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This year has been a year of expansion & experimentation for me (DJ Ripley), from the chance to play Lincoln Center with Ushka, Dutty Artz/Kafundo collaborators Buraka Plays Som and Charanjit Singh, to my new gig as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Business at NYU. I’ve also been branching out creatively, with new collaborations in the works in production/remixing (more on that forthcoming), and this week, a new live performance experience – I will be performing a live DJ set with amazing drummer/percussionist/beatmaker Ravish Momin. He is an esteemed jazz drummer and Indian percussionist who has toured across the world alongside many free jazz greats as well as with multiple iterations of his own band, Tarana.

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Matt Shadetek The Empire Never Ended Album Cover
Dutty Artz is immensely proud to announce the new album from Matt Shadetek The Empire Never Ended, his second solo effort.  The album will be out March 26th 2013 via Dutty Artz.  The record is a mix of instrumental and vocal tracks which fuse Shadetek’s love for new sounds with the street knock of Rap and R&B.  Guesting on the record are Riff Raff, Troy Ave, Chan Dizzy, Aku Orraca Teteh and Jahdan Blakkamoore.  “After I moved back to NYC after living in Berlin I wanted to make something more local” Shadetek says “I grew up on rap music but there was a moment where things just got really boring and my interest went elsewhere. Lately things are getting interesting again.”  You can listen to Madness from The Empire Never Ended over at Pitchfork.

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A good friend of mine, Brooklyn Shanti has been rocking the mic since he was  12. Over the past year  Shanti has been doing a great amount of work in India.  Two of his most recent projects involve, Rani Rani, which was picked up by a Bollywood film, From Sydney with Love; and Bengla Bass, an original production that was a part of a music documentary show called The Dewarist.

[youtube width=”525″ height=”355″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1irkofrajI[/youtube]

“The Dewarists is a part music documentary, part travelogue which takes independent musicians to diverse locations across the world, to collaborate and inspire as they create wholly original works of art — that stand the test of time and orthodox.”

[youtube width=”525″ height=”355″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Ldd2cT1T4[/youtube]

“In this episode Brooklyn Shanti and Mou Sultana come to their home town Kolkata. Nucleya joins them to create a track about their relationship with the city. The song has two distinct parts, one featuring a bass-heavy dance beat and the other a mellow bengali rap. Watch as they talk about their beginnings and make ‘Bangla Bass'”

Make sure to also keep an eye out for his  collaboration with Jah Dan Blackkamoore

 

 

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le1f dark york artwork

This is the instrumental for my contribution to Le1f’s mixtape Dark York earlier this year. A few people were asking me for it and so I thought I’d make it available.  It’s 128bpm so a bit slower than a lot of the ‘trap’ music popping on the net right now.  My homie Dead O from clouds gave me a huge stack of underground Memphis rap CDs several years ago when I played in Helsinki with him and the hypnotic darkness really made an impact.  This is my love letter to those beats.  A big shoutout to Le1f for using it for his tape, as a lifelong New York Rap Guy I’m happy to be included in this new generation of weird rap that’s oozing out of NY right now.  I’m calling the genre for this one Emotional Grease.

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Flyer from the first Backdoor, August 2009

Way back in the summer of 2009, a bunch of us in DC wanted to try an experiment — take the energy of the house parties we were throwing and DJing and try to transfer it onto the dancefloor at a club. We formed a new entity — the Anthology of Booty — with a preliminary mission:

committed to resisting negative forces such as racism, misogyny, and homophobia in social spaces like dances, clubs, and bars. We create spaces for dancing, enjoyment, relaxation, and art with an emphasis on inclusion and respect. As DJs, we play all kinds of music reflecting our different communities and passions.

You know, basically stuff that is discussed here all the time. Our vehicle to achieve this lofty goal of consensual fanny-bumping was the party Backdoor — paying homage to and carrying the tradition of so many communities forced to use the backdoor, sidedoor, separate entrance, and to the clandestine places where they/we partied anyway. It was also a play on the venue where we threw Backdoor — the basement of the 9:30 Club, called Backbar. We kept it on the downlow, advertised by word of mouth, and soon had ourselves a sweaty, sultry underground party.

It didn’t take long to outgrow the space, unfortunately, and so we set off in search of another venue for Backdoor, which proved to be challenging. Backdoor became nomadic, and even went on hiatus at times as we returned to our roots with some warehouse/studio events. Yet we still yearned for the days of a regular, monthly space where our blend of global booty beats and dancefloor politics could be counted on amidst all the other nightlife options. So its quite exciting to be having the first Backdoor party in quite some time, with the hopes that it will be the first of many. What’s more, it’s back in a basement!

I Want to Believe in Backdoor

If you’re in DC, stop through. If not, let’s see how we can get you here for the next one. Believe — we can throw banging parties and think about things at the same time…

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I’ve really been enjoying the stuff that Dre Skull has been doing on his Mixpak label. He’s been covering a ton of the musical styles I enjoy including Dancehall, House and other forms of interesting beat music. We caught up when we played together at the Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival and he mentioned that he was doing a compilation of southern inspired hiphop beats by electronic producers. It turns out that that’s what I’d been working on as well and so I offered to contribute something. I’m really happy with how the comp has come out, there are some great contributions from the other producers and I’m happy to be a part of it. Here’s my track The Machines which I just added to my soundcloud. Below is a link to a playlist on the Mixpak Soundcloud with all the tracks available to stream. The compilation will be available on iTunes and all other fine digital retailers on September 25th, 2012.

 


Stream the full compilation here.

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I started teaching at Dubspot in August, thanks to Matt Shadetek. Before I began teaching I was a teacher assistant for DJ Kiva for about a month, and it was during this period that Kiva gave our class a sneak peek of his project 1000 Sunrises, which he finally put out last week.  It always awesome to hear a project during its earlier stages, and then hearing it completed.  Definitely worth checking out.

DJ Kiva will be dropping this freshness November 10th at Le Poisson Roug with Africa Hitech, and he will be rocking Webster Hall with Matt Shadetek November 12th.

The following material was pulled from the Dubspot blog, which Lamin wrote:

Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist producer and musician DJ KIVA returns with a superb new solo album 1000 Sunrises out October 18 on his  Adios Babylon imprint via Destroy All Concepts.

Navigating beauty and pain with deep, mesmeric, off-centered beats, soulful, dub-wise electronic impressions, twirling synthlines, and reinforced sub-bass, 1000 Sunrises is a perfectly balanced album. The six tracks presented here are meticulously and lovingly put together, and they move with an unhurried, reassuring pace. From the opening “Feel It,” with its extra-bouncy thump and unrelenting, catchy synthline to the meditative “Tayyib,” which maintains a solemn and contemplative mood with eerie voices but holds a propulsive groove, and the staggeringly beautiful, mind-expanding title track “1000 Sunrises,” DJ Kiva remains remarkably self-reliant and uncompromising in aesthetic throughout the entire album. Album closer “City Of The Dawn” is the uplifting, post-future, and soulful electronic music you can only get from an experienced and self-assured electronic music producer, whose style and range go far beyond arbitrary and trendy sub-genres. Electronics, melody, dub, and soul come together – same as it never was.

[youtube width=”525″ height=”355”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc4K_CdiG40[/youtube]

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[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/LV_Joshua_Idehen-Melt.mp3]
LV & Joshua Idehen – “Melt”
from LV & Joshua Idehen‘s album Routes, an album which came out on Keysound Recordings a few months ago. I’ve listened to the album countless times, played some tracks on the radio, and at parties prior to the unrest in London. I highly recommend it. It’s an impressive, imaginative, muscular, and fun album.  On “Melt” Idehen, a Londoner of Nigerian heritage talks about growing up in London on top of a ridiculously good kwaito-informed funky jam provided by LV (very impressive vocal cut ‘n past & repeat action.) So much is said in such little time (youth, class, perseverance,…) & so much understood even when the words aren’t clear!

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I’m not sure if they’re referring to the son of Tarzan,  town in Nepal, or the language from Papua New Guinea, but we’re proud to announce DA013 the Korak EP from Contakt & Mayster. The duo are behind TURRBOTAX®, Brooklyn’s own XLR8R sponsored “un-pretentious yet forward thinking and adventurous” club night at The Cove, now turning two years old.

On “Korak” tropical percussion, 808 cowbells and an assortment of clicks and pops whir and collide around a throbbing, syncopated bass line. DA’s own Matt Shadetek provides a NYC 3Ball rework with nuff bass to rattle windows and rib cages. The b-side “Opar” is a study in tension and release with a more classic 4×4 house beat while Contakt & Mayster create a soundscape with reversed cymbals and filtered percussion. Doc Daneeka comes through with a UK Funky remix.

Out Soon!!!!

 

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Tomorrow, I’m kicking off my Sunday morning radio show on WFMU! All summer long, 9am to noon – I’ll be playing music, noise, and whatnots on WFMU 91.1 and 90.1 MHz FM. For the past couple of years, I provided extra oils to keep Rupture’s Mudd Up! wheels greased proper, all the while filling in, co-operating, and board-opping for everyone from Rob Weisberg to Glen Jones, and now I got a three-hour spot on the longest running freeform, independent community radio station in the United States! The show doesn’t have a name, and for now we’re just calling it Lamin. If you have a good name suggestion, let’s hear it! As for a description, let’s just say we’re staying true to WFMU’s commitment to unstructured-format broadcasting. Go here to stream my last Sunday morning broadcast.

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[vimeo width=”525″ height=”320″]http://vimeo.com/24175601[/vimeo]

This would be so incredible if the world wasn’t so insane. Still, an awesome video by Megaforce.

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Here’s something that deserves it’s own post, but the way things are going it doesn’t look like that will happen. So here it is “The World Needs Change” by Clams Casino, from his Instrumental Mixtape – which is quite amazing.
[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/07%20The%20World%20Needs%20Change.mp3]