Come out to Zebulon in Williamsburg tomorrow night for a live performance by Nettle (Jace/Rupture’s band of real musicians and noisemakers!) Yours truly will be adding extra bump between the live sets. Solo guitarist Piers Faccini will also be performing.
Facebook RSVP here.
Over two years ago Jace and I started talking about doing an artist residency project in Morocco. Five years ago Jace started talking to Maga Bo about how boring clubs and festivals are and what sort of more in-depth work they could do, as musicians, as DJs, as curators, as artists, and as friends. Beyond Digital is finally here. The future vision is an international non-profit that curates artist residencies focused on interesting localizations of international tech. Cell phone banking, Berber Auto-Tune, Mesh Networks in Cairo, Pirate Distros…..
In June Jace, Bo, John Francis Peters, Carolyn Lazard and I will go to Marrakesh. More people will come to help with documentation and to complete their own projects- this is the group that’s locked in so far. Everyone has different priorities- but we’ll be working together on everything. Bo is going to record an album in a DIY studio we build. John, who is the photo editor at The Fader, is going to complete photo-essays and teach digital photography. Jace is going to follow Berber Auto-Tune to its originary-point and beyond. Carolyn is going to film documentary shorts. I’m going to try and keep everything organized while doing my own research on small studios and DIY digital culture.
We will also be putting on skill-shares and media production workshops. Everything we do will be documented and spread out from Morocco through museum shows, lectures, dvds, streaming and just about every other format you can imagine translating a month into. On the ground we’ll interface with Dar Al-Ma’mûn cultural center and Arab Media Lab.
We are working behind the scenes and non-disclosure agreements to lock down some serious institutional, grant, and corporate support. BUT- right now we need YOUR HELP. We need to send Jace and Bo to Morocco in the spring to do preliminary organization and networking to make sure everything goes smoothly in June. The main cost here will be travel expenses (transatlantic flights, local car rental, frugal accommodations & food, translator). Part of the money raised will be used to create a website. Anything over the amount we’re asking for will be re-invested in the June portion of the project. Project donors can receive curated CD’s from Moroccan markets, signed prints from John Francis- Peters, instruments, custom mix tapes, and if you feel like balling the fuck out, you can even pledge your way to Jace and Bo djing your dinner party, wedding, or day at the beach. Help us get there.
this time next week heat heat heat
Or, The Sloth’s Slow Metabolism Protects It From Neologism.
FREE!
DJ /Rupture
Matt Shadetek
Geko Jones
Chief Boima
let the CIA know yr coming
Friday, February 11 at 10:00pm
The Cove
106 N. 6th St.
Brooklyn, NY
“My girl yuh no… boring / gwan wine bend over touch your toe ring” – Busy Signal
Busy Signal – Wine Up (Nuh Pop Dung)
File this one under things that make me happy. Busy Signal is in top form and Washroom deliver a gorgeous reggae flavored dancehall riddim entitled Bad Suh. I’ve been starting my sets with this one recently and also playing a few other cuts on the riddim including the Tifa and Voicemail. People in my Prospect Heights neighborhood may have been confused to see a tall red bearded man gesticulating and shuffling his way through the black grimy snow on his way to the subway to the sound of hot dancehall in his headphones. Â Anti-winter music.
[youtube width=”525″ height=”393″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSmMoVf1j_8[/youtube]
If you follow Shadetek’s blog you know we have been thinking alot about digital marketing, how to monetize content, and keep making the music that we love. It has been a busy winter for DA, we linked with Leeor from Friends of Friends PR to help amplify and sharpen our message, Jace and I started to engineer Beyond Digital, a non-profit that funds international arts residencies and interventions, we joined forces with Emeka Alams from Gold Cost for a capsule line (and that’s just a taste of the plans that are not TOP SECRET, SECRET OR CONFIDENTIAL). Just to keep things hectic I moved to Kingston, AKA HUSTLE UNIVERSITY, where even the kid that opens the gate is just waiting to play you his newest riddims off a usbstick. MOVE QUICKLY AND GET WEIRD. Mine deep for the magic cambio strategy that converts cultural capital to liquid capital fast enough to keep us all eating.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI[/youtube]
With that in mind, I reached out in December to Stephanie Brown about an interview. She’s a Digital Marketing Manager for a major label in Canada. I wanted to know more about what exactly her job entailed- and what bets the people with the money and infrastructure are making on how to sell content. #realtalk bizness
T: As a Digital Marketing Manager for a major Label in Canada, what exactly are you responsible for?
S: I direct strategy for marketing our artists online in Canada. When we have an album coming out, marketing managers will meet with me to discuss what sort of promotional support we can give the release online, and where to best spend their ad dollars. The idea is to create awareness and hype about the artist by placing content on the entertainment and music sites that will get the greatest visibility in Canada. So, when the album finally drops, audiences will recognize the artist and hopefully be inclined to buy the album. I manage relationships with a number of partner sites who use our content from our artists (electronic press kits, interviews, etc) to support their editorial coverage, which is really a win-win situation. Additionally, I plan social media promos & contests, aid with online ad buys, and oversee our direct-to-consumer marketing channels.
T: Social media seems to be most powerful when an artist is directly communicating with fans- but obviously most big label social media is not being generated directly by the artist – who actually is sitting on the computer updating each artists facebook, myspace, etc- do you guys have back end access that streamlines all of this stuff?
S: We monitor our artist’s social media platforms in terms of numbers, just to see who’s gaining momentum. But aside from that, artist management is typically responsible for updating those properties. We offer suggestions, but the decision lies ultimately in the hands of management. For some of our domestic artists, we’ll post news and happenings on their Facebook and Twitter pages if we’re requested to do so. We’re always transparent about it, so we sign off on our posts as “Team” whoever. Many artists actually do post themselves, or work closely with their managers to establish their digital identity.
T: How is the balance understood between digital and more traditional marketing? Are marketing plans all done holistically or is digital and traditional really heavily divided?
S: The digital element of marketing plans is undoubtedly an important facet, but it is typically independent from television, print and radio. It’s always a point of reference, because we want to ensure that the messaging is cohesive across all mediums, but it’s still its own world. However, if we wanted to run an online promo on a large scale, we’d be sure to support it with traditional marketing. Those promos are typically those with a big budget and a kickass prize-like a meet and greet with an A-list artist in Australia, for example. The submissions would be collected and shared online, but we’d use print, radio, and TV to direct people to the contest website. Otherwise, a portion of the total marketing budget will simply be allotted to online, and then it’s up to me and the digital team to direct where to best spend it.
(more…)
It’s Black History Month, so we reflect on our dark-brown and black American heroes. iTunes is providing a road-map to our immediate musical heroes. Lil Wayne is black, and the Black Eyed Peas are caramel. You already know, Kanye West is blacker than Cornel West, but Cornel West is a better rapper. Stevie Wonder smiles way too much, and R. Kelly is the walking embodiment of complicated. Dr. Dre’s great grandfather escaped from a plantation and started a own colony somewhere out West. Kid Cudi wears white-boy suits; he is a regular on MTV. Michael Jackson is not dead; he is white.
Did today happen? Does adulthood exist? All I know is that it’s snowing, again — or maybe it never stopped. The last time I was this tired I was walking through a forest after a show and before the airport. Mudd. Deliciously low visibility. A river. Nature has so many things without off switches. We passed a homeless guy pushing a cart.
Last night’s radio show, now streaming, featured a very informative Benjamin Lebrave from Akwaaba Music.
you can subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast for downloadable versions, issued 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).
[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/the-third-eye-foundation_standard-deviation.mp3]
The Third Eye Foundation – “Standard Deviation” from The Dark (Ici, d’ailleurs, 2010)
I spent my Saturday in doors working on nothing but noizes and beatzes, stopping to watch Al Jazeera‘s coverage of a suddenly chaotic #Egypt – Egyptians demanding for their pharaoh to resign. In the evening, I walked down a couple blocks to a Senegalese-owned halal restaurant called “African-American Cuisine.” On my way back, iPod decided I should stop listening to 8Ball & MJG and pay attention to The Dark, The Third Eye Foundation’s 2010 album. For the most part, I’ve payed attention to Matt Elliot’s output under his birth name, at least since 2003’s The Mess We Made, but not his earlier releases as 3EF. While based on track titles alone “If You Treat Us All Like Terrorists We Will Become Terrorists” sounds apt for the times, “Standard Deviation” is immense, absorbing, murky and warm with low, low rumbles and creeping, ascending voices. If you enjoy this track, the album is a nice cohesive mix-up you should definitely check out.
Seems to me like a nice route through tonight is to begin by catching Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts reading from her new book at the New School [UPDATE: THE NEW SCHOOL IS CLOSED TODAY DUE TO SNOW, READING POSTPONED] and then make our collective way over to Made in Africa — whose special guest DJ, Akwaaba’s BBrave, will stop by next Monday‘s radio show.
Harlem Is Nowhere (the book: excerpt) is out now, two weeks after my Domus mixtape appeared. The New York Times reviewer read her work & couldn’t help but hear music (Auto-Tune no less!):
It reads, in fact, as if Ms. Rhodes-Pitts had taken W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Souls of Black Folk†and Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings†and spliced them together and remixed them, adding bass, Auto-Tuned vocals, acoustic breaks, samples (street sounds, newsreel snippets, her own whispered confessions) and had rapped over the whole flickering collage. It makes a startling and alive sound, one you cock your head at an angle to hear.
Here’s a breakout jam from my Harlem Is Nowhere mixtape. The beat is an exclusive from Timeblind, low-slung, spacious, holding momenum in one hand and stillness in the other. Sharifa and I read excerpts from the 1941 edition of Rajah Rabo’s 5-Star Mutuel Dream book.
This incredible publication listed pages and pages of things you might see, with accompanying 3-digit lottery numbers to bet on if you saw them. The lottery dream book simultaneously quantifies the mundane and wires it into a complex system of hope and mysticism, all with an eye on the money. Money the only thing that moves around a city faster or more completely than its number runners. Illegal uptown gambling created this fantastic by-product, these lean little snapshots of life on the street. This was Rajah Rabo’s landscape of possibilities. And so we receive a strange vision of what one might have seen, seventy years back. In many ways the quotidian is the rarest of all. The thing that gets lost first. So we read it. So we say it.
[audio:http://negrophonic.com/mp3/Harlem-Is-Nowhere-mix_excerpt.mp3]DJ Rupture, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Timeblind – Rajah Rabo’s 5-Star Mutuel Dream Book
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Last but not least: if you are reading this and own or have access to a yacht, please let me know. We’ll only need to borrow it for a month or two. Thanks!
KEXP is a dope radio station in Seattle- and even though I left Seattle for NY five years ago- it is still one of my favorite stations for their sick DJ roster. DJ Riz basically made me fall in love with radio. Kid Hops holds things down on the dubwise spectrum and Alex Ruder has recently brought a welcome breath of fresh air into the station. It was a no brainer when DJ Chilly asked if we wanted to include Kingdom’s remix of Rita Indiana’s “Los Poderes” on the latest Music That Matters podcast. The tracklist reads like a Tropical Roll call of DA homies.
1. Sonora – Memoria
2. Rita Indiana – Los Poderes (Kingdom Remix)
3. Frikstailers – Cumbianchamuyo
4. ChocQuibTown – De Donde Vengo Yo
5. Ana Tijoux – 1977
6. Los Rakas – Abrazame (Uproot Andy Remix)
7. Chico Mann – Mentirosos
8. Joan Soriano – MarÃa Elena
9. Grupo Fantasma – Montañozo
10. Davila 666 – Callejón
11. Tremor – Espina
12. Toy Selectah – Half Colombian Half Mexican
13. Cuarto Poder – Solo Tu Tienes La Llave
14. Poirier feat. Boogat – Que Viva
15. Banana Clipz – Coupe Cumbia
16. Uproot Andy/Geko Jones – Manuelita Remix\
17. Novalima – Libertà 18. Very Be Careful – La Alergia
19. Madera Limpia – Perro Que Ladra
Stream it:
[audio:http://feeds.kexp.org/~r/kexp/musicthatmatters/~5/3PAll3gCSbY/96cb74a8-2609-4be9-92c7-96c77efaf6b3.mp3]
It is a good thing, we discovered last night, to begin and end with mister Arthur Russell. Hard to go wrong in a a loose and loving space. Along the way: Ghanian hiplife in preparation for next week’s guest, Chicagoan footwork sold to Americans by the Brits, the Bronx’s own Colombian low-end king Jorge Meza, Caroline Bergvall reading Dante, and and (aka always more).
you can subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast for downloadable versions, issued 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).
tracklist: (more…)
So this Thursday, January 27th, Chief Boima and yours truly, along some good friends from Garbon, Ivory Coast, and Madgascar will kick off a new party in the southeastern part of Manhattan Island (a neighborhood commonly referred to as the Lower East Side of Manhattan borough) at Gallery Bar (art gallery by day, and lounge/party space when its dark.) We’ll be joined by very special guest, founder of Akwaaba Music and DJ, BBrave. Facebook RSVP.
Going Africa and Beyond. Though I won’t be popping champagne like my Ghanaian brothers Ruff-N-Smooth (they have all the money and the honeys!) I will be playing their music.
[youtube width=”525″ height=”393″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etFHI594-rE&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]
the Dutty Artz familia keeps growing. Welcome Adam Atropolis, lifelong New Yorker and next-level beatmaker and songcrafter. Right now he’s in Colombia with his Cumba Mela crew, cooking up all sorts of very cool, very considered collaborations with local musicians (“we’re working with the king of kings of vallenato today,” begins a typical email), from the nu-skool electronic heads to, well, squeezebox lord Hugo Carlos Grando, king of the kings of vallenato.
but better to have Atropolis explain. He’s been there for two or three months now, and is coming back soon, so expect to hear a lot more from (and about) Atropolis real soon. – Jace Rupture
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It’s been too long since we posted anything. Just to update the world, to those who are actually reading, part of the Cumba Mela collective has been doing a mini-tour through Colombia for the past two-months. There is a lot of great footage and music to come. For those who don’t know, we are producing a compilation with artists that we are collaborating with throughout Colombia. We are also performing and producing a documentary that illustrates our journey.
Please click the following link to learn more about our project: The Colombia NYC Project
So far we have worked with a handful of artists. Once we return to the states February 1st. we will have more solid posts, previewing the work we have done here so far.
For now, I would like to share with you our experience in Palenque ; an historic village in Colombia with a massive heritage of preserved African traditions. Benkos Bioho, an escaped slave who aided many other slaves to live freely in this community, founded Palenque in the 17th century. Today, the traditional language of Palenquero can still be heard among the streets. The language was formed due to the diverse African tribes that lived together. Therefore, the native language of this area is a mix of several forms of African dialects with Spanish.
We were in Palenque during a champeta festival, which was really crazy. Since we have been in Colombia, we performed in Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Cartagena, and Barranquilla. And of all the places, we found the craziest and loudest sound system I have ever heard (no joke), in this small remote village, with wild pigs, goats, and chickens running around.
Anyway, during our 3-day visit we had the honor to be in the home of Raffael Cassini, one of the members of Sexteto Tabala. His group is regarded to be one of Colombia’s most highly regarded and important Afro-Colombia artists. It was amazing to see how such a highly regarded musician is living such a humble life-style in the quaint village of Palenque.
On the following day we had a beautiful experience with Las Alegres Ambulancias. We set up our mobile studio in their home and recorded a track with them. A remix of this track should be out hopefully in the next year. The completion of this entire project will hopefully be finished in a year.
Be sure to check out the short documentary bellow on Las Alegres Ambulances.
On our last day we worked with this young hip-hop crew. It was the first recording this 16-year olds have ever done in their life. We will be posting this track with some remixes soon, as well as some footage of the production behind this track.
Once we returned to Cartagena we met up with two more artists from Palenque. Viviano Torres, one of the fathers of Champeta, and Son Palenque. We got the honor to record with both of these artists. So stay posted to hear our collaborations with them.
As of now, we are in Taganga. Since we have been in this chilled out beach town we met up with Juan Carlos and Walter Hernandez, from Systema Solar, in their beautiful home studio. So keep posted to check out whats to come!
Nettle is a band I started in Barcelona which knows nothing if not change. This spring we will release an album — a soundtrack to a remake of The Shining, set in Dubai — on a label I’ve admired for awhile. (details soon…)
This Thursday we’re playing a free show at Zebulon in Williamsburg. It’s an intimate space where you can come get close to our strange music. There will be a little bit of singing and 100% no guitars. We use old instruments made from trees (Lindsay’s violin, Brent’s cello, Bill’s bendir frames), and homebrew digital tools (Sufi plug-ins, #mudd) and if you like to listen then this is your night. Icing on the cake: Lamin Fofana will DJ throughout the evening.
And remember: after Tropical comes Arid.