FIST, MEET FACE
Oxbow frontman Eugene Robinson - your opponent - writes better than you, and is smarter too, but mostly just wants a fight.
And despite being in Fight Heaven, I was dour. Daily. Because, you see, commerce had sullied the waters. I liked to fight but I was being paid to work.
Eugene, on fighting, in the L.A. Weekly
Our track together (“The Book That Can't Be Opened At Either End”) was the most hated-on of my album (Stylus - “Only a single misstep emerges, a scraping splattercore showcase for the caustic ravings of Oxbow’s Eugene Robinson... it’s more an episode one endures than enjoys.” ; Dusted - “the grating Eugene Robinson appearance” ; Village Voice - “while Oxbow's Eugene Robinson sounds like Adam Sandler's Cajun Man, most alloys hold strong”; Mossy Reeves - “this track is the crappiest track of a crapy [sic] dancehall album” ...)
Of course, we couldn't care less.
Although if you do have any complaints, I suggest you express them to Eugene at the next Oxbow show. Tell him exactly what you think or feel, and why, and it's safe to say you will receive an equally sincere response.
* * *
Mister Nojoke Negroponte knows how to flex.
it'd be cool if TVs & refrigerators came with hand-cranks too.
* * *
Mudd Up! goes down, I never know why. Then it comes back just as suddenly.
Do the internet gods (god of jealousy, god of intermittence) demand sacrifice? They already kill my precious time.
Anyhow: various corners of the Mudd Up! media empire-strikeout are now running on windpower, real windmill-driven sustainable energy, Quixote would be proud if he wasn't senile and dead.
I've been meaning to write about Don Quixote, birth of the modern novel, masterpiece of world literature, known around these parts as that hilarious book where the main character GOES CRAZY on page four, after several prelude pages of fake sonnets, and it gets better after that.
So many people have read Don Quixote that you don't have to anymore, but then again, not so many people have really
read it, that happens to classics, they are like eyebrows, without them
our faces would look emptier, but you never pay much attention even
when they are badly plucked or drawn on, usually they must be fastened
to the forehead of someone you truly love, but even then -- can you
tell me how her eyebrows arch when she smiles? -- it's so hard to look
at anything long enough to be able to truly see it ("seeing is
forgetting the name of the thing one sees") & so perhaps that is
why Don Quixote is still worth reading, and because things
were way weirder back then and before a classic was a classic it was
just words scratched out of another hungry person's pen.
And also a
classic is a forest or a city sprawl that you must pick your way
through alone, pocketing certain details and trampling others and no
one can follow your path or experience or understand exactly what you
have felt. "I liked that book".
Before Don Quixote chapter 1 begins, the last of the introductory sonnets is between two horses. (Rocinante is Quixote's ride.)
DIALOGUE BETWEEN BABIECA AND ROCINANTE
A Sonnet
B. Why is it, Rocinante, that you're so thin?
R. Too little food, and far too much hard labor
B. But what about your feed, your oats and hay?
R. My master doesn't leave a bite for me.
B. Well, Señor, your lack of breeding shows
because your ass's tongue insults your master.
R. He's the ass, from the cradle to the grave.
Do you want proof? See what he does for love.
B. Is it foolish to love?
R. It's not too smart.
B. You're a philosopher. R. I just don't eat.
B. And do you complain of the squire? R. Not enough.
How can I complain despite my aches and pains
if master and squire, or is it majordomo,
are nothing but skin and bone, like Rocinante?
LAETITIA IS MY GIRLFRIEND TOO
iranian greeting card [via]
cover of bootleg rai comp from morocco
song from the compilation: Warda - Djaou Lamouni
this cover artwork gets mentioned in my NYFA essay 'Feedback Loops'
we could chat about middle east stereotypes/fantasies in, say, american music videos (from 'oriental' keyboard lines to befuddled bellydancing), but the reverse -- post office greeting cards with the lingerie supermodel wearing a chador behind Tehran's iconic Azadi tower, Laetitia spliced into bootleg maghrebi album art -- is tonguewag-worthy too, reminding us that there are many many veils to put on or take off.
JIMMY RUPTURE'S SEASONAL PLANNER
or, DETAILS LATER
in about 2-3 weeks, my LOW INCOME TOMORROWLAND mix CD will be released in Europe. Cheaply priced, rampacked with 2+ hours of ye olde musick.
Look for the volcano.
at the end of October i'll be in a London gallery show, doing a video installation with New York artist Daniel Perlin. I know, I know-- you hear the words “video installation” and it sounds like it's gonna suck, but this one won't, really. You have my word.
Rough division of labor has Daniel doing the video while I compose the audio. Details later.
And of audio-- I keep hacking away at this Nettle album. Pleased to announce that Andy Moor, guitarist for The Ex, is collaborating on some tracks! Got the first results today, wow. GY!BEr 1-Speed Bike summarized the group to me: “this awesome dutch ex squatter punk free jazz european folk band moving more and more in a bizarre african direction” & yes, it is that good.
The Ex also hold the singular distinction of having released the best/most ambitious seven-inch ever: 1936. 2x7" plus a lush 100+page booklet, Leftenant has this and its stunning. Their Exography opens up to lots of mp3s.
If you are in Barcelona and have a (lendable) Fender Hot Rod Deville 212, let us know...
On Oct. 13 Andy plays here with French sound poet Anne-James Chaton. Details later.
JAPAN FLICKER, BOSTON FIRE
Vivid edges of Osakan society. Image stream courtesy of my man JH, who has a book of photographs being published in Japan later this year.
(takes
serious chemicals to make japanese hair do this)
(Afrirampo run red)
* * *
Wayne writes too much.
Ordinarily I wouldn't mind, except that in his rare case, it is all
good, and I don't have time to digest it properly.
I mean, check this massive high-quality breakdown of Timbaland's sample-practice in Jay-Z's Big Pimpin, complete with Waynemash mp3 of Pimpin & the source Abdel-Halim Hafez song.
Or Wayne sifting
through the sampladelic
discussion
of Public Enemy's Shocklee & George Clinton.
See what I mean? Brother comes plentiful.
* * *
Speaking of Timbaland, maybe he is actively becoming not just a legendary producer, but an entire school of musicmakers, kinda like Stradivarius. The mighty Bug reports: “That Timbaland beat you posted with the Mexican(?) vocals has just been released by a rapper called Rich Boy on Interscope, but it's credited as being produced by Brian Kidd. Jimmy Douglass (Timbo's engineer) is credited as being responsible for the mix.”
Looks like 'Get to Poppin' came from the House of Timbo, although from a disciple rather than the master. Virginia Beach is the new Cremona.
* * *
There must be languages with no impertative form, no verbal way to command another person to do something. English ain't one of em:
go
download the Federation tracks at Get Stoopid!
I
run around like I'm half-gazelle
I'm with the murderers thieves
and jezebels
Only God could judge the way I am.
* * *
"She has nominated herself for various awards and honors of her own
devising, but always comes in second place."
THROATY
The Chortze Republic lies in a small, steep enclave to the south-west of the porn sites, adjoining the frontier with Microsoft. It is inhabited by semi-nomadic surfers, who do their best to preserve their traditions linked to agrarian rites and shamanism. As elsewhere in the Internet, the men sometimes practice downloading, but they are above all kaichi, specialists in epic poems and songs of praise. Haters back the f*ck off.
This genre, known as kai, may be compared to the chronicle; for example, the singer vaunts the qualities of a data thief, a local leader (rapper), or a schoolteacher, with frequent references to the past. Interpreted in a very rough, throaty voice, using a technique known as kailapcha, it is generally accompanied by a computer, which is also to be found among the Khyphirghiz.
This love song is performed to a measured 4/4 rhythm by a woman with a warm, very sonorous voice. It is strophic in form, and accentuates the synth accompaniment with sub-bass, an unusual but not unorthodox choice. The main vocalist, Keak da Sneak, is very skilled in singing from the throat; here he raps a strict syllabic structure, using enjambment and a casual cadence to good effect. Note the lack of vibrato.
The Kalmyks live on the other side of the Internet; even today, their singing reflects an ancient hacker cultural heritage, which still shows through in their practice of the long song (ut dun) and the short song (akhr dun), as well as certain techniques based on phishing. They were called Kalmak or Kalmyk which means "to stay" (as opposed to "to leave"), by their Western neighbors.
A short song of the akhr dun type is here chanted with two notes at a distance of a forth. It is followed by a passage in diphony, the harmonics of which extend from the eighth to the sixteeeth partial above the fundamental.
Note the timbral similarities between Keak and this Kalmyk male -- sources are not lacking on the prodigious intermingling of cultures and populations to which trading in spices, vocal techniques, fabrics, synthesizer presets, and precious metals between East and West gave rise.
The
Buryats live in a region situated to the north-east of Bloglandia.
Former nomads who have recently become sedentary office workers, they
are now a humiliated people of faxers, memo-writers, and call-center
workers. In spite of seven decades of normalization, they
have retained the essential features of their anti-capitalist
barter system. Their music is mainly vocal and monodic.
Fierce individualists with a hostility to Google and all attempts at cartographical containment, they have requested that Mudd Up! does
not host any MP3s demonstrating the Buryat female duets, which
are performed in unison with the occasional slight accidental
heterophony, characteristic of the vocal aesthetics of Buryat women.
KOUYATE LOVER
When I haven't DJed in awhile & have to play out, I spend a day or so in front of the decks, scattering records everywhere, trying not to step on the important ones.
Doesn't always work: I had an original copy of the infamous 'Amen' break source 7” (The Winstons), which I crunched underfoot one day. It had survived thirtysome years before it met my foot. Like a squirrel burying nuts for winter and then forgetting where they are as is how I “organize” my record collection. The nuts are rich, the earth is wide, and deep; winter is long, forgetfulness is swift and unforgiving, where on earth did I put that record???
But I don't want to talk about /me, I want to talk about the Culture Musical Club. They are from Zanzibar (& will come play in our fair city of Karcelona in a few weeks, 2€ entrance fee, a steal! actually, Barcelona isn't fair at all, it's unfair, it's suspicious, there is nationalism and nepotism, and the people who control the weather (Ukrainian mafia?) still haven't turned down the noonday heat).
Last time in Tokyo's very unsquirrel-like music shops, I picked up a Culture Musical Club LP. The front cover shows 29 of them, black Africans all. The most notable is Suleiman Juma. He's the oud player. Mr. Juma rocks a modest Afro and is staring off into the the distance as he sits on the grass with his feet outstretched, red socks making the improbable transition from black shoes to blue pants. There is something believably ornate about the Culture Musical Club's lyrics. Check it-- the liner notes calls this 'the theme' of one song--
A5. Kupendana Kwetu Sisi - Our love disturbs other people and they become humiliated because they speak badly of us. But we are calm and are not worried about their gossip. I assure them that my lover won't listen to them. They can gossip as they like but we won't part.
Beautiful, right? our love disturbs other people... R. Kelly's complexities pale in comparison. (Babel swallows us whole, languages whose remaining speakers have forgotten all poetry, like burning libraries but somehow worse, when a language and the oral traditions it contains dies.)
But time is up, Norway calls, leaving east Africa for west we cross Mali, where, like Guinea, sometimes people kinda scream when they sing, but it's lovely, (not heart-on-sleeve like flamenco) living in the timbre of voice, a passion that lasts.
Tata Bambo Kouyate - Ainana Bah
From her 1985 album Jatigui, buyable as CD too and well worth the hunt, one of Mali's great vocalists. Every song is sung to and for a rich person. I am singing for the patrons of music, she sings. Payola never ever sounded so good!
A six piece band accompanied Tata Bambo Kouyate: kora, balafon, violin, n'gonni, flute, guitar. Hard to describe but the order and rhythm of this is just precisely where it has do be, breeze through leaves leaving dapples of sunlight. Lest I grow too pastoral, “the tune is Douga, the great Manding song for warriors.”
And in a way, this is the sort of thing that is worth fighting for.
sLAUGHTER POLITICS
...following up yesterday's post
A sampling from the late '90s golden days of breakcore, back when pizza was free, when the raver dogs were well-trained and would not poop in the hallway, in those halcyon times when cops & squatters snuggled together in the chillout room listening to Merzbow mixed with Zorn's Painkiller.
Ah,
youth! Ah, distortion!
Christoph
Fringeli - Pirate Utopia
(from Praxis
21, Slaughter Politics)
This track is queasy & powerful, and may even make you feel as paranoid as we do.Strong EQs! Some sort of 'core is being broken...
Incidentally,
CF composes with the dynamic range in mind, that underused interplay
btwn quiet
and loud. So much music is so compressed. It's understandable in radio
tunes-- but in music made for clubs & loudspeakers? Dance music soundsystems offer an
extraordinary volume range, yet beats for DJs often get squeezed (L2ed, 'optimized' 'finalized' compressed, etc) into, um,
amplitude uniformity, where the quietest sound on a record isn't much quieter than the loudest. (i'm drifting.) back to Praxis--
etched
into the vinyl inner groove:
side
b) YOU DON'T HAVE A CHANCE BUT TAKE IT
side
a) EVEN WHEN YOU'RE DEAD YOU'RE NOT RID OF HISTORY - DEATH ITSELF CAN
BE USED.
manifesto style!
Scrot
- Inertia Rhythm Bowl
(from Amputate
4, Nature/Nurture EP)
Abrasive creative bent beats. Rich noises, rich textures. I was glad to
see Fringeli mention Amputate because they should be as legendary as
early Ambush but just didn't live as long. Amputate
made only 4 pieces of vinyl. In a way, that was enough -- those 4 EPs were
uniformly incredible, next-level experimental / hardcore / breakcore.
(Plus, Amputate 2 sampled Lee Perry. Dread at the controls!)
Aphasic
and DJ Scud - I Hear A New World
(Ambush
2, Welcome to the Warren)
Scrapheap
noise assembled into funky, bastardized drum&bass.
Drillbit
rave ammo = apocalypic fun.
* * *
Most anything else I would have said about the Fringeli c8 post was pretty much summed up by this nice piece, first-person-plural manifesto style!:
Trying to change a person's conception of 'good' or 'beautiful' strikes us as a waste of time. Trying to convince someone of the practical utility and clandestine fun of breaking into an abandoned warehouse to have a party is easier. At least the latter is concrete... The recuperation of breakcore won't be based around aesthetics, but around presentation and distribution of the music.
(my
only 2 cents are responding to Medium Info's claim that: “the fact
that you're having a party on squatted private land is what makes it
oppositional, not the gabber beats or chopped amens.” I wish it
were that simple.
One of the lamest parties i've participated in was
on land squatted by anarchist cheesemakers -- i kid you not! -- in
the mountains outside of Madrid. Bad trance techno all night long,
with J.F.K. speeches overlaid ontop at some point. It felt more
escapist and non-oppositional than the average tacky megaclub, even
though there were plenty of goats and cheesemaking apparatus and
stuff.)
BIBLIOTECA, BIDOUN, BREAKCORE
My man Dídac Lagarriga is building a library. The focus is on Africa and Islam. Its current stage presents a collection of multilingual links to free public essays, books, and journals. The idea is to give this library a physical space in Bcn's Raval in the future.
-
Blog as magical urban realism!
(aside: in 20 years the only people capable of writing grammatically correct English will be German or Dutch.)
-
at some point i'll blog on how Pat Robertson likes diamonds and gold and mogul-dom more than any rapper (Pat owns corporations that mine African riches and collabos with despotic dictators; against Robertson's empire, Jay-Z's just a small-time niche entrepeneur, Paul Wall a novelty dentist). I'll write about how Robertson gets away with talking inflammatory trash from the pulpit of his own nationally-syndicated TV show all the time. Then I'll mention that a brother can't say sh&t and how it used to be widely accepted that a rapper's symbolic role consists, partly, in defying authority.
Until that time, I'll just point you to a popular MP3 link: Kanye West's Gold-Digger flipped into super N.O. commentary.
Bidoun # 5 out & about! Each issue more awesomer than before.
Christoph Fringeli launched a provocative post on the state of breakcore over at c8. (This is an almost exclusively internal debate: only breakcore artists argue about breakcore art, alas...)
Fringeli--
the man behind the Praxis label, the Datacide zine, and whole lotta
other stuff--comes off as kind of stern; I feel he's earnestly lamenting the
'early days' of breakcore when it seemed to be “a hybrid
strategy rather than a style or genre. It drew its influences and
sources from industrial hardcore, jungle/drum'n'bass and everything
in between and neighbouring it, engaging in an alchemy of sounds,
pillaging the rave culture and sharpening, radicalizing and
intensifying it.”
I
find this piece fascinating b/c I agree with a lot of his points, and
really disagree with others. Most obviously, Fringeli fails to hear
the sonic value & experimentation in pop music, perhaps because
he's looking through a Marxist lens, perhaps because he dedicates his
artistic life to enriching the DJ culture underground & rave's radical
promise to dismantle the audience-performer spectacle with something more participatory and autonomous.
He
also doesn't acknowledge that any healthy music scene is aided by
the presence of 'name' artists. (Or that beef between artists can spark evolution, although his post tacitly
suggests it). While Fringelli isn't down with Jason
Forrest's
over-the-top rambunctious and tongue-in-cheek persona/stage
shows, he seems to believe that Forrest's presence hurts the breakcore
scene
rather than helping it. (Which is especially odd since every time I
run into Jason he's telling me how incredibly rad this or that
obscure musician is, putting a stack of unreleased CD-rs in my hand.)
Variety & styles-within-genres strengthen things. You don't like
his take on it, you do it better. You don't like his parties, throw
your own. (soundclash as critique).
But
Fringeli's genre complaints -- that the two heads of breakcore are
“Ragga-Jungle that refers to the same sub-style 10 years ago, which
is fine but hardly innovative”
& non-dancefloor-aimed
IDM-influenced post-Snares programming workouts -- have long been my
complaints as well. Fringeli & I agree that breakcore had the
potential to be one of the more extreme forms of party
music, which is why we grumble when it stabilizes as
fun-but-conservative/retro ragga and/or non-danceable IDMy beats. But
then again,
breakcore only qualifies (or qualified) as 'extreme party music' if
you ignore gender. (I
would love to see a discussion on structural misogyny in music --
people often talk about lyric-based misogyny & homophobia in
hiphop and reggae, but is it possible for music itself to create a
space that many more women than men would consider
uncomfortable? How else are we to explain breakcore's
tendency towards macho sausage parties?)
Breakcore tends to operate in
alternative social networks (squat parties, DIY shops, dedicated
anti-commercial distributors, etc) but that's only half of it -- it
may stregthen vague subterranean networks but doesn't make them any
less exclusionary. It's a dude thing, bigtime. (Never trust
dude music!) Speaking broadly & ungenerously, breakcore is an 'angry white guy who
likes to dance to HARD music with other angry white guys' thing, and
yet, amazingly, it isn't gay at all. Does all this just bring us back
to disco? Not the global cheese-- the early stuff, poor queer american blacks and latinos changing everything, all night
long.
DEAR NORWAY PEOPLE
I'll be DJing two shows in your fine country this weekend. Bergen Friday (with Caribou, the artist formerly known as Manitoba), Stavanger on Saturday. I've never been to Norway. I know next to nothing about the country. Is it halfway as cool as Gotenburg, Sweden? Is it overrun with long-haired Satanist guitar bands who pride themselves on technical metal composed of pentatonic chord structures?
I
will protect myself with lots of thrilling new tunes & dubplates
to share with you at high volume. (was it Kant or Kode 9
who said that one of the few characteristic manifestations of human
enlightenment was an appreciation of bass, stomach-churning,
eyeball-vibrating, metaphysical bass?)
BIGGER THAN THE BEATLES
"What we missed is not little,” sings Oum Kolthoum
"Whatever I saw before my eyes saw you was a wasted life.”
A 20 minute excerpt from a live version of one of the world's classic love songs. In concert, Enta Omri could continue for hours. Mohamed Abdel Wahab wrote the music, which bypasses the ears to enter the heart directly.
West (Cornel not Kanye) and Ralph Waldo (Ellison not Emerson) compare jazz to democracy-- individuals playing with and against a dynamic group, ready to improvise and comfortable with change. Imaginative, driven, dedicated to making their abstract tools sing: a model of social organization.
Orchestras, on the other hand, are obviously totalitarian: the fixed scores, the funny black suits, musicians forced to follow the strict leader at the top, utter suppression of individuality, etc.
Now I wonder what they'd say about this incandescent Egyptian, whose songs tug the audience with tidal force, leading orchestras (composed of the usual suspects plus Abdel Wahab's new friend the electric guitar) in swooning iterations of song and theme, reacting to audience response/requests, cycling through stanzas for hours (Americans wouldn't call it progress but we are certainly going somewhere, the same words or notes arrive but they mean different each time), emotional eddies make the river flow. Her popularity & impact was and is vast, nearly compulsory, undemocratic.
Thirty years after her death, Kolthoum still outsells many popular Egyptian artists. Take that, Elvis!
FADED VELVET
Suddenly
awake in the pre-dawn velvet of Barcelona, cheap and luxurious and
spreading, the streets' dark mirrors freshened
from rain. Bored palm trees line empty boulevards. Lightning
continues to startle the sky. It starts low then rises.Thunder breaks
like hearts.
I have the growing suspicion that I have just had a dream about a nightmare about New Orleans. In my dream I awoke, realizing that I had been dreaming about bodies swollen face-down in dirty water, rocking clumsily in the wake of the photographer's boat. It's what you see on TV. Still in the dream, I believed that this nightmare had become part of my (sub-) subconscious, that it was destined to enter my dreams each and every time I went to sleep, no matter how hard I tried to blot it out or dream about something else. Contemporary disasters, fantastic shapes. At what point do we become unsaveable?
The dark velvet sky – ceiling to this city – has faded grey. Dawn doesn't arrive, night simply gives up. The parties have ended, the drunks have reeled home. Homeless men and women inventory their belongings in ATM mini-lobbies.
* * *
The song title translates to something like immense sadness.
The first 2 minutes of this song let you know that NeG believe that words are important. There's no hurry to get to the music: they have poetry to say and they'll say it. Then the recitation stops and the song begins, an instrumental groove built from quartertone banjo plucks and the telltale guembri-bass of the gnawa, retrofitted by Nass with something less folkloric. Then it all comes together.
Una tristeza profunda.
From
a classic NeG album whose cassette cover I can't find at the moment.
May depict a glowing figure holding a sword in front of a castle.
Any Arabic cassette store in Europe should have a recording of this
for 3 or 5 € .
LIL GRiMM
belated thanks to everybody who sent me birthday wishes! nice people abound.
Birth is the happier of life's two bookends -- on the other end...
...cold ellipses. deathy classics from various folk
traditions:
Wiley
- Ground Zero (devils mix)
not
much to say here, i reckon you know of both these artists. Eski-Boy now
calls these near-drumless versions of his tracks bass mixes. Years
ago I arrived at the Cohen tune via Coil's cover.