Month: November 2009

MEXICO: MICTLAN DUB FESTIVAL

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[Salon Calavera]

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This weekend I’ll be performing at the 3-city Mictlan Dub Festival, alongside Adrian Sherwood, Mungo’s Hi-Fi, and various local DJs and bands in each city. Things kicked off last night with a screening of the Dub Echoes documentary followed by a Q&A with me in the incredible Salon Calavera in the center of Mexico City. SKULL SALON. Mictlan, by the way, is an Aztec concept involving the proper path taken on the way to Death.

I’m looking forward to these dates. In NYC sometimes people ask me to do ‘cumbia’ sets, so it’s quite fitting that in Mexico I’m asked to do a special set presenting my interpretation of ‘dub’. I’ll be playing out a lot of stuff I rarely play out. Dub classicists beware!: much as I love Tubby & Co., I’m hostile to canonical interpretations/reiterations of dub…

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[Salon Calavera, roof view]

for info–

Nov 27 – Puebla Cholula

Nov 28 – Mexico City

Nov 29 – Guadalajara

gdldubfest-web

THE UNBUYABLE SUBLIME

monitor mix main

Two weeks ago Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney asked me to contribute a piece on her NPR blog, Monitor Mix. She was doing a series on ‘End of the Decade’; I looked back across a broad landscape.

You can read my post here: Free Music and the Unbuyable Sublime

It includes the following four sentences:

  • A decade, in music, is a terrifyingly long time.
  • Sounds now move faster than the speed of context.
  • Music confounds value.
  • I want the giants to fall even faster so we can see what weird flowers start blooming in the spaces left vacant.

THIS WEEKEND

slr booklet

Friday November 20 – DJ /rupture & Matt Shadetek, Devlin + Darko. @ The Empty Bottle, Chicago. Free with rsvp, $10 otherwise. to get in free, email: rsvp@emptybottle.com

Saturday November 21 – DJ /rupture & Matt Shadetek @ The Video Saloon, Bloomington Indiana. A Benefit Show for the Indiana Forest Alliance.

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for a taste of what Matt will be spinning, check his latest mix, S3CR3T KN0W13DG3 – triangulated somewhere dutty between Matt’s own productions, up-to-the-times dancehall, and UK funky.

FERAL DIGITALS GNAW BOWED STRINGS

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[photographer: Bjarni Grims. copyright Bedroom Community 2009]

It’s confusing because there are two Ben Frosts – a musician and a visual artist – and they both come from Melbourne. But when I listen to Ben Frost everything makes utter sense. The soundworld explored on his new album, By The Throat, is pretty much perfect. Acoustic instrumental weight in restraint attacked by feral digitals. I couldn’t be happier.

I feel a deep affinity (if not envy!) for what’s happening here. It’s a less mean-spirited version of acoustic/electronic/noise balances I’m working with for the Nettle Shining-in-Dubai Resplandor project, and Frost’s recording quality/production level is SKY-HIGH, sounds stunning. Not sure if the wolf noises have earned their right to be here, but they’re infrequent.

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Here’s a song from By The Throat. It starts off pretty then something else happens.

[audio:Ben_Frost-Hibakusja.mp3]

Ben Frost – Híbakúsja (buyable at Amazon)

RADIO TONITE

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Radio tonight: special guest Bendude from Montreal’s Masala crew! Topic: Digital digging. (aka Secret Google Cheat Codes). We’ve hosted ‘analog’ diggers like Beto from Soundways and Sonido Martines, now it’s time to learn about the other side…

KEYWORDS: Cd-rs, rapidshare, mp3s, coupe decale, cumbia, world music 2.0, internet submarines, poorly rendered turtles all the way down, francophone.

SOLAR LIFE RAFT VIDEO

Yes, I already blogged this, but I’m excited and will repeat myself with more details… Huge shout out to director & animator, Sara Taigher, and illustrator Maria Chiara Di Giorgio.

It was fascinating to watch this animation idea go from vibing with Sara in Rome one hot day last August to storyboards to the final version. Her visual narrative conjures up lovely, imaginative accompaniment to the music and short story found inside the CD packaging. For the 3-minute video we wove two sections of the mix together, using two of the exclusive SLR tracks (one by Matt & I, one by London grime producer Mizz Beats) and those magical voices from Nico Muhly (whose blog is outstanding). “Underwater High Rise feat. DJ Kiva”, our tune, will be released on 12″ next week with 2 other songs from us.

Anyhow, welcome to our world…

Ever since the water rose we had to move the batteries up to the sixth floor and the dolphins have taken over the old studo. Nokea found an octopus in the stairwell. It was sleepy or high or something..

promo text: The production duo of DJ /rupture (aka Jace Clayton) and Matt Shadetek are pleased to announce the release of this absolutely breathtaking new video, directed and animated by Sara Taigher with illustrations by Maria Chiara Di Giorgio, set to the music off their just-released record, Solar Life Raft (out last Tuesday on The Agriculture). The video is a medley featuring DJ /rupture + Matt Shadetek’s “Underwater High Rise,” Nico Muhly’s “Mothertongue Pt. 1,” and Mizz Beats’ “Blue Night.”

NYC TONITE & UPCOMING

It all happens at the American Museum of Natural History tonight! Dutty Artz extended familia IN FULL EFFECT: DJ /rupture, Matt Shadetek feat. Jahdan Blakkamoore, Sonido Martines, Maluca… 9pm-1am. Price includes admission to the Space Show and a free return visit to the museum. You can buy tickets here.

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for a warm-up jam,

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/leaky/MattShadetek-Strength_In_Numbers-SOLAR-LIFE-RAFT.mp3]

Matt Shadetek – Strength In Numbers

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and on Saturday, Sonido Martines & I will shift over to Queens, for a Night of Psychedelic Cumbia! at D’Antigua, 84-16 Northern Blvd, Jackson Heights. It’ll be Sonido, myself, and 2 sets by the M.A.K.U. Soundsystemnoche

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next weekend Matt Shadetek and I’ll be performing at a free-with-RSVP party @ The Empty Bottle in Chicago on Friday November 20th, and then @ the Video Saloon in Bloomington, Indiana on Sat. Nov. 21.

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then a few days later, it’s off to Mexico, where I’ll be doing a talk on DUB and 3 shows across 3 cities (Puebla, D.F., Guadalajara) with Adrian Sherwood. Here’s a flyer for the 1st event, a free talk in Mexico City on Thursday November 26. Nos vemos!

DubEchoes

SILENT CITY

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Kurdish Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor teamed up with local string quartet Brooklyn Rider to record an album called Silent City. Like a good science-fiction book, Silent City has a terrible cover and fascinating contents. Placid, contemplative, not-entirely-Western classical. (Would have worked well on my recent ambient radio show.)

The 29-minute title song employs soft drones, cycling melodies, and gentle volume swells to great effect. One of the under-appreciated powers of acoustic classical music is dB dynamics, sheer AMPLITUDE RANGE; a concert hall can soar from whisper to rumble, and pieces can be written which exploit this, this walking alongside silence when necessary. Go from loud to quiet in a club, and not only will you hear everyone talking over the music, somebody will start shouting. At you. To turn the music back up. (Not necessarily a bad thing; perhaps classical music would be more interesting if the audience members shouted like drunk ravers from time to time.)

I would love to see Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider perform live (we played on the same night last week in Copenhagen, I did not catch them). Here’s one of the shorter songs from the album:

[audio:kayhan_kalhor_and_brooklyn_rider-parvaz.mp3]

Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider – Parvaz [buyable]

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