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Jahdan and I are off to Europe tonight and looking very much forward to our shows. We’ll be in Berlin from the 14th – 17th (Monday – Thursday) with some down time doing some interviews, voicing dubplates and seeing friends. If you’re around get at us via email or similar, my phone won’t be working out there. If you’re a sound and want dubs from Jahdan and are in any of the cities on the tour, holler.

GDM023CD_eflyer_1209

JAHDAN BLAKKAMOORE & MATT SHADETEK: BUZZROCK WARRIOR LIVE

Dec. 10th Vienna @ FLUC WANNE w/ DUBBLESTANDART + SUBATOMIC SOUND SYSTEM
Dec. 11th Nuernberg, AMPLIFIED ATTITUDE @ DESI
Dec. 12th Linz @ KAPU
Dec. 18th Cologne @ GLOBAL PLAYER
Dec. 19th Dresden @ ALTES WETTBÃœRO
Dec. 20th Berlin TBD

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African By The Bay
[Artwork/cover design by Lupo Avanti]

Dutty Artz is proud to present The African By The Bay EP, an exclusive collection of irresistible remixes from San Francisco/Bay Area producer Chief Boima. The EP is available for free download, and features a healthy dose of Afro dance remixes and instrumental reworkings of songs by Birdman (“Money To Blow” feat. Drake and Lil Wayne), Akon (“Right Now”), The Jacka (“Glamorous Lifestyle” feat. Andre Nickatina), Fabo & T-Pain (“Own Step”)

African By The Bay EP is a potent batch of new stateside rap tunes given the remix treatment by Boima, our favorite African-American (in the Obama sense) producer, whose trail-blazing approach weds percussive patterns from sounds like Ivorian Coupe Decale and Senegalese Mbalax. (Not to mention Angolan Kuduro, Nigerian Club, and South African Kwaito, and his Sierra Leonean Highlife and Palm-Wine refix of Cold Flamez “Miss Me, Kiss Me”.)

African By The Bay (62 megabyte ZIP file), feel free to to download and re-post on your site.

01 Chief Boima – Shake Them Dreads
02 The Jacka – Glamorous Lifestyle feat. Andre Nickatina (Chief Boima Remix)
03 Sean Garrett – Smooches feat. Young Joc (Chief Boima Remix)
04 Birdman – Money To Blow feat. Drake and Lil Wayne (Chief Boima Remix)
05 Akon – Right Now (Nananana) (Chief Boima Mbalax Decale Remix)
06 YV – Own Step feat. T-Pain & Fabo (Chief Boima Remix)
07 Cold Flamez – Miss Me, Kiss Me (Chief Boima Remix)

(more…)

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Rupture is off-the-grid tonight, still in Mexico, where this weekend he performed alongside Adrian Sherwood, Mungo’s Hi-Fi, and various local DJs and bands at the Mictlan Dub Festival. I’m holding things down tonight 7-8PM on Mudd Up! radio on WFMU 91.1 fm in NYC. It’s cold and rainy (just miserable weather here) in NYC, tune in, throw in comments, questions, get involved, heat up. Again, tonight @ 7PM.

Subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast if you want downloadable versions: , Mudd Up! RSS.

For those outside our FM broadcast range, WFMU offers live streaming and even has its own free iPhone app!

Here’s something I’ll be dropping at some point tonight –

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/Clipse_Ft_Yo Gotti-Showin_ Out _Prod_ .mp3]

Clipse – Showing Out feat. Yo Gotti

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Unrelated Submerged Second Life Picture- but watch for an amazing video coming soon from Sara Taigher

Solar Life Raft- the mix that keeps on giving- has finally made its way to your local record stores. /rupture and Shadetek working together is a serious Voltron force. It’s safe to say that I have listened to SLR over a hundred times since it was recorded- and I’m still finding reasons to go back. Opening with Time-Blind’s abstract tone poetry and closing with a gorgeous re-work from /rupture and Shadetek of Telepathe, it’s easy to miss all the ground the mix has covered.

Tracklists are the weird anathema of the DJ Mix- always reminding us as producers and consumers that for some reason the sounds cant just stand alone. A tracklist can mark a DJ’s access to dub-plates and exclusives or their prodigal digging- but always the tracklist serves as a sort of roadmap for listeners that want to go beyond the mix and gain some traction in it. Often I’ll look to a track list before deciding whether or not to listen to a given mix. Or I will return to the tracklist after hearing something amazing that I want to be up on.

SLR stands alone without the tracklist- and the hype that goes along with it- people read the tracklist and think, “Wow, this sure is eclectic”- but it’s not grab bag by any means- its laser precision etched in bass. It is hard to believe after listening to SLR that you’ve just digested sounds as seemingly diverse as Cardopusher, Paavoharju, and Luc Ferrari. One you get used to these sorts of mixes- where genre-orthodoxy and rigid notions of sonic-geographies are left behind- it gets pretty fucking hard to go back to an hour of any BPM mixed seamlessly at the start of 8, 16 and 32 bar phrases and movements.

/rupture and Shadetek can really cook in the lab. I’ve always rated Matt for his back-from-the-crossroads skills in Logic. I mean- from what I know- he was the first stateside producer to actually be doing production for grime dudes in London. /rupture on the other hand has always been off in a zone that seemed far more experimental- where quantization was frowned upon and standard timing or track development was laughed out the door. Through the last few years they seem to have tempered each others workflows and styles in all the right ways- and SLR should be an announcement that these two can make tracks with the very best of them. The album is almost a third original production and its the home grown tracks that really provided the convincing narrative that holds the mix together.

Effusive praise can ring hallow coming from ones own crew- but I’m not just trying to ramp up sales- Solar Life Raft is remarkable. Do whatever your ethical radar tells you in regard to consuming music and somehow, someway, find yourself a copy. If that happens to be amazon, boomkat, itunes, or beatport….just think of it as investing in more music.

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/leaky/MattShadetek-Strength_In_Numbers-SOLAR-LIFE-RAFT.mp3]
Matt Shadetek – Strength In Numbers

[audio:http://secretgooglecheatcodes.com/GGD-Bebey-DJ_Rupture+MattShadetek_RMX.mp3]
Gang Gang Dance – Bebey (DJ /rupture and Matt Shadetek Remix)

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tribe

“…the five-letter English word tribe. The Western media’s analysis of events in Africa reveals the word as the main obstacle in the way of a meaningful illumination of dynamics in modern Africa. Tribe—with its clearly pejorative connotation of the primitive and the premodern—is contrasted with nation, which connotes a more positive sense of arrival at the modern. Every African community is a tribe, and every African a tribesman. We can see the absurdity of the current usages, where thirty million Yorubas are referred to as a tribe, but four million Danes as a nation. A group of 250,000 Icelanders constitutes a nation, while 10 million Ibos make up a tribe. And yet, what’s commonly described as a tribe, when looked at through objective lenses, fulfills all the criteria of shared history, geography, economic life, language, and culture that are used to define a nation. These critical attributes are clearly social and historical, not biological.

Nonetheless, to the analysts, tribe is like a genetic stamp on every African character, explaining his every utterance and action, particularly vis-à-vis other African communities. Using the same template of Tribe X versus Tribe Y, print and electronic media and even progressive thinkers simply look at the ethnic origins of the leading actors in a conflict and immediately place them in the category of X or Y. So, whatever the crisis, in whatever part of Africa, in whatever time period, the analysts arrive at one explanation: it is all because of the traditional enmity between Tribe X and Tribe Y. It is like looking at John McCain, seeing that he was born in Panama; then looking at Barack Obama, seeing that he was born in Hawaii; and then concluding that their political differences are due to the places of their birth or that their differences are rooted in an assumed traditional enmity between Panamanians and Hawaiians.” – NgÅ©gÄ© wa Thiong’o

from the current issue Transition magazine

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

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osb

UPDATE: Contest over!

Alright, we’re giving away a pair of tickets to One Step Beyond.  We’re going to keep this simple and straightforward; the first person to email family [at] duttyartz.com with the correct answer to the following question wins a pair of ticket to the show; What was the first joint-release from DJ Rupture and Matt Shadetek/Team Shadetek?

You must also include “One Step Beyond Ticket Giveway” in the subject line.

– more info below –

The FADER Presents

ONE STEP BEYOND at the American Museum of Natural History

Friday, November 13, 2009

DJ /Rupture
Matt Shadetek Feat. Jahdan Blakkamoore
Maluca
Sonido Martines

9pm – 1am
$25- Price includes admission to the Space Show and a free return visit to the Museum.

Buy tickets in advance at http://www.amnh.org/rose/specials/

The Rose Center for Earth and Space
Enter on 79th Street at Central Park West
Must be 21. ID Required

amnh.org/osb

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osb

The FADER Presents

ONE STEP BEYOND at the American Museum of Natural History

Friday, November 13, 2009

DJ /Rupture
Matt Shadetek Feat. Jahdan Blakkamoore
Maluca
Sonido Martines

9pm – 1am
$25- Price includes admission to the Space Show and a free return visit to the Museum.

Buy tickets in advance at amnh.org/osb

The Rose Center for Earth and Space
Enter on 79th Street at Central Park West
Must be 21. ID Required

amnh.org/osb

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Ahmed Janka Nabay gets mentioned in a New York Times CMJ rundown;

There was also an African apparition: Janka Nabay from Sierra Leone, wearing a straw skirt and singing and dancing to recorded tracks of what he said was a 500-year-old tradition called bubu music. The tracks were modern, and the beat, fast and skeletal and driven by bell taps, was unstoppable, demanding wider dissemination.

[audio:http://www.strawvsgold.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/janka3-introduces-true-music-bubu-music_.m4v]

listen to more audio from an interview Janka did with Straw vs Gold several months back.

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[youtube width=”525″ height=”455″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_82ZMRnU0U[/youtube]

“Lee Perry’s ‘Blackboard Jungle: From Dub to Dubstep'”

A mini documentary featuring Lee Scratch Perry, Subatomic Sound System, Jahdan Blakkamoore, Dubblestandart (plus interview footage with Rusko and live clips of Jahdan with Major Lazer)

1973, Jamaica.  2009, to the world!  The story of the seminal dub album “Blackboard Jungle” from Lee Scratch Perry and King Tubby that was cornerstone of the dub music craze that would extend around the world.  In 2009 Vienna’s dub masters Dubblestandart called on Perry to revisit the vibes.  This collaboration stretched around the globe to involve New York City’s dub scientists Subatomic Sound System & rising reggae vocal talent Jahdan Blakkamoore, and resulted in the first ever original dubstep tunes from Lee Scratch Perry plus a journey back into the Blackboard Jungle!

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rollingdeep

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/roll_deep-when_im_ere.mp3]

Roll Deep – When I’m Ere

Legendary East London grime collective Roll Deep compile some of their best songs from the last seven, or eight, years.  The first half of the set is just stunning– amazing, consistent, commercial-free bangers. There is a disconnect somewhere in the middle of the set, the pop tunes (proto-commercial grime?) kick in, and it’s distracting but you’ll forgive them once hear “Terrible”- one of the groups earliest, if not their first track as Roll Deep crew. It’s essential.

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Francophonic 2

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/Franco-Mario.mp3]

Franco & Le TP OK Jazz – Mario

L’ Okanga La Ndju Pene Luambo Lwanzo Makiadi –better known simply as Franco— died 20 years ago, October 12, 1989. Franco and his legendary TP OK Jazz band created some of the most wonderful and far-reaching African music for the latter half of the 20th century. He was (and is still) not just popular around the globe but he is adored all across Africa. Nevertheless, it seems to me the few American folks who are into Franco’s music are for the most part into his early recordings (look at the expansive Francophonic Vol. 1: 1953 – 1980 released by Sterns last year, celebrating the 70th anniversary of his birth.)
His 1980s hits are staples at African dances and celebrations, especially tunes like “Mario” and “Takoma ba camarade pamba” which are still extremely popular particularly among certain nostalgic African expatriates who migrated to Europe and the United States in the mid 1980s and early 1990s. In fact, it was in the mid ’80s that Franco and his band were at their most innovative, the era in which they packed nightclubs and stadiums all across Africa. In the ’80s Franco and TPOK Jazz were also surrounded by newer artists like Kanda Bongo Man and Pepe Kalle with exciting new musical and dance styles like Kwasa-Kwasa and Soukous which were faster with louder drums and and perhaps even sharper guitar melodies, not to mention the solos. Francophonic Vol. 2: 1980 – 1988 was released last week by Sterns. The songs on Francophonic Vol. 2, when listened to chronologically (the way it was intended/compiled for listening) one notices a shift in tempo and rhythmic programming as we move from song to song; the drums and percussive instruments are nudged forward, a bit to the foreground, and they become more restless and clearer/in the center, at times just behind guitar and underneath those sweet vocals, definitely not hiding anymore but creating space for and contributing to the undeniable grooves.

The track featured here is an epic hit and has a story that is all to real; “Mario” is a “song about a gigolo who despite being highly educated has chosen not to apply for jobs but would rather sit at home and live off his rich lover who happens to be a woman twice his age.”

Franco