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.
I’ve been making music in various underground music scenes for the past ten years now. I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Generally you find great people in underground music scenes, people with a lot of passion and dedication who truly love music. When people are able to strike a balance between their underground aesthetic and being organized, special stuff can happen. But there are many times when people can’t strike that balance. One of the ideas that I’ve run into again and again in this world is the idea of ‘doing it for the scene’. On one level this is a very respectable idea: doing something not out of self interest, but to benefit the larger musical community. The problem I’ve encountered with this is that taken too far this can seriously undermine one’s ability to continue to function.
For example, let’s say hypothetically you are a small record distributor. You do it because you believe in the music, you want to support emerging artists and labels and you don’t care about money. You set up shop, take product on consignment from any unknown player with a willingness to press their material and start doing business. Consignment is when you take product before paying for it, warehouse it and pay when it sells. You continue to operate on this basis but because you have so many unheard of records released by labels with no business model or capability to promote them, sales are slow. Eventually, basic costs start to add up. The rent on your office is due every month. The bill for your shipping provider is rising. Eventually there comes a time when you have backed yourself into a corner. Nothing is selling and while you were hoping for an improvement you passed the point of no return. The shipping company has cut off your access to shipping because your owed bill is so high. Your landlord is initiating eviction proceedings against your office where you warehouse your product.
Finish reading this post at my new blog at mattshadetek.com
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 post is cross-posted from the brand spanking new blog at mattshadetek.com. In addition to my usual stuff here at Dutty Artz I wanted a place to call my own and talk about some of my less dutty, more clean artz that I am up to. Expect a lot more wordz.
photo by the author in Flatbush, Brooklyn
I assume if you’re reading this blog that you’re someone familiar with my musical output. If not, please get familiar here at my soundcloud page.
Generally speaking I am pretty cagey about my new projects until they’re nearly done. I want to try an experiment this time in going through the process of making an album completely in public. Transparency! Throwing stones in a glass house!
I’m leaving America next Sunday. There’s nothing left for me here, and I’m not coming back. At least, not for a year. I’m not quite ready to leave, but I’m contractually obliged to- so this Sunday I’ll fly from JFK on a convoluted itinerary to Buenos Aires. I found out in the spring that I had received a Watson Fellowship. Wayne and Jace deserve credit as much as I do- they helped me craft my proposal. And there was some tactical chaos magic that nudged my chances just enough to matter.
So I’ll be gone for twelve months starting this august- attempting a sort of grand tour. Five months in S. America. A month in Jamaica. Six Months in Africa. Or something like that. So far only the first three months are planned. I’ll be in Argentina for a month, then Brazil for two. There’s a project behind all of this- a nebulous (now) attempt of getting a grasp of what it is that we (Dutty Artz) are engaged in from a broader prospective then I’ve previously had access to.
I’m looking for sustainable/scalable business models, new productions techniques, pirate economies, massive sound-systems, broken_links, and a bevy of things that I’m only faintly grasping at right now.
I’m taking a fancy camera and some HD recording devices and there are notions of collecting my documentation outside of the internet- creating a kind of visual/taxtual accompaniment to the Global Ghettotek fascination that I’ve been continually inoculated against but cant seem to quit. The whole project will be as open source as possible. I have no fucking idea what I’m doing, and need a lot of help. But there is powerful positive energy in the universe and I have my stars aligned and my crystals vibrating at 60 HZ just like the man at the botanica told me to do.
My email is TallyBower AAAATTTTTT GGGGMMMAAAAIILLL so if u have any suggestions, any friends anywhere along the way, beef to pick with the colonial underpinnings your reading in my mission, a favor to ask, food to try, places to surf, or anything that I need to know, or that you want to do for me, or that I can do for you. please just let me know.
It’s nearly impossible to leave New York- there’s too many people that I love, and projects that I care about- but nows as good a time as ever to get away.
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!
The latest release from anticon., debut album by Baths is in heavy rotation this week. It has some extremely lovely moments – worth checking – also worth spending money on, if you all are still into that.
New mix (Park Here) from our good friend Waer Rock/Culture System focusing on New York area producers making garage-y beats. This one is thick with unreleased jams from folks like Incyde, Peter Gunn, Mikey Dubs, and more – plus a track from our very own Matt Shadetek, “Beenie Eyes” from the album Flowers.
PS – I’m still here. Money calls, but indeed family is always first!
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:
“From radical turntablism (Otomo Yoshihide) to laptop music innovation (Numb), via classical instrument hijacking (Sakamoto Hiromichi), Tokyo’s avant-garde music scene is internationally known for its boldness.
While introducing some of the greatest musicians of this scene, “We Don’t Care About Music Anyway…” offers a kaleidoscopic view of Tokyo, confronting music and noise, sound and image, reality and representation, documentary and fiction. “We don’t care about music anyway”…
In other words, “we make it and that’s all”. Beyond the music and beyond its performance, the future and mode of existence of a city, and society as a whole, are in motion.”
For the lucky BK people this gem shows this coming Friday 16th at 8pm as part of the Rooftop Film Summer Series at the Old American Can Factory 232 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY (info).
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.
Huge new single from Rita Indiana y los Misterios, “No Ta Llevando El Diablo”  b/w “Los Poderes” (translation: “The Devil’s Takin’ Us Away” and “Powers”)
Unfortunately Rita has cancelled her US dates for the summer- but have no fear- she’ll be taking over stateside hearts and minds soon enough. As this track makes it to all the right ears your going to be hearing a lot more from her.
