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latest comments

ragudave (COLLECTED NONFICT…): Jace et al, Give Scriptgenerator by Philippe Vas…
Alex (african mp3s up): Are these Gros Beat CDs purchaseable online somewhe…
satyricon (african mp3s up): Grammy winner last night... Best Contemporary Worl…
satyricon (Party People FYI): noticed BTTB is hosting a dj set of yours on the 15…
muggerwithknife (GRIME 97): this is pretty crazed. a few weeks ago 2 friends of…
V-M (MIDNIGHT COWBOY): I love that film, to me its about escapism and the …
blip (Party People FYI): You ship see Marboro at a festival I also djed at i…
Stan (MELT): What a beautiful little poem-like allegory-thing. …
jc (SENEGALESE EGYPTO…): toby- great link!, thanks for the correction. the w…
toby (SENEGALESE EGYPTO…): hey jace, hate to play the meme cop, but when i fir…

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words by jace. some mp3s & annoted photos from time to time.

vinyl rescue service

NEVER GONNA DANCE AGAIN

A brand-new bootleg gem from DJ Wrongspeed!  Or maybe itīs George Michael who jacked the mashed-up mentalism of Wrongspeed.
Courtesy of Resonance FMīs Red Zero Radio crew.  Yeah, this isnt from an analog-only source; its more like the reverse: the tune ONLY exists in MP3 format. 
    Pretty African stuff coming soon... but not yet.

PATOIS BUFFER OVERRIDE

    This was the year when mainstream UK & US press finally started listening to the lyrics in Jamaican pop--and they were horrified, as if the rampant violent, misogyny, materialism, and homophobia didn't exist in reggae prior to 2004. T.O.K. are as bigoted as their fellow Kingston vocalists, but on a good day they are far weirder and more harmonically inventive than the competition. (Including the other big weird 4-member deejay group, Ward 21). This recent T.O.K. jam is called "Jook Di". They spit over Golden Cartel's Flying Green Puss riddim. Most of the other versions are as slack as this one, but only T.O.K. is brave/ridiculous enough to sing in falsetto about sexual fantasies from a woman's point of view. Complete with gorgeous background vocal samples and screaming.

    If you ever read a reggae reviewer talking about the music in terms of "good" or "bad" or overall quality, then they are probably missing the entire point, severely. It's not that kind of genre and it doesn't abide by those kinds of rules, so following them won't get you anywhere.

    I think the useful questions are ones like: What shouldn't work but does? How does this artist or producer do so much with so little (or so little with so much)? What does a crowd of moving bodies in front of a massive soundsystem understand about this tune that a person sitting alone in from of their home stereo might never, ever get? Why are these electro-Caribbean gangster entertainers so puritanical on certain issues and famously libertarian on others---and might it be possible to pin this on a heat-warped vestige of British colonialism? Are all or just most of the leading studio producers semi-closeted gays? Will US stars ever follow Elephant Man's bold lead and develop a new dance move with each new single? And so forth... 

OPORTO, STREETLEVEL & BELOW

Oporto, Portugal is a beautiful weathered city. Between fantastic meals that shake your taste buds awake people exist solely on cigarettes and espresso. Gentle melancholy scents the air, not just there but everywhere Iīve been in Portugal, and like my friend Max said, you can spot a Spaniard a hundred yards away because they are talking so much louder than the Portuguese.

            Many of the housesīfacades have lovely pastel tiles, and a handful of the walls hold pissed-off graffiti and stencils, written in playful pun-ridden Portuguese with the occasional forray into direct, angry English. Below is a dope iconographic blend--Bush, Hussein,  the social elegance of a business suit turning into bombs & flags. Patriotism. Persecution. A cycle of propaganda. Things that make nations.


            (What will happen when the budget airlines slam into Portugal? This new colonial outpouring is odd indeed: driving into Budapest  a huge sign announces "Tesco [UK supermarket chain]  welcomes you to Hungary!" Easyjet arrives, then Wizzair (the London-based, Central- and Eastern European-branded equivalent) and simultaneously, a flourishing of British stag parties in Budapest, steaming Britons stumbling around, asking for the whores... It happens like that in Barcelona too: Sleazyjet economy-- cheaper foreign city sidestreets as the marketplace; women, usually African or Eastern European, as the goods. Plane home on monday, English spoken all the while.)

    Back to Porto-- going underground, which is where Ove-Naxx & I performed. Ove---a polite maniac noisician from Japan who maintains enough rhythmic base in his music so you can A. dance along  and B. feel the full impact of his violence against structural normality---went buckwild, rocking a Saddam Hussein mask thrashing about in the transfixed audience. At some point he sliced open his thumb, deep cut, on broken glass. Ove kept raging, pounding out riotously fun architectural beat-splinters on his MPC2000 sampler--spilling blood everywhere in the process: on gear, floor, clothes, other people.  He didnīt stop early, despite heavy bleeding. 

ove soul ink

    People often joke about "crazy Japanese" or slap totalizing labels on "extreme music from Japan", but the fact is, the experimental / noise / punk freakout scenes in Japan possess a downright impressive sense of historical context. Nuances of style hold enormous importance. Punk Japanese experimentalism isnīt conceptual in the WIRE-approved, Alvin Lucier type way, but kids really care about the ideas, attitudes, and situations that go into a particular work or performance--the concept, or story, behind any given piece is something you need to get as well as its actual sound.
    At least I think thatīs whatīs going on. Sometimes in Japan itīs hard to tell.

TRANSIT STRIKE = 6AM BUS DRUDGE

Too tired to think sharp. Too quiet to listen to music. Too weak to read the news. Gig in Budapest tomorrow--slash that, today. Plus transit strike in Barcelona. Time to link, outsourcing textwork in bloglandia. Fun, clipped, testosterone-scented prose fragments from the ether over England:  Walked into the Saatchi Gallery with a shotgun, blew a hole in Damian Hirst's "Love Lost", watched dirty water and panic-stricken fish gush from the jagged-edged hole onto the floor. Retitled it "No Love Lost" then blew my head off before the cops arrived.