“UPP filho da puta!†(Pacification Police you sons of bitches!) So went the refrain to nearly every funk proibidão blasting out of the walls of speakers lining the main street of the favela Mangueira on a Friday night last month in Rio de Janeiro. Around the corner, the G.R.E.S. Primeira Estação de Mangueira, the most famous samba school in Brazil with its trademark green and pink trim (verde que te quero rosa sang Cartola, their legendary sambista), had already wrapped up its rehearsal for the evening. The action had shifted to the jam-packed baile, a series of sound systems lining the narrow street, like a gauntlet of tamborzão.
Here is a mono radio rip from a live DJ mix on WFMU a couple of weeks back. It’s jam packed with unreleased, exclusive killer Shadetek tracks! The tracklist is a little rough, but the unreleased joints – opening track “NIC U” and “Pterodactyl” are gleaming freshness not to be slept on! Look out for his Dutty House EP coming out Tuesday!
TRACKLIST
Matt Shadetek – NIC U
Matt Shadetek – This Is Love
Matt Shadetek – Pterodactyl
Contakt – Not Forgotten
??? Dubbel Dutch Remix
Matt Shadetek & Lamin Fofana – Sunshine City
Black Ryno – Nuh Take Talk (Matt Shadetek Remix)
Matt Shadetek – Delta
Kingdom – Bust Broke
Mayster & Contakt – Korak
??? Secret Agent Gel Rimix
Maxwell D – Going Away
SBTRKT & Sampha – Evening Glow
Matt Shadetek & DJ /rupture – Sunset B35
Chief Boima – Techno Rumba (DJ /rupture & Matt Shadetek Remix)
Greetings from the darkside, Londoner Toby Ridler’s Becoming Real project recently unleashed a vicious EP entitled Spectre, outright insane beats with vocals from one vocals/raps from one of grime’s most amazing/underrated MCs Trim. There is also a wicked juke refix of the lead track by DJ Rashad.
“We are all only temporary curators of our present bodies, which will all decay, sooner or later. In a hundred years or so all the humans currently alive will have died. I take great comfort in knowing, with certainty, that thing that makes us special, able to enrich our own lives and those of others, will not cease when our bodies do but will be just starting a new (and hopefully even better) adventure … ” – Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson
Coil was great. I can’t really explain it here. Just returned to NYC after a productive absence but today is one of those “days” where I’m “home” for less than 24 hours. His post– post– Throbbing Gristle project X-TG was slated to play at the GY!BE ATP this weekend, we were looking forward to that…
although his work that really opened my young self up was Coil.
Red Slur is the first Coil song I ever heard. Sometime in high school, these 3 minutes made an indelible impression. It remains one of my favorite songs.
Whenever I land in a new city, I go into town with three intentions.
*Find out if there is a really old and amazing music from the region.
*Find out what the locals are listening to at the pubs and clubs so I have an idea what my set should be like.
*Find something really new listen to.
Language barriers usually don’t usually impede this. You might go in with an idea of what you’re looking for but the skilled know not to expect anything. Just find something amazing.
Walk the streets with eyes and ears peeled. Somewhere some 14 year old kid that cut class today, came home early and is blasting a local mixtape so loud the whole neighborhood can hear it. On the metro, someone is rockin out their mp3 player so loud you can hear their headphones above the racket of the moving train. A restaurant owner from a foreign country is simultaneously playing the most amazing CD of music from his country to make his establishment feel like home. Music is everywhere and when its good, its usually loud.
I was walking around Oberkampf in Paris with Marie Maurin from Jacasseries Radio an area where a lot of the college kids go to get wasted for cheap and we ended up checking out a bar called International. We were just walking over to see what was playing because there’s always some live act going on in there but what we found heard from outside was amazing. I’m talkin Konono no. 1 on acid.
The street outside was mobbed with with smokers. Gotta love that you can walk out the bar with your beer there. We pushed through the crowd to get closer to the music. I spent the next couple minutes trying to figure out if what was on the projection screen of the crowd downstairs was really happening or if it was a tape. There was a bearded man in a faded santa suit throwing popcorn at the crowd dancing downstairs. When I realized it was real time I told my friend I needed to push through and check out the basement.
Congopunq as a duo are a fairly odd pair of dudes to behold. Dr Kong is a towering 6’2 dude jumping up and down and pulling all manor of tricks out his suitcase. He is happy to make you crepes on stage or bang a kettle with a broomstick or stare at one person menacingly for the duration of a song. His performance interacts with the crowd and makes the show more participatory something I’ve been looking for in new acts to book.
Percussionist Cyril Atef performs in a custom made jock strap and sits behind the oddest drum kit I’ve ever seen assembled. A djimbe for a kick drum, a random collection of random shakers and percussive instruments gathered from around the globe all microphoned through a sample station to loop and stack beats. There is a roland or korg synth which also ran through the loop station and probably a couple pots and pans. He’ll stack a few loops to the beat add a synth line then proceed to rock out the amplified thumb piano for 15 minute jam sessions of improvised dancefloor mayhem.
This is them performing live in Haiti. Watch how the crowd goes from chanting for the local dancer Chi Chi Man to going totally mental for Congopunq’s jump up carnival vibes.
Cyril, is the long-time percussionist for Mathieu Chedid (french megastar with the oddest haircut in the biz) and he’s also founded another project called Bumcello. He has been living in France for some 20 years now. I sat down with him to talk about the new project at his apartment and from what I can tell he’s completely insane in the healthiest sense of the word. Here’s the video for their single from the Candy Goodness album released on Crammed Discs. This guy should be rocking at tropical parties around the globe right now and no one seems to know about him. Promoters and Booking Agents… get on your P’s and Qs and BBM’s and twitter… I’ll be playing with him tonight at the same bar I met him at International 5/7 Rue Moret. Planning on bringing him to NYC soon so please hit me up if you wanna host them at your parties.
I have to say, at the Monterrey tribal guarachero rave I wrote about for The Fader, it was incredible to watch the DJs go from 128bpm tribal, then slam into a cumbia rebajada (crowd cheers!) then move onto crunk-en-espanol, then Cypress Hill en espanol, then back to tribal, all in the space of 10 minutes. It was the only rap moment of the night — mediated by syrup-cumbia… and the dancing never stopped! Outside the party, one kid walked around with a SWISHAHOUSE tee on.
Here’s what ppl dont understand. We were raise in Texas, so screw music is what we know. But our parents raised us with traditional music like cumbias, etc. This is our music, a mix of what we know and what we grew up hearing.
We are all curators and everyone gets to hang/post their 15 pieces. Interviewing Leeor Brown last week about his insider take on the world of P(A&)R we talked about how to tell stories through and across digital networks (HIS TELL ALL INTERVIEW IE #REALTALK VOL.! IS COM1NG NEXT WEEK). In a media environment where the biggest players are only a few re-tweets away we still actively police our digital social life with decorum held over from meat-space. Getting someones email address might be easy- but sending a message and opening dialogue are not the same thing. How many release announcements fall on deaf gmail accounts? I remember reading a few years ago that on A Small World (ie facebook for rich people) a user was banned for friend requesting Paris Hilton because he didn’t have a legitimate claim to be a part of her social network. Annoying promo emails don’t usually provoke active shunning, they just got ignored. It was refreshing yesterday, then, to see tucked away alongside “Artists On Tour! Interviews, guest list and more available!” and “What is a Pixelated Lazer Face Bass Monster?” a really honest no BS hyperbole promo email of sorts. It read:
“Greetings and much respect…thought you folks (certainly DJ/Rupture) would get a kick out of this recent essay: http://bit.ly/aRU34F
Keep up the fabulous work,
LC-S”
I AM VERY HAPPY I CLICKED THIS LINK. READ A SHORT EXCERPT ON THIS AMAZING ESSAY BELLOW AND THE REST HERE.
KOFI CAN HAZ SCAM
<EXCERPT> “…my people simply told him to call me home with the power of his ‘Invisible Missive Magnetic Juju’ which could bring a lost person back to home from an unknown place, how far it may be, with or without the will of the lost person. So having paid him his workmanship in advance, then he started to send the juju to me at night which was changing my mind or thought every time to go home.”
-Amos Tutuola, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
It’s fascinating to imagine how these blank-screened cadaverous wholes and frayed bits and pieces have all gotten here. There’s so much black glass that it is like the landscape of an indecisive volcano. These used computers have been donated by Western charity organizations and faith-based NGOs and given the Nigerian tendency to use things even beyond their given function or recognizability, their presence here is only temporary. A great many were brought from Ghana or up from South Africa while a steady stream arrived from China even before that country began its obsessive courting of West and Central Africa. But the vast majority of these machines, parts and components have been shipped by or brought in by enterprising Nigerians who since the late 1980s have known that what would mark this generation of West Africans more than blight, violence or corruption was a hunger for Web-based connectivity, that narcotic rush of shared information.
With almost no formal education whatsoever, many would learn how to rig, rewire, rebuild and master the essentials of computing in these glorified junkyards. They learned from ragged men with soldering irons in their pockets that pushed wheelbarrows filled with screens, wires and keyboards, with the wild-eyed look of juju men drunk on that vile moonshine called ogogoro.
</EXCERPT>
Louis Chude-Sokei is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle- which means I used to sit endlessly in the skyspace 5 minutes away from the classrooms where he was obviously dropping serious knowledge. There are many powerful registers that he moves through in this essay- and when it is so easy to find cringe-inducing writing about poor countries- especially where tech and development are concerned- we must recognize the beautiful moment of being alerted to such powerful well written analysis (with bonus points for Tom “OH MY GOD I GET IT” Friedman pop-shots). Here’s hoping that when I write Prof. Chude-Sokei back asking him to contribute to DA he responds.
Discussion question: Can we learn from 419 Yahoozzzee boys about telling stories on the internet and building relationships out of digital ether? IE HOW TO MAKE $OLID ALL THAT IS MELTED BITS IN THE CLOUDY AIR . It’s time to start looking at alternative economies and networks and re-purposing/learning from their success. If such limited bandwidth can translate into this much cash and we arnt doing shit with our TI connections then it is time to employ a new model.
ADDENDUM. 1. : a thing added : DIRECT FROM THE COMMENTS BELOW AND OUR GENEROUS FRIEND MR CRUCIAL AKA TIMEBLIND IN CASE UR IN A RUSH AND CANT BE BOTHERED TO CLICK TO SEE THE COMMENTS
I’m in a S. American time warp. Everything in Rio happens slow, filtered through the humidity. No one is in a rush. Everyone wears sandals. Last night I finally made it to a baile funk. I showed up around 3 to Favela do Vidigal- in the South Zone of the city, with my friend Gabi who is researching technology + production and distribution in the Funk scene.
I felt the bass when we got out of our cab- but we still needed a five minute moto taxi up the hill, past anti-police roadblocks, to the party. The soundsystem stretched across the entirety of a T intersection- blacklights hung everywhere and the subs were mounted at head level- ensuring that chest-rattling bass could be felt even in the way back of the crowd. The blacklights accentuated the whites and neon yellows of the futbol apparel that men were rocking. Even with the hazy compressed sodium street lights- everything was glowing- it felt like a cavernous club interior. Armed men walked casually through the crowd, navigating crews of dancers bouncing to the floor and back to commands that translate to “drop it on my dick and fuck.”
What startled me most wasn’t seeing all of the tropes of baile sensationalism before me- ASS, GUNS, BASS!- but how much it reminded me of my favorite parties anywhere. Dancers who loved dancing, cute gay boys twerking it like pros, poppers battling near the speakers, footwerkers taking off their sandals and braving the cobblestone to go double time on already frenetic beats, and music that was ethereal and present, infused with all the sweet/sweat synthsations of my favorite RnB coupled with a low end urgency that has kept with funk since the latin freestyle and miami bass days. The DJ was a middle aged man in a dark grey tee and a brown zip up hoodie, he didnt sing or dance along, just looked out on the crowd with a knowing look of stoic contentment, this is his work, and he is absolutely killing it- at one point, from behind the platform that hes standing on alone about 30 yards back from the system- i glanced up at t his acer netbook and only saw Winamp running. There are no monitors, no headphones. I was already too drunk to need anything from the bars that served endless variations on fresh squeezed juices, liquor and redbull. I danced until it started to pour, the dj put a backpack on top of his laptop, a weathered tarp covered the speakers, the music kept going, but we decided to walk down the hill. Half way down the power cut out, everything went dark.
I’m still trying to get my head around the music- because it sounded different then most of the funk I had heard before. Vaguely: more European club music then 2-Live -Crew. It reminded me of NguzuNguzu- whose production I adore primarily because I have absolutely know idea what to do with it. It’s almost always too Ravey for me to want to play it out- but at the same time there is something seditious and dark beneath all the glistening synths- and that darkness and space is what keeps drawing me back. I honestly think they could of wrecked this party last night. The first track of theirs I heard was Kingdom’s remix of Hate 2 Wait- which to this day is one of my favorites to drop when its time for a radical new direction in my sets. Dutty Artz extended family Khalif MihajiLeif just killed a voicing of the original instrumental that wraps up to perfection with some Linzy-esque crooning. When homeboy graduates from college I give it two years tops until he’s a household name for 20 somethings worldwide.
NguzuNguzu have a new E.P. dropping on Silverback records early October – they did up a promo mix for it- that you can grab over at Scattermusic– (i would re-up it for u- but my internet run real slow down here)
“creativity was the ability to bring to life an image or idea regardless of resources”
– Chief Boima, Interviewed by Eddie Stats
Eddie Stats has a great interview with Dutty Artz familia Chief Boima and Vamanos from Ghetto Bassquake over at his blog Ghetto Palms for the Fader (linked below). Â In it came the above quote which Boima mentions in the context of film theory.
I love this idea and it brings me back to a concept that I try to bash my friends and students over the head with all the time.
Creativity is what happens IN SPITE of things like equipment, time and resources. Â A lot of people I know cling to the idea that as soon as they get this next plug-in, keyboard, piece of software, money, time or whatever it is that they don’t currently have that they’ll be able to accomplish their creative goals.
I am sorry to report that this is absolutely not the case.
I’ve just spent 3 weeks in Puerto Rico with a holy shit cast of characters. I haven’t been down to the island in almost five years because of the general apathy that’s become commonplace en mi islita, but the timing was right and I think Puerto Rico may finally be ready for change.
Within days of my arrival I found myself in the midst of some of the top dawgs of the reggaeton and electronic music scenes and I wanna take a few to hip ya’ll to whats gwarnin out there. Its way too much for one post so I’ve broken it up into three that will air this week.
First off, shouts out to Toy Selectah who was also in town to work on some tracks for Calle 13 and Argentine reggae artist Fidel Nadal. At Toy’s invitation, I found myself at Visitante’s home recording studio where C13 have been working on their new album. Hand’s down, what the boys have built is the most beautifully decorated and acoustically engineered studio I’ve ever stepped foot in. Cherry oak walls engraved with logos from their various releases, persian rugs, top notch gear, blah blah blah. I got to hear what Toy was contributing and what is coming down the pipe is explosive. Visitante their producer, Ismael their drummer and Mark, the dread in the video who doubles his duty as guitarist in the video and the carpenter who’s been building the studio, are all hella cool peoples and you should definitely peep this new single Calma Pueblo which has been riling up the religious censors.
Yo soy el que quiere que coman, aunque no tengan hambre – Residente-Calle 13
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/13733993[/vimeo]
I’m the one that wants you all to eat, even if you’re not hungry
I feel like with that line alone Rene’, better known as Residente, summarizes one of the most disenfranchising aspects about life on the island and the reason that his band is so popular. It’s what my friend Yari calls The 100×35 Mentality. There is a serious apathy plaguing the island when it comes to embracing change. New is completely disregarded until its cool and there are very few artists (or members of the general populace) that break norms there. C13 has consistently pushed the envelope. As do we..
Toy Selectah and I played together to a capacity crowd of 550 party people, on a monday night. The resident DJ has been building the night for 4 years and leans toward hip-hop and dancehall. I played about 45 minutes of dancehall cumbia mashups, crunk cumbia refixes, panamanian plena and hip hop in spanish. I’m happy to announce that it was received fairly well received by most of the audience, the bartenders and even by the resident DJ (*you’ll never kill a top 40 hip hop crowd with all new underground sounds, but do dare yourself to try).
The part of the audience that comes to dance liked it more than the guys that were there to drink and pose off but I’d definitely say it was the first time for almost anyone in the room to hear this stuff and something went right because I had alot of hits on FB the following day as a result.
At the end of the night, we had an honest conversation with the DJ about having built something that could change island. He could be the one to introduce a world of new latin sounds to the island, to which he replied… that’s really not my thing. And therein lies the problem on the island. They need more leaders like c13 to set trends and propel them forward. The people are getting tired of la misma mierda. The strike at the University of Puerto Rico en April was a perfect example that the people want things to be done differently. They are willing to stand up for change. What they need is a movement, and in my next post I’ll tell you more about how I’m getting that ball rolling.
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
The second episode of Dutty Artz Radio is up! Me (Matt Shadetek), DJ Rupture, Mosholu Park aka Lamin and Taliesin all got together in the basement of Dubspot to all DJ some short 20 minute sets and do the first episode of our new book club!
The book we talked about is Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.
I chopped the audio into separate parts for your mp3 player pleasure. We streamed it on UStream although somehow the video got lost. The full chat transcript is after the jump though so you can read back if you want. We’ll be doing this weekly on Thursday nights at 7PM NYC time (EST) at http://www.ustream.tv/duttyartznyc
This coming Monday we’ll have a special edition after Dubspot Radio which is at 8 (and I also run) with special guests NGUZU NGUZU! YAAAAA! We’re very excited
