Next Friday, August 27th, come catch myself and Tanlines in a pay-what-you-want party at The Whitney Museum.
[some guitar band at the Whitney]
James Franco was trying to get on the bill with a new indie garage cumbia electro project he’s working on, but the Whitney people had to tell him no. Which is just as good, because with Tanlines, myself, and you, together we are well-equipped to build a DANCE PARTY, possibly the Last Fun Party of the Summer, and let me repeat: it’s FREE. 6-9pm = pay-what-you-wish for museum admission. Grapes will not be served, despite internet rumors stating otherwise.
This Saturday, July 31st, I’ll be closing out the Wooly Fair in Providence, Rhode Island with a midnight set. They call it a “Providence-born DIY art carnival”, and it looks to be a very fun time. Creative grassroots events which aren’t necessarily focused on music are often the best places to DJ. Wooly Fair runs from 1 in the afternoon to 1am.
Lately I’ve been squeezing more Arabic moments into my sets. Here’s a clubby/rootsy gasbah flute track from Algeria:
The image below is a drawing of a temporary/permanent/growing installation, centerpiece of this year’s Wooly Fair. It’s “the Flower Tower, a pyramid of container gardens that will be distributed after the July 31st event to hospitals, schools, and other organizations.”
This Saturday, I’ll be DJing at MoMA’s PS1 Warm Up series out in Queens. Also playing: Kalup Linzy (fresh from his life-imitates-video art-imitates-soap appearance on General Hospital!), Le Tigre’s JD Samson, and “surprise guests.” Weather right now says it’ll be 94 degrees with possible thunderstorms, but at this point in the summer, New Yorkers are used to that. This particular Warm Up is part of the Greater New York show.
Event runs from 2-9pm, I’ll be playing toward the end of the day. Hot weather music.
July 24th
MoMA PS1 Greater New York presents:
JD Samson / New York (DJ set)
MEN / Brooklyn (live)
Kalup Linzy / Brooklyn (R&B, Soul, Disco DJ set)
Kalup Linzy and the Sweet, Sampled, and LeftOva / Brooklyn (live performance set)
DJ /rupture / Dutty Artz, Brooklyn (DJ set)
With surprise guests!
Today I’m going to host WNYC’s Soundcheck from 2-3pm on 93.9FM, then at night – tonight, Wednesday June 23rd – I’ll switch into my DJ /rupture costume and shake up the Que Bajo party.
Tropical enthusiasts will not be disappointed: humid city, rich old cumbias, synthed-up new beats, we got you covered. Geko Jones and I trading off all evening. Santos Party House, $5, 11pm. Village Voice writeup.
para empezar: a nice ‘Cumbia de la Playa’ version, group unknown Poder Vallenato:
and a 6-minute medley from Ecuadorean genius, Polibio Mayorga. Mayorga’s telltale bounce goes through subtle musical shifts as shouts of encouragement animate a real or imaginary dancefloor. The guy who gave me this CD was worried that, back home, it was old people’s music – but, he said, it would get them dancing every time. There’s little bass in the original; you need to boost the low-end to get an idea of how it’s supposed to sound. “Bass weight”, in dubstep parlance…
I have a wonderful life-affirming Polibio Mayorga / soundsystem hoarding story from Mexico City, will share soon.
[???? – Cleveland Museum of Art calendar screenshot]
Regrettably, I can’t understand or link to anything particularly useful on the Cleveland Museum of Art’s calendar/CMS/blog, but I am happy to say that I’ll be DJing a midnight set at this Saturday’s summer solstice party (whose pricing system resists simple understanding), taking an increasingly crunk crowd into darkness on the shortest night of the year. I play til close so we’ll have time to sink deep. Also on the bill, Javelin, Phenomenal Handclap Band, Omar Souleyman, etc.
Omar Souleyman plays dabke, and if you like his SubFreq-filtered brand of Syrian wedding folk-techno you should get yrself to a nearby Arabic Music Shop, because dabke is a hugely popular genre in several countries, and you’ll find gems like this 14-minute flute-float party number, here chopped off midway because I’m saving the best half for my Arabic mixtape, which will be coming “soon”.
I love all languages countries and people that have words or phrases for different denominations of ‘now’ and subtle variations on ‘soon’, like Mexican Spanish with ahora and ahorita.
Where where we? Brooklyn. Andy bought this CD in Bay Ridge. It’s either Palestinian or Syrian. The cellphone/music store has either sold or removed the ceramic black Sambo figurines it had on sale.
& here’s another song I might play. Latin fight song! A 128bpm banger from Papi Sanchez, Dominican in Miami, complete with ragga English language intro courtesy of Shabakan. Drop this at the right time & place and you will be rewarded. Or bottled. Maybe both.
Tomorrow begins Postopolis DF here in Mexico City, and after the daytime presentations, you can catch me as DJ /rupture, “el indiscutible campeon del clash sonoro mundial”, twice under the auspices of Postopolis, and twice in a rolling deep Dutty Artz formation. Four gigs in five daze – Mexico City No Sleep / all your tacos are belong 2 us. Here we go:
Martes 8 de Junio 8 @ the Postopolis Opening party at Club Social Rhodesia. DJ Rupture, Wayne & Wax, 8106, Noiselab DJs.
This party is going to be multiple varieties of bananas. Argentine cumbia villera pioneers Damas Gratis, Colombian duo Bomba Estereo, Mexico’s top soundboy Toy Selectah, and yours truly with special guest vocalist Jahdan Blakkamoore, raising temperatures down in Monterrey Mexico on Saturday May 29th. ¡¡Puro fuego!! also on the bill: Instituto Mexicano del Sonido, Sonidero Nacional, etc….. BOOM.
For those who don’t know about Damas Gratis’ explosive populist power, read up: my 2008 Fader cumbia article involves careening around Buenos Aires w/ Damas Gratis leader Pablo Lescano. One of the songs he played in his S.U.V was The Kumbia Queers cover of Bronco’s “Que No Quede Huella”. Lots of groups version this one, it’s a nu-classic about love, pain, and forgetting.
Today, EarthDay, Thursday April 22, I’ll be DJing in Pittsburgh @ The Brillo Box. details.
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The cat pours the dog a stiff drink. The dog longs for opposable thumbs so he can reload the shotgun. His furry hindquarters rest on a handmade stool imported from Japan; the animals like it here because everything’s sized for them. But maybe this bar is in Japan (that would explain the good lighting) and the stools are locally sourced and it’s the liquor that’s imported. The cat and dog aren’t talking so we can’t get any clues from their accents. Honestly, we could be anywhere. Even Los Angeles.
Very Be Careful are an L.A. band who play Colombian vallenato with a hardcore purist aesthetic. Which of course is totally impure, willfully anachronistic, and leads to strangely dry album production yet their live shows are meant to be quite lively. I am suspicious of people who are suspicious of “remixes” and “synthesizers” although I do love accordion, voice, percussion, and respect this band for zeroing in on that, channeling OG vallenato heroes like Alejo “Big Black Man” Durán, writing new songs in an old style and keeping the VST plug-ins switched off even though they’re recording & mixing with computers just like everybody else.
VBC disdain ‘the contemporary vogue for hybridity’. They say: “[Ours] is a purist style that strives to pay tribute to the classics, and we aim to compose in the same vein. This is a greater achievement for us than dropping in some obscure unrelated beat to the music.”
An unauthorized cumbia remix of VBC (“Mi Fantasma”), stripped of identifying meta-data, achieved popularity in Buenos Aires bailantas against the band’s wishes. The remixer didn’t do much, this is the power of laziness!
And here’s the original version of Very Be Careful’s “Mi Fantasma”, an eerie, powerful track (someone have time to post a quickie translation in the comments?) whether or not a young Argentine has slapped a guacharaca-and-kick loop on top:
I’m playing in Washington D.C. tomorrow, Saturday April 17. First time in Distrito Federal! It’s a Dutty Artz thing: Matt Shadetek and Jahdan Blakkamoore are coming down with me & we intend to shake things up. Info.
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I’ve been checking a lot of data visualization projects lately. (I tend towards data narrativization, truth be told). This one is particularly fresh. And sobering:
