, Hausa music, “Balani Show” Bamako parties, and hip hop — pretty diverse stuff, but cohesive in character.

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The day after his radio appearance, the rogue scholar will present a selection of music videos from Mauritania at Brooklyn’s rogue cinema, Spectacle. And if you want to help Music from Saharan Cellphones make yet another medium-jump, there’s a Kickstarter project to turn the free MP3 compilation in 12″ vinyl.

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[The poster uses 3 alphabet character sets: Arabic, Tifinagh, Latin]

This Friday we’re presenting Beyond Digital Morocco at the Cinematheque de Tanger, then moving outdoors for a free concert featuring Nettle (here in Morocco Nettle is a trio: myself, Lindsay Cuff, and Brent Arnold) and Hassan Wargui (Imanaren). All happening in Tangiers’ incredible medina.

Nettle is from NYC, and Hassan’s from Souss Berber country in Morocco’s south — we’re using these days to develop and record new songs together. It’s not that music ‘transcends’ language, it’s that music is language, and our motley crew is enjoying its communicative glow. Lindsay’s learning the words (in the Berber language of Tashelhit) to an Archach song we’ll cover; Hassan’s Amazigh banjo lines help us extend ‘Mole in the Ground’ even further; Abdellah’s joining in on rebab and bendir… and things are just getting started.

Here’s a quick video of our first practice together:

 

RSVP on the Facebook event page if you’d like to let the C.I.A. know you support us. Offline, we’re making event posters at a truly special letterpress studio that’s been open for over half a century.

bonus: late-night afterparty at Morocco Palace (located on a street called ‘the Devil’s Alley’, one block over from Tangiers’ synagogue, which had a congregation of around 200,000 during its heyday) with Adil El Miloudi!!

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reposted from Mudd Up!

As a talisman against the fall-like chill of Brussels, here’s a heater-upper remix I did for Architecture in Helsinki a few years ago. The original is so good, I went all out brought in Mr Lee G on vocal duties:
Architecture in Helsinki Heart It Races (DJ Rupture’s Ital Hymn Mix feat. Mr Lee G) by djrupture

Speaking of Brussels — Belgium has had no government for over a year! Everything seems fine in Brussels, arguably Europe’s most spatially dissonant city. It’s a surreal place.

Today, Wednesday August 31th, I’ll DJ at ‘une petite fête entre amis’ put on by La8. Info. The next day I’ll make an appearance on Radio Panik 105.4 FM, not sure when, watch the Twitter for that. (Radio Panik is one of a handful of open-eared European radio stations that rebroadcast my WFMU radio show.)