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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

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This post is cross-posted from the brand spanking new blog at mattshadetek.com.  In addition to my usual stuff here at Dutty Artz I wanted a place to call my own and talk about some of my less dutty, more clean artz that I am up to. Expect a lot more wordz.

photo by the author in Flatbush, Brooklyn

I assume if you’re reading this blog that you’re someone familiar with my musical output. If not, please get familiar here at my soundcloud page.

Generally speaking I am pretty cagey about my new projects until they’re nearly done. I want to try an experiment this time in going through the process of making an album completely in public. Transparency! Throwing stones in a glass house!

(more…)

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Matt Shadetek mixing in the Dubspot basement, photo by Kiva

While I’m posting about Dubspot radio you all might as well check out the mix that I did on it last week.  It’s me playing 140bpm stuff, a bunch of dubstep, garage and a bunch of stuff off Flowers including a few exclusive unreleased things including tracks from Jahdan Blakkamoore, Indigo Rex who’s one of my former students who’s coming along quite nicely and some other new stuff.  It starts off deep and cool and heats up.  At least the first half will help you stay cool.  The second half might make things worse.

New Brainfeeder artist Lorn did a cool mix too playing a bunch of whatever they’re calling all that new glitchy hip hop stuff.  Beat scene?  Wonky?  I don’t know, anyway there were some joints followed by an interview I did with him talking production and creative process.  I cringe listening to my voice BUT there were definitely some jewels getting dropped, hit the Dubspot Blog post to stream or download the audio and read the track lists.

On Monday we’re going to have guest Elliot Lipp and Dubspot’s own !bangInclude, the show is every Monday from 8-10PM EST.

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cross-posted to Mudd Up!

On my radio show tonight: special guest from Oakland – Larisa Mann AKA DJ Ripley! She’ll start by sharing some Jamaican ‘answer tunes’ which flow into a larger discussion of music as a dynamic social practice (and not simply a collection of objects/recordings). As a legal scholar and formidable DJ, we couldn’t ask for a better person to come in and touch on everything from the social implications of intellectual property laws to, as she put it in our email exchange:

“the many ways that physical property, access to and control of material spaces, are still a prerequisite for music to happen – from control of servers that host files, to temporary or permanent control of streets and warehouses, zoning, etc., to the problem of providing bass, which still requires physically bigger systems than other kinds of sounds..”

In other words: expect heavy tunes and insightful talk tonight, 7-8pm EST, WFMU. For warm-up, Larisa offers a selection of mixes on her blog, like this recent live set.

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Me, Berlin, March 2004.

Lately over at Dubspot I’ve taken on an expanded role beyond my normal teaching in the form of producing some materials for them in the form of articles and soon some tutorial videos. The first article is up on their blog and is about a concept I learned from Timeblind which he calls Speed Dating. It’s a method for improving your production workflow and I thought producers who read this blog might find it helpful.

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Masala got got, then restored, but the whole affair simply served to remind us that we need to communicate – to share sound & ideas – in spaces we control. Places where years of content community-building won’t be deleted by corporate whim.

Think globally, upload locally, tunnel downwards. Rig the submarines. Sink deep. In a post-search mediascape whose senses will we rely on?

YOU. Your content. Your grandma’s chain. Cycling off into the darkness… check it:

“web 3.0: the grand retreat back to our own servers”

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Matt Shadetek at Dubspot

Photo by Clair Lim, at my Logic class at Dubspot.

For those that follow this site you’re probably familiar with some of the things I do, like produce, dj, make records etc. Lately I’ve been doing some new things though, and I figure they’re worth mentioning here because some of you might be into them. The first I’ve mentioned before which is teaching at Dubspot. I love Dubspot, it’s a great place with a great group of people involved. I’ve been there for a bit over a year now and I really enjoy it. I’ve met a lot of great people there, students and instructors and it’s helped me to realize that I really like teaching music. I teach the production in Logic class there where I basically teach people how to operate Logic, the main program I use to make all my stuff, but I also teach the broad strokes of my own low-tek Hi-Fi production ideology. Basically the idea is that it’s not about expensive equipment or perfect anything but more about wading in, getting your hands dirty and having fun making something, which I preach and practice. I teach Logic in small groups of 4-8 people, usually once or twice a week at Dubspot. As a result of the class I’ve developed relationships with some of my students and continued teaching them in private lessons which are basically us working on their tracks together, solving problems, and talking things through.

One of the reasons I really like teaching and helping people produce is that I’ve spent about ten years now developing a pretty specific niche of skills, basically how to produce weird bassy dance-ish music, and it’s great to be able to share that knowledge, guide people away from the pitfalls and cliffs of the learning curve and point them in the right direction. Mainly because people just get so happy when they finally get how to do something that they really wanted to do.

More recently I’ve had a few people approach me to do this but without the teaching component, which has turned into people hiring me to go to their studios and help to finish their tracks, which I’m really enjoying as well, and have decided I’d like to do more of. So, if you’re someone in New York, who’s working on tracks and are looking for production help, be it mixing, arranging, polishing, achieving certain sounds or just help finishing stuff, get in touch. I do have limited time and limited mental stamina for working on stuff I don’t like so please point me at some kind of a musical sample or describe what you’re trying to do in your message and I’ll let you know if it’s something I think I can help with.

My next logic class is starting on Friday, January 29th and will be Wednesdays and Fridays from 10:15-1PM.

Contact me about production through Myspace, Facebook or Twitter.

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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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Lately I’ve been having fun typing things into Google’s little search box at the top right of my browser and seeing what comes up as suggestions. Today I was reading about the Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux Reservation on Wikipedia and there was a mention of Caucasian people, who have a wikipedia entry too. This however lead me to see what google had to say about white people so I tried my friend the search box. Hilariously the first result was ‘white people stole my car’. What? Needless to say I clicked through. Turns out that a while back if you typed ‘white people stole my car’ into Google, the helpful googleoids would ask “did you mean black people stole my car?” Screenshot below. I can’t vouch for the veracity of the screenshot but I did find it very funny.

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Geoff Manaugh, author of the BLDGBLOG book & blog,  will join DJ Rupture on Mudd Up! w/ DJ Rupture on WFMU tonight betweeen 7-8pm. Geoff’s a consistently fascinating writer on architecture, contributing editor to Wired UK, and a former techno DJ. Expect discussion to range from architectural acoustics & unexpected sample-discovery to a selection of Geoff’s favorite techno.

You already know the drill, 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!

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prewar

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/GeeshieWiley-LastKindWordBlues.mp3]

Geeshie Wiley – Last Kind Words Blues
American Primitive, Vol. II: Pre-War Revenants (1897 – 1939)

I discovered Geeshie Wiley’s “Last Kind Words Blues” while reading a piece from Best Music Writing 2009 anthology – John Jerimiah Sullivan’s Unknown Bards (the blues becomes transparent about itself.)  Sullivan detailed the rigorous, painstaking process of seeking, restoring, and analyzing forgotten American treasures/some of the oldest/rarest (country-blues) recordings on earth. Sullivan dedicated a great amount of time and attention to Geeshie Wiley’s “Last Kind Words Blues,” giving a deep and thoughtful analysis of the lyrics and singing with help from Pre-War Revenants curator/’American fingerstyle guitarist’ John Fahey.

“Last Kind Words Blues” is about a ghost-lover. When Wiley says “kind” -as in, “The last kind words I heard my daddy say” – she doesn’t mean it like we do; she doesn’t mean nice; she means the word in its older sense of natural (with the implication that everything her “daddy” says afterward is unnatural, is preternatural.) Southern idiom has retained that usage, in phrases involving the world “kindly,” as in “I thank you kindly,” which – and the OED bears this out – represent a clinging vestige of the primary, archaic meaning:[…]

Not many ciphers have left as large and beguiling a presence as Geeshie Wiley. Three of the six songs she and Elvie Thomas recorded are among the greatest contry-blue performances ever etched into shellac,, and one of them, “Last Kind Words Blues” is an essential work of American art, sans qualifiers, a blues that isn’t a blues, that is something other, but is at the same time a perfect blues, a pinnacle.

***
What you do to me, baby, it never gets out of me.
I believe I’ll see ya,
After I cross the deep blue sea.