MAKE HAY

first stop: “Sam Cooke Was Right”. Matt Shadetek on what just happened last night. YES.
Pitchfork (PSF)

Friday before last I awoke to find many ‘congrats’ emails in my inbox, for Pitchfork’s 8.8 “Best New Music” review of my new mix CD, Uproot. At the time I didn’t realize quite what that meant, but soon learned… Over CMJ weekend Uproot shot up to #4 in the iTunes Electronic chart (of course, this may mean like 34 sales, who knows?), blogs started spreading it around, and, as this Last.fm screenshot reports:

last fm

The Beatles, popular this week! Rupture stock, up 492 pts! Life is strange.

if you want to hear Uproot, let’s be honest: there’s any number of pirate-booty ZIPs and RARs are floating online. In digital space, popularity is inseparable from ubiquity. Or check the Agriculture’s myspace, their music player has some selections. (A special shout goes to the James & the Agri label, since releasing a 100% licensed mixtape in 2008 is a thankless task involving fun stuff like mountains of paperwork and fees to other labels).

& if you want to buy the darn thing — me and all the artists on Uproot are ‘independent’, which mostly means “in need of cash” — download spots include eMusic / Amazon / iTunes / Other, etc. Physical copies are in stores too. There’s a digital-only companion called “Uproot: The Ingredients” which presents all the tracks I used in their unmixed form — much longer, and quite different, from the mix itself. DJ-friendly shops like Boomkat and Juno have the Ingredients as lossless FLAC or WAV files.

Anyhow, today I woke up to another email, my friend Neil ‘Astral Social Club‘ Campell saying he heartily agrees with my pick of Sheffield UK’s Rare and Racy as one of the best records stores around. Friends who read the internet are better (and faster) than Google Alerts. He’d seen the ‘Rupture Guest List’ on Pitchfork, published sometime last night as we all sat around in prObama post-election amazement and disbelief (more on that later!) Guest List is a weekly interview piece they do, asking artists about their favorite new music, books, movies, etc.

Guest List. includes cumbia talk, César Aira talk, Years of Rice and Salt talk, and talk on why Bob Dylan and The Pixies are like museums. The filmmaker I mention, Bani Khoshnoudi, has a semi-private NYC screening of her latest film this Friday, very exciting.

19 thoughts on “MAKE HAY”

  1. I didn’t need Pitchfork to tell me, I knew it was going to good. Love the mix.

  2. I refuse to listen to any part of Uproot until I have the physical CD in my hand. Unfortunately, I must wait until Nov. 15th (payday), but I cannot wait to finally hear it.
    Just added “The Ingredients” to my Xmas list.
    🙂

  3. I liked the mention of “Rye” music in the Pitchfork guest list. Good to listen to, and nutritious to boot.

  4. even better than Arabic “rye” is cumbia sonidera, i mean “Sonny Guerra”!

    that mis-hearing may send people on some frustrating Google searches… maybe we should invent a person called Sonny Guerra and attribute a new style of music to him, retrospective reality google hack

  8. Waw, no sabia que te gustaba Cesar Aira! yo terminé recien de leer un libro que sale de una conferencia que dio el en los 80s sobre otro escritor argentino, Copi… y ayer en Granada me compré El Mago. No hago otra cosa que leer Aira o cosas relacionadas con él hace varios meses… es medio adictivo, su forma de escribir, las vueltas que da, los hilos que se anudan… Muy Bastard ; )

    Abrazo

  11. uproot is fantastic. took a bit for me to get into because it wasn’t quite what i was expecting (excellent!-i should know better) but now i really dig it and listen to it more and more.
    i pretty much avoid pitchfork anymore, so nice to see the guest list thru your blog here and read it. really engaging and informative, for whatever their screwups. but my question is-what’s up with the track with durrty goodz? is this gonna be on his full length? just saw him freestyle on some mobile phone cam video and was reminded how amazing he is.

  12. thnx. the Durrty Goodz track, which is fire, is gonna be on OUR full-length. 🙂 Jahdan Blakkamoore “Buzzrock Warrior” out in March.

    While JD & I were in London he & Goodz did some more recording, stuff which might end up on Goodz album as well.

  15. ace move on the ingriedients release. i always end up trying to track down the tracks from good dj mixes, and theres always some you can’t really get hold of, or theres a ‘the tracks’ release, but tracks are missing, or one or two are different versions from the mix… so this is really cool especially since it includes the accapellas and everything

  16. Been diggin Uproot, nice balanced effort with appropriately timed hijinx throughout…I had to pick it up because I really enjoyed Mindsweeper. The first track off of Mindsweeper is the best album/mix opener I’ve heard yet in my time. Damn near had me in tears once. Play in Toronto sometime eh? May have missed you recently though…

  17. thanks! i think the opening of Minesweeper is my favorite too… its a nice story actually: i contacted the german label, Piranha, for that first gorgeous Nubian tune and in the beginning they said no, we couldnt use it… but a week later they investigated me or thought about the project or whatever and let us use it with their blessings… you can imagine how happy i was w/ their change of mind!

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