Category: st. elsewhere

PARISIAN ALGERIENNE

in BRISTOL, a city chock-full of wonderful people and probably the best musical activity per capita anywhere. Staying at Chez Parasite & digging thru k7/cd shop finds from Paris. On tour you have time to catch up with friends but not yourself. Where was I 2 cities ago?

Paris.

The Barbés neighborhood (Barbés Rochechouart stop on metro line 4) is overwhelmingly male, Arab and North African men men men on the streets, smoking, in silence and talking, with the brisk smuggled cigarette trade jostling Ramadan sweet stalls & bread, roast corn.

this first tune is the Algerian rap equivalent of Killah Priest’s Heavy Mental track. 9 minutes long! avant-gardey news collage to ambient hiphop to beat & snare. from Lotfi’s Double Kanon album. Lotfi is Algeria’s biggest rap star. I understand snippets of the French & Arabic but not not enough to be useful. Commentors? share your linguistic wisdom? I bought this at Etiole Verte on Rue Caplat. they were playing 50 Cent.

I’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating: world music is music with truly global reach. Think U2, Beyonce. So, 50 Cent is one of my favorite world music artists right now. Britney Spears used to make world music, but now she’s just world tabloid. Hmmm… anyhow, here’s what’s popping at the most experimental edge of mainstream Algerian rap.

Lotfi – Batard

 

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this next one is scratchily recorded old chaabi, very beautiful, perfect for late night listening (in B’s flat, dark cathedral outline just beyond the window, as you sip rooibos and feel the city go quiet, ease into sleep, cover itself in patchy silence). CD lists his name as El Hadj Mohamed El Anka. Transliterated spelling is slippery however (Hadj M’hamed, El Hajj Muhammad, etc).

18 minutes long! Voice, oud, orchestra, abetted by time-keeping darboukas & tambourines.

this is familiar & dusty in a good way. Dusty: The CD slips into Sublime Frequency style tape hiss/filter weirdness and sudden shifts in quality. Released on Fassiphone, they must have compiled it from time-worn tape reels. Familiar: the song is one of his classics, “suffisent pour nous renseigner sur la grandeur d’un des plus grands piliers de la culture algérienne.” as said in this nice article on him from a Lounes Matoub fan site.

El Hadj Mohamed El Anka – Sobhane Allah Ya L-tif (suite)

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I CANT BELIEVE IM STILL AWAKE

so. more gigs coming up, some solo (London, Amsterdam), the rest with The Ex’s guitarist, Andy Moor. Andy & I do improvised sets on turntables + guitar. Last March, in Nancy (France), we sounded like this:

DJ Rupture & Andy Moor – Hot Pink (Version) Live in France

a limited edition CD of our live recordings will be released soon. in the meantime, we’re selling a superduper limited tour CD at shows. we’re also working on a remix of one of our favorite roots rai vocalists & some other stuff.

I’m using several records in the above piece, but the main beat is a riddim produced by Matt Shadetek & myself, called Hot Pink. The low-end overloads occasionally on this recording (these things happen). Matt & I have been making beats on the regular for awhile now. Our new project doesn’t have a name yet. But WE ARE STARTING A NEW LABEL: Dutty Artz. more on Dutty Artz when i feel vaguely human again (not tonite)

upcoming dates:

Oct 11 : duo w/ Andy Moor, The Cube Bristol
Oct 12 : DJ set, Bangface London
Oct 13 : DJ set, OT301 Amsterdam
Oct 18 : duo w/ Andy Moor- Reims electricity festival
Oct 19 : duo w/ Andy Moor montpelier
Oct 20 : duo w/ Andy Moor feyzin (near Lyon)
Oct 21 : duo w/ Andy Moor Geneve
Nov 10 : Nettle. live in Rome!

ok. one two three sleep!

see you on the road

BELATED ZINN DAY

in Paris, and the apartment here has Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which is good, since i wanted to blog its memorable opening yesterday (the holiday of Columbus Day in America):

…When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

They willingly traded everything they owned. . . . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. . . . They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane. . . . They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

 

And so it began. “We could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

TU FRUTO ME SABE A CUMBIA

Mexico. Texas.

The reason our borders are so policed is because they don’t exist at all.

thank you, Austin!! big shout to Turntable Records, where I picked up some fine sounds. Clearly one of the great American music stores. On the counter they have Screwed & Chopped DVDs, Mariachi flicks, and Harmony Korine’s Gummo for sale.

the first of these 3 songs is a classic from Colombia. The second two are AV8-style cumbia-booty mixes emerging out of the Dallas/Ft. Worth area of Texamexico.

Armando Hernandez y su Cunjunto – La Zenaida (from Cumbia Cumbia)

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? – Tocando Palmas RMX (from Lucky Kumbias vol. 1)

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Funk E (aka El Buki) – Tussle (from Super Cumbia Bros. vol. 1)

SWARM

 

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77Klash, the man behind the beat on Turbulence’s Notorious, has a new riddim out — The Swarm. Released on his Klash City Records and served in 7″ form by Tuff Gong. Vybz Kartel & a bunch of others have versioned it, here’s a hometown one by Brooklyn’s Noble Society:

Noble Society – The Swarm (buyable on itunes

9-year-old Makonnen designed the Swarm cover with a little help from Marcus of RockersNYC.

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in other newz, the U.S. dollar keeps dropping in value. Or, as the BBC phrases it today, “Euro bursts to fresh dollar high“. Something sinks, something else rises up. Makes me think of Bruce Sterling’s Distraction:

Yes, it was true that the nation was broke, but other countries had seen their currencies annihilated and their major industries rendered irrelevant… In many ways, Oscar had to give the Chinese credit for their cleverness in making all English-language intellectual property available on their nets at no charge. The Chinese hadn’t even needed to leave their own borders in order to kick the blocks out from under the American economy.

In some ways, this brutal collision with Chinese analog reality could be seen as a blessing. As far as Oscar had it figured, America hadn’t really been suited for its long and tiresome role as the Last Superpower, the World’s Policeman. As a patriotic American, Oscar was quite content to watch other people’s military coming home in boxes for awhile. The American national character really wasn’t suited for global police duties. It never had been. Tidy and meticulous people such as the Swiss and Swedes were the types who made good cops. America was far better suited to be the World’s Movie Star. The world’s tequila-addled pro-league bowler. The world’s acerbic, bipolar stand-up comedian. Anything but a somber and tedious nation of socially responsible centurions.

RADIO: DUB WAR + COLLEEN

this evening is a good one for WFMU — from 7-8pm I’ll be playing some brand new dubsteppy/grimey stuff & hosting a live set by Dave Q & JuaKali of Dub War NYC. After that comes Dave Mandl w/ special guest Colleen. Colleen’s real name isn’t Colleen, she’s great, we played a show together in France and although i haven’t heard any of the studio albums i’m sure her delicate, neo-archaic music translates quite well to radio.

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