BEYOND DIGITAL BEACH BOOKS – part 1

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[photo by Beyond Digital’s Juan Alcón Durán]

We’re been putting a lot of work into preparing for the June stretch of Beyond Digital, when our team of eight people (and rising!) will converge in Casablanca, Morocco… Website coming soon, along with a proper update.

But for now: part one of the Beyond Digital Summer Reading List! An outpost of the Dutty Artz/Mudd Up Book Club. I’ve been asked a few times for some BD related texts, so here you go: a handful of books I’ve read recently that struck chords with how I’ve been thinking about BD, in one way or another.

 

BEYOND DIGITAL SUMMER READING LIST: part one

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1. Pitch Perfect, my Auto-Tune essay for Frieze magazine, originally published in 2009.

The best article on Auto-Tune or your money back… Carolyn (Beyond Digital’s Paris point person, who’ll be joining us in Casa) just conducted a video interview with Moroccan producer Wary, who makes an appearance here.

 

2.The Radicant – Nicolas Bourriaud

Yes, the “French science fiction writer” from Hennesey Youngman’s hilarious video. This book is cool though. St. Nic is all about translation. We’re into it. (So is Michael Larson.) Bourriaud writes: “Translation may represent that ‘basic ethical effort’ that has been mistakenly associated with recognition of the other as such. For translation always implies adapting the meaning of a proposition, enabling it to pass from one code to another, which implies a mastery of both languages but also implies that neither is self-evident.” The Radicant is a slim book (perfect for the subway), which explains why I can’t find it right now. Probably on my desk. . .

“As a critical methodology, multiculturalism resembles a system for distributing meaning that assigns individuals to their social demands, reduces their being to their identity, and repatriates all meaning toward an origin regarded as a political revealer. It is this critical model that is in crisis today, this multiculturalist version of cultural diversity that must be placed in question, not in favor of a systematic universalism or a new modernist Esperanto, but rather in the context of a new modern moment based on generalized translation, the form of wandering, an ethics of precariousness, and a heterochronic vision of history.”

 

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3. Bab El-Oued, Merzak Allouache

This is a novelization of Allouache’s Bab El-Oued City film. It’s not great — it’s not even set in Morocco — but hey, how you gonna be mad at a novel that opens with the theft of a mosque’s loudspeaker (a handsome young baker throws it into the sea) and chronicles its impact on a working class Maghrebi neighborhood? Allouache sketches a social realist panorama, with a subplot involving romance novel smuggling.

Coming in Part Two: one of the best books about music, ever (hint: Umm); non-annoying non-Beat avant-garde lit about the aftermath of a terrorist bombing written by an expat in Marrakesh; sci-fi set in Fez dealing with biological slavery and a new mode of sexuality; Appadurai’s ethnoscapes, and more…

In the meantime, some heat from the first volume of DJ Amine’s Maghreb Mix Party series:

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/11 Bakr N’reserve Wenelhagha.mp3]

Bakr – N’reserve Wenelhagha

THE SECT OF RAVERS TRAPPED IN OBLIVION

I was semi-delirious during last night’s radio show, but I hope you can’t tell… Kicked things off with new material by the Durutti Column and floated upwards from there. Subtext: listening to the silences between Buenaventura Durrutti and Downliners Sekt. Three cheers for Spanish anarchists & their spiritual children.

In fact, it’s worth quoting Downliners Sekt talking about the Portbou train station . Where European infrastructure standards conflict with Spanish ones – but what the passengers get is pure existential pause-button edits. I know that station well, and love the idea of music visions & postrave oblivion flowing from it.

FACT:Where does your name come from?

Downliners Sekt: “Well, originally it was a 1956 song called ‘Down The Line’ by Roy Orbison [also covered by Jerry Lee Lewis], then eventually used and modified by an obscure British band as Downliners Sect. We sampled the name from them because we thought it sounded great. Also, it has a special meaning that connects all of us to Portbou. Portbou is a train station that gets you in a really weird mood especially if you happen to stop there after raving “under the spinning lights” of Barcelona clubs all weekend. This place has a very Twin Peaks oppressive atmosphere. It’s the changing point between Spanish and French railway networks, and once you get there everything slows down for the customs check between borders. Because since 1845 the Iberian railway gauge has been 233 millimeters wider that the European gauge, the train has to undergo a break-of-gauge before crossing the border. It feels like time stands still in the town and Portbou, almost imperceptibly, shrinks by 233 millimeters. The sect of ravers trapped in oblivion, “down the line” in Portbou. Since then, when we feel a bit down, we kindly use the expression: “en descente de Portbou” — which means “going down the line from Portbou.”

tracklist from May 9, 2011 Mudd Up! Continue reading THE SECT OF RAVERS TRAPPED IN OBLIVION

CINCO DE MAYO… Y DESPUES

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One of my favorite Mexican bands calls themselves Super Grupo Colombia. They’re one of those groups who have moments so good they cease being songs or even hits and pass into the DNA of things, transformed into a reference and departure point for cumbia lovers everywhere.

Today was Cinco de Mayo. I ate my breakfast, I had my NY day, and down in Mexico hundreds celebrated this holiday with the start of a 4-day peace march (#marchanacional) beginning in the city of Cuernavaca and moving towards Mexico City, where it will conclude this Sunday. Envio un abrazo solidario. As Geraldine Juarez writes, the march is “to demand the end to the ‘War on Drugs’ and the removal of all government officials responsible for more than 35,000 deaths and the increase of insecurity and corruption.”

Here’s an important video from poet Javier Sicilia, “who became the leading voice of the discontent towards the government’s method of tackling the drug trafficking problem after his son Juan Francisco was killed.” It’s important to me because I fell in love with Mexico, it captured me like no other country has. Cinco de Mayo fiestas & tequila shots can ease the weight of now, but it’s a weight I want to feel. Before we can begin to care about the impact of American drug consumption and U.S. drug policy on the tens of thousands of Mexicans dead, we have to feel… that Mexican problems are American problems. Not just intimate, but interchangeable. You make a border real by policing it, and there’s a disturbing corollary: living in the United States and ignoring the political situation in Mexico helps feed the violence of that border. Wanting to be ‘global’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ is missing the point — so slippery and abstract as to be useless. We should try to be good neighbors and take it from there.

I might not be thinking these thoughts if it weren’t for cumbia. That’s why I’m putting up this Super Grupo Colombia song. The lyrics aren’t topical – though their flow on the chorus never ceases to amaze – it’s simply a nice song from Mexico, and golden minutes help fuel long hours.

[audio:https://negrophonic.com/mp3/Super grupo colombia – Cumbia de la dinastia.mp3]

Super Grupo Colombia – Cumbia de la Dinastia

BIN ADJECTIVE LADEN: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

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[Nettle, Bin Scrape Laden 12″ EP. Soot Records, 2001]

Everything seems a bit odd these days — a feeling I’m trying to get used to. As places go about compiling their Osama Bin Laden lists, such as PlayGround’s Ten OBL Disses & Tributes, I figure it’s time to clarify:

In 2001 I released a 12″ EP called Bin Scrape Laden. It hit shops around February, well before the September 11th deadline… On the inner vinyl ‘run out groove’ I had them inscribe the standard airport security phrase: “Are you carrying anything that might be considered a weapon?” The vinyl disc came packaged in rough cardboard record jackets that I hand-branded with the Arabic word for ‘Soot’ (and nearly burnt down the Madrid apartment Rocio & I were renting, but that’s another story).

When 9/11 happened, a lot of people who knew the record got in touch, asking — only half-joking — if the C.I.A. had contacted me. I came up with the name after I’d read breakcore pioneer DJ Scud’s 1998 article on Osama Bin Laden (which is weird in & of itself) in Christoph Fringelli’s Datacide zine. Scud had turned in an incredible remix for the EP. And most of the sounds I was sculpting those days sounded a lot like scraped-up trash bins. So the title clicked into place, although nobody got the play on words… until September 11th came and reconfigured our world.

Here’s a track from Bin Scrape Laden, produced by yrs truly under the name Nettle in the simpler days of 1999/2000. It’s named after a (sadly defunct) Pans y Company bocadillo.

T-nettle bin scrape laden-SOOT003-001T-nettle bin scrape laden-SOOT003-001T-nettle bin scrape laden-SOOT003-001

[audio:https://negrophonic.com/mp3/Nettle_Serranito.mp3]

Nettle – Serranito

So yes, I am available for presidential-level geopolitical consultation gigs and/or palm readings.

The “hidden moral” of this story is that it takes a lot of time, money, and people to make vinyl records, even weird Arabic influenced noise-beat ones with a strong prophetic bent.

In Casablanca last month Maggie and I went to the address of Hassania Editions. A major major label in the 70s, 80s, and beyond. Nothing but a dental surgeon on the top floor. The motorcycle shop dudes next door had no idea. The guy selling candy in a nearby doorway remembered, vaguely, when it had closed. About five years back. We walked around the neighborhood, a ‘popular’ one which would feel like a dangerous slum in the Americas but in Morocco it felt – was – safe, active, the opposite of shady. Spicy greasy bread and the best almonds I’d ever eaten and the first disc seller is peddling Zinga Zinga video CDs — humorous Gaddafi youtubery. Because sometimes you have to laugh. To keep from… I bought the MP3 CD this unlabeled tune came from at the second disc seller. I can’t make out the name(s) in the beginning… Carlos? Anybody?

[audio:https://negrophonic.com/mp3/06Track.MP3]

Mudd Unknown – from ‘Chaabi One 2010’ / Casablanca

It’s gorgeous. 11 minutes, a stroll rather than an appointment. Make it to the nine minute mark and you get rewarded by one of those Maghrebi rhythmic accelerations that remind you you’ve been drinking tea all day. That the heart can quicken. That love is real. That time runs in one direction: out.

PRINCESS IN A MERCEDES

800px-Alma tunnel Paris

[Pont de l’Alma tunnel, Paris. Wikipedia]

[audio:https://negrophonic.com/mp3/PRINCESS_IN_A_MERCEDES_CLASSE_S_280.mp3]

she’s inconsistent, but she’s still alive…

A haunting new song from Anne-James Chaton & Andy Moor. Haunting: presences which do not, cannot leave. Even – especially – after the song ends. Music as quiet constant supplement to the historical record.

she’s in a hotel, a palace, at the Ritz, in Paris…

available now as a 7″ on the Unsounds label!

SIPPIN’ BATHWATER

Last night’s radio show, SIPPIN’ BATHWATER, is now streaming. Over the course of 60 minutes: Lapalux provides a timely antidote for those suffering from the letdown of James Blake’s album, Quechua queen Luzmila Carpio occupies her rightful place as the missing link between Gang Gang Dance and Gang Gang Dance, Bombino’s Sahelian compositions acquire a desert-motorik lean, Lamin Fofana enters the building, Clams Casino gets motivational in a subtractive #based mode, Tim Hecker shimmers anew, and Berber highlights fresh from Casablanca sweeten New York’s reluctant spring air.

WEB WIZARD NEEDED

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My Beyond Digital crew is currently looking to hire a web designer to help us construct the Beyond Digital: Morocco site. Experience with multi-lingual sites and WP-installs that can switch between languages is a plus. We need someone available immediately.

Interested parties, please send your portfolio/resume and an email of introduction to: activate at beyond-digital.org.