by on

festival2009 banner p465 crop

This Saturday I will speak at the New Yorker Festival, as part of a panel on The Music Biz: Remixing the Industry. It ain’t cheap, but with folks like lifelong industry uber-insider Danny Goldberg, Downtown Records boss Josh Deutsch, and bassist Melvin Gibbs in the mix, discussion should be lively.

I mean, there are only a few more years where we can actually sit down and talk about ‘the music biz’ with ‘record executives’ and such, so let’s make the most of it. And/or help the sick patient die faster.

R.I.P. OiNK.

+

Later this month I’ll be performing in Copenhagen, and so many things are happening in November that my subconscious mind won’t let me think about it yet.

by on

Thomas Mapfumo

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/Thomas_Mapfumo-Hwa-Hwa.mp3]

Thomas Mapfumo & The Acid Band – Hwa-Hwa

In Harare, Zimbabwe (or what at the time was known as Salisbury, Zimbabwe Rhodesia) — sometime in the middle of the 1970s, Thomas Mapfumo stopped playing covers of American rock and soul (music by Elvis Presley, Bobby Darrin, Mick Jagger, etc.) He began singing in shona, and transcribing the sounds of the mbira (chief instrument for traditional Shona music) to the electric guitar. His lyrics became overtly political, in support of the revolutionary movement in the rural parts of the country. The white minority Rhodesians/ruling population, which was brutally suppressing voices of dissent, didn’t catch on due to their lack of understanding of the native language/culture until 1978 when Thomas Mapfumo released the song “Hokoyo,” which means “Watch Out!” in Shona, and Mapfumo was eventually arrested and jailed. “Hokoyo” became a regional hit in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The song “Hwa-Hwa” is from Thomas Mapfumo’s first full-length, also titled Hokoyo! –first time available in the US thanks to Water.

A few years back, Rupture wrote about and posted some Mapfumo tracks, especially digging his 1980s catalog. Thomas Mapfumo made most of his albums in the 1980s and ’90s, releasing politically charged music, criticizing Robert Mugabe’s government for its gross human rights abuse and torture/beating and killing of opposition party candidates and supporters. Mapfumo was exiled from Zimbabwe in the 1990s. He now lives in Oregon, still making music and touring internationally.

by on

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR_-Y-eIlQo[/youtube]

My friend DJ Kiva who teaches at Dubspot with me showed me this yesterday. It’s a compilation of a couple of clips of artist/engineer Theo Jansen’s work in motion. He calls it kinetic sculpture and it’s insanely beautiful.

by on

djbeto

Tune in Mudd Up! with DJ Rupture on WFMU tonight at 7PM, as Roberto Ernesto Gyemant aka DJ Beto, the man responsible for putting together those wonderful volumes of 1960s and ’70s “cumbia tropical & calypso funk” from Panama, joins Rupture to talk and share some incredible music (most likely some exclusives that are not included on the comps.) The compilations are released on Soundway Records.  I am especially looking forward to the talk and the music Beto is going to play for us. I have been fascinated with the music of Panama ever since our visit from Wayne Marshall and Raquel Z Revera. They highlighted the unique position of the Central American country and its lasting contribution and shaping of Reggaeton and our current urban soundscape.  (Missed it? It’s streaming here. Subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast if you want downloadable versions of my weekly show: , Mudd Up! RSS. Listen, get involved, throw in comments, questions. Again, tonight @ 7PM.

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

by on

Image

Back in 2003 I wrote an essay for The Wire’s ‘Epiphanies’ section. The piece detailed my high-school encounter with a bootleg cassette compilation of Japanese noise stitched together by RRRecords. It was published in their April issue (coverboys: Autechre). Here’s an except:

The RRR cassette was polarising, but it was also personal and fragile; and I had the sense that if I didn’t listen closely, it might pass unnoticed. I knew nothing about these groups, but it was obvious that an individual with photocopier access and a dual cassette deck could make a substantial difference in their world. This scene had a tangible scale. It stood within grasp, which suggested that I could actively participate in music – any music, especially the weird stuff – rather than remain a well-informed consumer.

…and here’s a PDF of the entire article.

by on

New mix finished/and up for PDXINDUB.COM

I will be performing a vibrational rhythmanalysis of the control city Portland, Oregon. August 8th @ Various (Branx)

Head HERE to stream/DL

Tracklist:
Colleen- The Happy Sea
8 Ball and MJG- Relax and Take Notes
Sukh Knight – Diesel Not Petrol
Raffertie – AntiSocial (B. Rich Remix)
Lexie Lee- Warlord’s Daughter (Paceface and Sticky Rmx)
Joker- Purple City
Trina Ft. Lil Wayne- Dont Trip (Lunice Lazer Rmx)
Fused Forces- Cock Back and Blast
Fused Forces- Footsteps
LionDub and Shadetek Ft. Jahdan- General (Marcus Visionary Rmx)
Timbaland- Pony Inst.
Cardopusher- Lacra
Salem – Trapdoor

This is a dubsteppy thing- but keeps things fresh and colorful with plenty of pressure.

I’m back on the blogging horse/elephant- new mixes and an exclusive interview with Lisbon’s Octa Push come soon!

by on

Very cool little short video of Just Blaze showing part of how he makes his hiphop beats, in this case a great and very fast way to chop samples and set them up for triggering in the EXS sampler in Logic.  Thanks to Timeblind for the linkage.  This is what I love about Logic.  Any time I’m working with someone else, or teaching my class at Dubspot, I learn some new different way to do the things I do when making beats.  Timeblind is also a super Logic wizard and has taught me lots.  In this case I didn’t know that you could split regions during playback OR drag from arrange into the EXS editor.  Logic heads will appreciate this.  AND if this has you scratching your head and thinking “That looks really cool, I want to be able to do that” you should sign up for the next session of my class at Dubspot, starting August 15th on Saturdays from 4-6:45pm in Manhattan.  The session after that is November 11th Wednesdays and Fridays from 10:15 to 1PM.  Lamin is in my group on Thursday’s that just started last week and will be doing some blog posts here and on the Dubspot blog about it.

Thanks to www.mikechav.com for putting this up, a bunch of good producing videos on his site.

by on

duttyartz_featureimg_giant

BROOKLYN ANTHEMS

Dutty Artz Represents the World Town

Story Julianne Shepherd
Photography Jason Nocito

Encyclopedic, scholarly and wielding deep faith in riddim and vibes—the alchemy of the Brooklyn-based Dutty Artz crew is completely mystical and slightly awe-inspiring. Its main proprietors, the power trio of DJ/producers Jace Clayton aka DJ/Rupture, Matt Schell aka Matt Shadetek, and Roberto Fernandez aka Geko Jones, are dudes preeminently known for soliciting and disseminating the globe’s bangingest dancehall, dubstep, and cumbia beats. They have explored metropolises, townships and favelas to seek out music in its indigenous state and found likeminded friends in Brazil’s Maga Bo, Montreal’s Ghislain Poirier, and Cape Town’s African Dope Records crew, and when they can’t get to the most outward of dance music’s niches themselves, they have a gang of colleagues to carry the load. When a friend recently traveled to Distrito Federal in Mexico City, Jones begged him to bring back whatever wild music he could find. Thus, when you Google “tribal guarachero,” duttyartz.com is the only non-Spanish blog that results. They are archaeologists scouring the globe’s nooks and crannies with the curiosity of scientists, not conquistadors. They are so passionate about the beat, and generous with their knowledge of it, you almost don’t know where to begin the discussion.

Click HERE to read the rest of Julianne Shepherd’s intelligent and sincere article from The FADER #61.

by on

Terius Nash aka The Dream in the studio.  This guy is a BEAST.  His past two albums are crazy, pretty much all I’ve been listening to for a while.  The fact that he’s making shit this fast should just make everyone else quake in fear.  He deserves his hype. Shouts to Kingdom via Twitter for the link. I’m on there too. Tweet tweet tweet.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uXe6Y9wv0k[/youtube]

by on

Midrange wobble hooligan Rusko breaks down some of his dubstep production methods on YouTube.  He goes through in a pretty detailed way talking about how to program the shuffled beats in dubstep, how to make wobble bass, how to mix beats and general production process stuff.  I like his music although I imagine there are a lot of dubstep people who will think he’s bastardizing the scene since the stuff he makes is very main-floor friday night mass appeal dubstep.  I like it although I think there will be a lot of people coming behind him trying to make ‘banging dubstep’ and making a lot of horrible music, like what happened with d’n’b after Ed Rush & Optical introduced the whole No U Turn techstep sound.  Regardless though, whatever style you’re making, if you’re trying to make powerful beat based music he is giving away a lot of good knowledge here.  Respect to him for pulling back the curtain.  Real producers who are confident in themselves don’t need to keep ‘production secrets’.

Part one:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4rDC1kuHtc[/youtube]

Part two:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eLFb6CecXA[/youtube]

Part three:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGJMhYv5fqA[/youtube]

Part four:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AZ1RL8jI9c [/youtube]

by on

 
Large Hangars and Fuel Storage/Tonopah Test Range, NV/Distance ~18 miles/10:44 am by Trevor Paglen

Mark Danner is one of the good journalists. His work navigates nearly impenetrable messes of deceit and deception like the 2000 Florida vote recount, the nefarious path to the American war in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. Military intervention in Reagen era El Salvador… the list goes on- but I think when you have Susan Sontag call you “one of our best, most ambitious narrative journalists” you’ve pretty much fulfilled your journalistic duty to the world.

One of my biggest fears during the election was that once/if Obama was elected there would be a psychic closure on the Bush years. In a more utilitarian sense, I am afraid that people are so excited about entering a “new era” that they  forget that there is a lot of unfinished business from the last 8 years that needs to be sorted out. Danner’s latest piece, “US Torture: Voices From the Black Sites,” which appeared in the new issue of the New York Review of Books on Monday, is doing some of the heavy lifting. It contains detailed accounts of interrogations of “highvalue detainees” at secret “black site” prisons. An excerpt from the piece – about a tenth of it – appeared on the OpEd page of Sunday’s New York Times. It’s a potent reminder that the clean up process has just begun.

Wayne says PDFs are the new MP3s- so here is a PDF of the whole article as it appeared in the New York Review of Books. This is painful to read, and while for some it might be confirming what they thought they already knew- there’s something deeply moving about reading first hand accounts of the abuse against “our enemies.”

Mark Danner “US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites” PDF (9 pages)