Blog (2008-2018)

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Last Mudd Up Book Clubb, the Naked Singularity meetup, was a great one, as Sergio De La Pava and his wife made a gracious appearance. Sergio was a passionate, funny, and generous guest, sharing insights which made our experience of his excellent novel even better. There was discussion of moral concern, conservatism of the publishing industry, drunk Russians wrestling bears and the plight of the farmers, what trials really read like and lots more, including Lee Ann’s homemade cardamom & pistachio bread. Delicious.

And now, as Endless Winter reluctantly starts to consider Spring — and now that I’ve got my personal piano month out of the way– we turn to our favorite hilarity-inducing Austrian misanthrope, rhythm master, one-paragraph-book-writer par excellence and italicist of exquisite conviction: Thomas Bernhard!
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shirtless Thomas Bernhard, our favorite Austrian misantrope hilarity man

On Sunday June 2, we’re meeting in Manhattan to discuss a splendid pair of losers — Thomas Bernhard’s 1983 novel The Loser, about Glenn Gould and two failed virtuoso pianists, and Gay Talese’s 1964 Esquire essay “The Loser”, about boxer Floyd Patterson. Talese published 37 articles on Patterson — THIRTY SEVEN! — which makes him arguably as obsessive as Bernhard’s unnamed narrator. (more…)

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After a brief respite, Matt Shadetek hits the road again this Friday. First up will be Madison with Chants at a Barbershop! Then both Matt and Chants head to Milwaukee to play alongside Milwaukee’s Kiings, and DJ Marcus Doucette of the great independent radio station Radio Milwaukee.

On Friday May 10th, Matt, Old Money, and Chief Boima are in Providence (kicking off Old Money’s summer tour), and on Wednesday May 15th Matt headlines the opening night of the Together Festival at Beat Research alongside DJ Ripley, and Chief Boima. May is a month of Dutty Artz showcases.

May 3rd – Madison @ Thorps
May 4th – Milwaukee @ Stonefly Brewery
May 10th – Providence @ Fete
May 15th – Boston @ Good Life (Beat Research – Together Festival)

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Rotter-Bag-Blue-SMALL

This Saturday DJ /rupture will be playing music at the Brooklyn Flea Record Fair in Williamsburg. 50 collectors, shops, and record labels will be selling their goods, and a small stage will feature DJ sets from a Red Bull Music Academy curated line up:

1pm-1:45pm- Dan Selzer (Acute Records)
1:45pm-2:30pm – James Friedman (Throne of Blood)
2:30-pm-3:20pm – DJ/rupture (Dutty Artz)
3:20pm-4:10pm – Veronica Vasicka (Minimal Wave)
4:10pm – 5pm – James Pants

We’re throwing in our lot to the list of specialty items with seven different Dutty Artz bundled merchandise packages. We’ve just printed up some t-shirts, so the special deal of the day is: buy a t-shirt get one vinyl AND one CD Free. Several Dutty Artz members will also be selling vinyl from their personal collections. Come out for a fun afternoon of music shopping, and food sampling.

Hours are 11am-6pm, adjacent to Smorgasburg inside East River State Park, at Kent Avenue and North 7th St. in Williamsburg.

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[reposted from Jace’s Mudd Up]– Here at Dutty Artz, we talk a lot about Colombian culture and the immigrant experience, almost always from a musical perspective – yet there is all this amazing writing happening right now! The 2012 English-language translation of Santiago Gamboa’s Necropolis comes to mind, or closer to home, the phenomenal debut novel of New Jersey’s Sergio De La Pava, the April book clubb selection –

Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

This Sunday, April 28th, we’re meeting to discuss Sergio De La Pava’s wonderful, humane, laugh-out-loud funny, 689 page novel involving a public defender in New York City: A Naked Singularity (2008 ex libris, 2012 U Chicago Press). (more…)

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(GIF via Art Becomes You)

Got some more Iswayski for ya! Today’s focus is Azonto beats.

The Ghana dance that’s been wildly popular for the past few years continues to result in a lot of good music. The beat that’s generally associated with it is a super dancey and effective pop formula blended with traditional Ga drumming. Who made the first beat is up for debate, but E.L‘s “U Go Kill Me” is what brought it to the masses.

I’m still surprised I don’t hear more of this in US club sets outside of African nights. It’s impossible not to move your body to, has high production standards, and a lot of the lyrics are even in English. Maybe it’s because so few Western artists are producing it? The UK has Fuse ODG bringing it to the Grime crowds and the whole Afrobeats thing is probably helping to spread it over there. But there’s not much of an American counterpart to any of that. Not that any of this matters as a symbol of the sound’s success, I just personally fuck with it and would like to hear more of it.

So let’s go over a few recent tracks that are doing pretty well that I like a lot:

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Bombeat

This Friday the Bombeat crew and myself are excited to hold it down at The House of Yes, an amazing event space, and non-profit organization located in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  We are  looking forward to hosting Quantic aka Will Holland, a man of various diverse musical projects.  If you are unfamiliar with his work, do yourself a favor and dig into his wide selection of productions created over the past decade.

APRIL 26th 2013 // House of Yes // 342 Maujer St  New York, NY 11206

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I’m speaking today about a topic that I’ve been living for years, and only recently (and with the help of awesome Dj/Activist/thinkers like DJ Ushka) been able to articulate in a public way, and combine with my other scholarship: “Rocking the Body Politics; Musical Spaces for Resistance & Survival.” This is an extension of the workshop Thanu/Ushka and I organized at the Allied Media Conference last year on “Radical Organizing from the Dancefloor,” combined with ideas from my research and dj experience that I also presented at the Clandestino Institut in Göteborg, Sweden last year (Exile, Resistance, Occupation, Music).

mannbodypolitic

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MoMA PS1: Jace Clayton: The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner
On Sunday April 21, come join us for the NYC debut of Jace Clayton’s The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner! Featuring pianists David Friend and Emily Manzo, vocalist Arooj Aftab, special guest, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and Jace /Rupture pulling the whole thing together/apart.
4pm at MoMA PS1. Performance is free with museum admission.

The album version is called Julius Eastman Memory Depot – Bandcamp | iTunes | Amazon. Pitchfork review.

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This past week, during our West Coast tour, Matt and I spent a significant amount of time hanging with Tendai Maraire of Shabazz Palaces at his home in South Seattle. He was a great host and seems to know everyone around town, so we got an impressive tour of Seattle’s cultural history and local music scene. One of the highlights of the week was being able to check Tendai’s proteges Malitia Malimob perform live at our gig at The Crocodile in Seattle:

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Tra Ba EP CoverWe travel in circles. Our lives move in cycles. Our dreams spin us around. This is something that artist Rafi El understands intuitively. Through his life and music, he’s been constantly circling back to the source of his creativity, the mountains of South America – long a source of cultural wealth and shamanic power. Raised by parents from Argentina’s historical Jewish communities, Rafi was born in Israel and grew up in Los Angeles, where he currently lives. His earliest days were steeped in the sounds and cultures of three continents.

In anticipation of the release of Rafi El’s debut full length album this summer, Dutty Artz releases the lead single “Tra Ba” as a free EP:

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Brooklyn Graffiti

(I painted this over the weekend.)

It’s me, Iswayski. This time around we’re going to dive into some New York rap.

In general, hip hop is in a good place right now. Whether you’re looking for some ignant club joints, deft lyricism, or skater comedy, it’s probably available. There’s a gang of different styles floating around out there. And here in NYC, things are in a similar state. You’ve got the turnt coke boy rap of French Montana, some pretty flacko rare shot from A$AP Mob, and the late 90s throwback flavas of Pro Era. It seems we’re finally starting to climb out from under the weight that years of tradition and hierarchy that the genre’s birthplace had imposed on the game. So let’s go over a couple lesser known recent efforts.

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