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Extra late reminder that tonight between 6:30 – 10:00pm at Ovest (513 West 27th Street and 10th Avenue) in Chelsea we’ll be participating in Electro Skins.

From the curator Virginia Villari:

Inspired by the collaboration between New York based DJ /Rupture and Matt Shadetek (whose album SLR dropped on the Agriculture Records) and the Italian video artist Sara Taigher, author of the video clip for the Solar Life Raft Medley track, Electro Skins presents the new released album by Rupture and Shadetek, Solar Life Raft, and a selection of Sara’s video artworks, together with a performance by circus artists Seanna Sharpe and The Circustentialists.

Electro Skins seeks to highlight the deep connection between the human and the technological: how electronic music perfectly expresses human feelings, how video art strikingly represents the human condition, how performance – the body movement throughout the space – can be inspired by electronic sound and images. Electro Skins uncovers the mutual creative exchange between diverse art forms, which get empowered by this contamination and ultimately become one.

Videos will be projected on the walls from three projection stations, turning the space into a giant video installation, DJs will play their brand-new tracks, culminating into a moment when Solar Life Raft Medley will be projected from all the three stations, the djs will be playing it and Seanna and The Circustentialists will be performing a piece specifically created for the event’s site and concept.

Check Contaminate NYC for more info

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[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/Ahmed_Janka_Nabay-Eh_Congo.mp3]

Ahmed Janka Nabay – Eh Congo

Janka Nabay is a countryman of mine (which means he is from Sierra Leone, West Africa) with a very interesting backstory you can read on his MySpace.  I’m not fluent in Temni, but I understand what Janka is singing about in “Eh Congo.”  I spoke to him last year to confirm my interpretation and draw some connections, because the lyrics to this song sounded like a free association exercise (that’s what happens when you leave your home country and get lost/immerse in foreign culture –language, communication changes/words are forgotten.) I could write about the song’s lyrics, but I won’t –that will spoil the mystery, or just diminish the song’s already understated mystique.  After all, this is music/rhythms used to soundtrack rituals involving secret societies, coronations, burials of village chiefs and prominent society members. But I must say, that has nothing to do with the lyrics here, which makes it even more intriguing. Anyway, Ahmed Janka Nabay Bubu King is coming out soon True Panther. You can pre-order  a 12″ EP here.

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— Howard Zinn dies at 87

A real American (Brooklyn!) hero has left us. I dated a girl who had a brain crush on Dr. Zinn, so I was exposed to some articles, and People’s History‘s significance cannot be understated.

“From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.” – from You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train

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PAT ROBERTSON VOODOO DOLL! Proceeds Go To Haiti relief

I’m unsure about the execution (voodoo-blackface?) too, but this is a great idea, no?

American televangelist/Christian evangelical ‘douchebag‘ extraordinaire Pat Robertson blamed the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti on the on the Hatian people and their religious/cultural practices– voodoo. Additional article: What is Pat Robertson Really Saying About Haiti?

***

& here’s my request to johnnyvoodoo and all America voodoo doll makers, please make a doll of this man, David Brooks of the New York Times —

If you read his Op-Ed column last Thursday, I’m sure you will sympathize with me/my request. For a better understanding, Matt Taibbi clears the thickets by translating excerpts of Brooks’s essay so we can further appreciate his timely insight —

“This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.
The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.
The chastened tone of these essays is captured by the economist Abhijit Banerjee: “It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control.”

TRANSLATION: Don’t bother giving any money, it doesn’t do any good. And feeling guilty about not giving money doesn’t do anyone any good either. In fact, you’re probably helping by not doing anything.

Read more @ True/Slant

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I imagine I like Afrikan Boy, he seems like a fairly relaxed and pleasant person.  This new video, shot in the imaginary offices of ‘Afrikan Airlines’ is quite enjoyable.   Ever since he did a grime influenced tune a few years back about getting caught shoplifting in Lidl (a very very cheap European supermarket chain where I used to buy groceries in Berlin) I’ve been rooting for him.  Also I think it’s cool that he raps in a Nigerian accent, which up til now has been (and still is?) considered uncool, giving rise to a bunch of Africans in grime who try to sound yardie and end up completely unintelligible.  via Ghetto Bassquake.

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One of our favorite mad scientists transmitting out of this here NYShitty High Priest of Anti-Pop Consortium, aka HPrizm aka Digital P has started a blog!  It’s about music technology and it’s called Bangout Sessions.  Priest is a great rapper, and has been for a long time but he’s perhaps less well known (if you haven’t seen him live) for his on-stage mad MPC bashing keyboard mutiliating beat performances.  I’ve had the privilege of seeing him do this a few times and always enjoy it.  Fearless and crazy.  I look forward very much to hear how all this translates into blogging, and there’s a few posts up there already to get you started.

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I’m joining DJ Still Life tonight (10pm to midnight) on his weekly radio show Worldwide Smash on East Village Radio.  At some point in the first hour of the program, I’ll be selecting new beats and bass from round the globe, might even drop a live set, so tune in - Worldwide Smash – weekly vetting of global bass music, Worldwide Smash delivers a double dose of raw beats: from instrumental hip-hop, dubstep and glitch through emerging forms of electronic music aimed…

After the program, we’re off to Que Bajo?! @ Santos Party House with international playboys Geko Jones & Uproot Andy for some serious bashment!

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This is crazy. DJ Kiva is a friend who I met through teaching at Dubspot but who’s been active in NYC for a good while. He’s a wicked producer, musician and DJ. Among other things you may know him from his feature on ‘Underwater High Rise‘ from Solar Life Raft where he played guitar and percussion. He and I worked on this Beaterator project together for Dubspot and Rockstar Games where we went around to a bunch of schools in NYC and across the country and taught kids how to make music using Beaterator, which is a piece of music software that runs on the Sony PSP portable game system. It’s actually really cool and you can make surprisingly official beats on it, on the train, in the laundromat etc. On top of that it has a built in mic so you can sing on your track, play instruments into it, surreptitiously sample people on the train etc. Kiva, being the intensely creative dude that he is, has gone and made an albums worth of music on this thing in the couple of months he’s had it. And it sounds heavy. A particular favorite of mine is his cover of The Abyssinians ‘Satta Masa Gana’ with him singing and playing horns into the built in mic. MAD. Check it below, download it, show it to your friends.

BTR8ION by DJ Kiva

BTR8ION…NYC artist/producer DJ Kiva presents the world’s first album written & produced entirely on the Sony PSP Beaterator. Created while traveling streets, subways, and skies from Brooklyn to LA and laid out mixtape style…Beateration for the Nation!

tracklisting:
01 Hollywood Starz
02 Situation feat. Channel Earth
03 Keep the Fire Burning
04 C’mon Y’all
05 Satta Massagana*
06 Bring Da Beat Back
07 Center of the Universe
08 Another Kind of Language
09 Mysyde
10 Era Unknown
11 Altitude
12 Back to My Galaxy

all music written, recorded, & produced by DJ Kiva © Adios Babylon 2010 on Sony PSP Beaterator.
* Satta Massagana written & originally recorded by the Abyssinians

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First off, tomorrow Uproot Andy and I are bringing Que Bajo?! back to the bassment at Santos Party House. We’ve taken several trips to south america in the past year and this will be our first time together since our tour back in October.
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Secondly, I think its about time we kicked off top 5/10 monthly for you so here’s a few of my picks for the party.

Geko Jones’ Top 5 Latin January 2010


Suckafish P. Jones– Cloak and Dagger Empire
found this via Culture System full EP available here. La Zeneida gets reworked into absolute cumbia mayhem on Disboot Records

Crystal Fighters – I love LDN (Meneo’s menrenstep remix) Fakes left with a cumbia shuffle then breaks down double time merengue wobble


Barney Iller – La Bony
Digi-bullerengue bizness from the heart of brooklyn, Que Bajo?! regular making it happen in the studio! This one will be out soon on vinyl with B-sides from me and andy. Wobble heads give a listen to his tune Ay Carajo!

Blank Point ft Del Patio– Watagatapitusberry (Toy Selectah’s MexMore rmx)
Tribal Guarachero/Ubsurd lyrics/Ass-shaking bottom end- what more do you want from a club banger?

Rita Indiana y Los Mysterios – Jardinera

Rupture spotted a video performance for this in august. I got my hands on it this weekend and am rediscovering it for its dancefloor possibilities. Laid back merengue on the disco tip

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I’m getting together clips of me and Jahdan live preparing my materials to send out for our next European tour in June (promoters, holler at booking AT duttyartz DOT com!) and thought I would share these.

THE GENERAL: live at the Museum of Natural History

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFXLJTGJw9I[/youtube]

WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS: Live in Cologne, Germany

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7u3YDvFZxI[/youtube]

Shoutout to Uh Young Kim and the guys from Bunch TV in Cologne, Germany they also taped an in depth interview with us that should be forthcoming.

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[vimeo width=”524″ height=”393″]http://www.vimeo.com/4318336[/vimeo]

The world will be tested by Texas Instruments and English diction…

One of my favorite bands released an album sometime in mid-2009, and I’m only coming across it/listening to it now. They have been gone for so long, and their buzz so quiet now. Nevertheless, it’s great to see Tjinder Singh & Co. return with more brilliant tunes. When I Was Born for the 7th Time is their most cited album and it’s charm is undeniable, a true classic— but (in high school and college) I found myself listening to Handcream for a Generation and Woman’s Gotta Have It more than anything else. 

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Cross-posted to Mudd Up!

So. By now we should all know that MLK is beautiful and Auto-Tune is culturally complicated. A lot can be said about this video, from the elemental power of oratory to the ways in which technology can amplify or disperse political potential to the notion that rewiring history is an act aimed at future change.

But what keeps running through my head is a paraphrase from Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. here: I’m trying to tell America about a dream that I had.

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image by jean-fabien

[display_podcast]

MOSHOLU PARK – AT THE FIRE

“At The Fire Is NOT a MIX

it is an EMOTION”—or rather a series of emotions

Lucky Dragons – Mirror Friends

Mosholu Park – Interlude (At The Fire)

Matt Shadetek – Shield Dub

Vybz Kartel – Yuh Love

Terror Danjah – Splash

Shlohmo – Hot Boxing The Cockpit

Muhsinah – Lose My Fuse

2/5 BZ – Etnik Market, Etnik Paranoia

CIAfrica/Manusa – Dans Mon Pays

Movado – Gyal Bend Ova

Big Boi – Fo Yo Sorrows

Goro Yamaguchi – The Cranes Crashing In Their Nests

Friend – Doki

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if there has been one name that’s stuck out for me recently, out of all the radio rips and whatnot i’ve been running thru, it’s oneman. this guy has consistently thrown down spontaneous, diverse, hype sets that mix up the old and the new without sounding scattered or all over the place. Serving up a gang of old school garage, funky, grime, dubstep and PURPLE, his sets seldom disappoint. If like me, you’re just getting wind of this guy, there is a bunch of material for you to get through:

on rinse Nov 19th 2009
[audio:http://www.moderaw.com/audio/!_PODCAST/rinse/Oneman_111909.mp3]
Download

on rinse Nov 5th 2009
[audio:http://www.moderaw.com/audio/!_PODCAST/rinse/Oneman_110509.mp3]
Download

on rinse may 7th 2009
[audio:http://www.moderaw.com/audio/!_PODCAST/rinse/OneMan050709.mp3]
Download