Rupture is off-the-grid tonight, still in Mexico, where this weekend he performed alongside Adrian Sherwood, Mungo’s Hi-Fi, and various local DJs and bands at the Mictlan Dub Festival. I’m holding things down tonight 7-8PM on Mudd Up! radio on WFMU 91.1 fm in NYC. It’s cold and rainy (just miserable weather here) in NYC, tune in, throw in comments, questions, get involved, heat up. Again, tonight @ 7PM.

Subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast if you want downloadable versions: , Mudd Up! RSS.

For those outside our FM broadcast range, WFMU offers live streaming and even has its own free iPhone app!

Here’s something I’ll be dropping at some point tonight -

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Clipse – Showing Out feat. Yo Gotti

The beautiful piece of music accompanying that uncomfortable (grotesque, disturbing and great!) video art is “Hotel Freund” from a remarkable new album, Alphabet 1968 from Black To Comm, a project by Hamburg-based Marc Richter. Listen closely to the “esoteric psychedelia” cunningly arranged pieces- hear the sound of children playing as giant rabbits look down from hilltops, intense and sinister.

[unrelated/reference points: The Food of the Gods Night of the Lepus & "let your love come down in the midnight hour."]

[Salon Calavera]

This weekend I’ll be performing at the 3-city Mictlan Dub Festival, alongside Adrian Sherwood, Mungo’s Hi-Fi, and various local DJs and bands in each city. Things kicked off last night with a screening of the Dub Echoes documentary followed by a Q&A with me in the incredible Salon Calavera in the center of Mexico City. SKULL SALON. Mictlan, by the way, is an Aztec concept involving the proper path taken on the way to Death.

I’m looking forward to these dates. In NYC sometimes people ask me to do ‘cumbia’ sets, so it’s quite fitting that in Mexico I’m asked to do a special set presenting my interpretation of ‘dub’. I’ll be playing out a lot of stuff I rarely play out. Dub classicists beware!: much as I love Tubby & Co., I’m hostile to canonical interpretations/reiterations of dub…

[Salon Calavera, roof view]

for info–

Nov 27 – Puebla Cholula

Nov 28 – Mexico City

Nov 29 – Guadalajara

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Head over to FACT magazine for an exclusive King Midas mix – FACT Mix 103 – King Midas Sound – available as direct-download for three weeks only. Full tracklist + interview.

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Cauto – November 2009 Mix

Cauto dropped an exclusive mix, plus an interview for Mr Gasparov‘s new blog – look there for the tracklist + info.

Big up Culture System for the heads up.

[Freshjive Hope Is Fading Fast t shirt | The World's Got Problems]

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G-Side – So Wonderful feat. Chrystal Carr, G-Mane, and SupaKing

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G-Side – Who’s Hood feat. Yelawolf

G-Side‘s latest effort the Huntsville International project was liberated last week, leaked in its entirety and contained some extremely solid moments for those of us who are still into rap music! Slowmotion Soundz, ST 2 Lettaz and Clova, Block Beattaz, and the various producers and guest artists offer strong, and even exceptional performances.  ST 2 Lettaz and Clova delivered moving verses on “So Wonderful,” “In The Rain,” and “This Is Life.” On “So Wonderful,” ST raps about difficult times, not just the current recession– more specifically, the lack of assistance, the extra huddle, and debt young folks incurred while making their way through college, the double-digit unemployment figures and lack of opportunity in black and brown communities, which predates the current financial crisis. ST also echoes the words of Young Jeezy and P. Dukes (my president is black, but we’re still in the same mess– Obama administration maintaining continuity.  By the way, P. Dukes made my favorite recession rap jam with “Make Me A Way,” and I regret not including it on the podcast.)  Clova is on-point also, with an interesting mix of low-key, sharp darts grounded in realism, at times interrupted with “next-level”-swag-so-advance raps (and oftentimes, he’s incredible with those lines.)

Yelawolf offered a crucial performance on “Who’s Hood,” delivering a dense, rapid-fire verse about Cadillacs, pit-fights, and nightlife in the Bible Belt (he sounds like a young Big Boi or something! last week we heard him channeling Bob Dylan for Juelz Santana.) Other highlights here include the solo track by ST “This Is Life,” which I heard in August when Traps N Trunks unleashed the Huntsville Alabama: Rochet City mixtape/compilation and the defiant and unforgettable “In The Rain” featuring Bentley. “This Is Life” and “In The Rain” are those outstanding rap songs you hear every now and again, and they stay with you– emotionally raw and honest lyrics delivered by a smart, ambitious/hungry rappers.  In the era of free music –sounds now move faster than the speed of contex– we are bombarded with ephemeral songs and disposable mixtapes. G-Side is offering music with lasting quality. The majority of tracks on their previous two album, Starshipz and Rocketz and Sumthin 2 Hate have held up well, withstanding countless listens and every now and then certain sounds warranting repeated listening.  The Huntsville International project has that– freshness, durability, rap music for 2010 and beyond.

Friday November 20 – DJ /rupture & Matt Shadetek, Devlin + Darko. @ The Empty Bottle, Chicago. Free with rsvp, $10 otherwise. to get in free, email: rsvp@emptybottle.com

Saturday November 21 – DJ /rupture & Matt Shadetek @ The Video Saloon, Bloomington Indiana. A Benefit Show for the Indiana Forest Alliance.

+ + +

for a taste of what Matt will be spinning, check his latest mix, S3CR3T KN0W13DG3 – triangulated somewhere dutty between Matt’s own productions, up-to-the-times dancehall, and UK funky.

Here’s a new mix I did for K-Mag aka Knowledge Mag from the UK. This one kind of reflects pretty accurately the stuff that I’m playing out now. Lot’s of 130bpm house and dancehall and a little bit of dubstep and stuff like it. There are several new unreleased unheard tunes by me in the mix. There’s also an interview with me and Rupture with the original post about the mix. Enjoy!

Subscribe to the Dutty Artz podcast here: http://www.duttyartz.com/2008/dutty-artz-podcast/

[display_podcast]

MATT SHADETEK: SECRET KNOWLEDGE MIX

1. Matt Shadetek – Singularity
2. Mykal Rose – Shoot Out
3. Hard House Banton – Sirens
4. Matt Shadetek – Coco
5. KG – 808
6. Matt Shadetek – Wonton Garden
7. Fada Bookie – Mi Name (Shadetek NY Tropical Remix)
8. Jahdan Blakkamoore feat. 77Klash and Spoek Mathambo – Dem Nuh Like It
9. Aidonia – In Her Belly
10. Footsteps – Worker
11. Dotstar – Stick Up (Dutty Artz special)
12. NB Funky – Riddim Box Rmx
13. Chelly – Took the Night
14. Royal P – Between Us
15. KG – Feelin Funky
16. Rudimental Records – Want You Back
17. Vybz Kartel – Dutty Angela
18. Matt Shadetek – Shield Dub
19. Joy Orbison – Hyph Mngo
20. Matt Shadetek – New York Attitude
21. Noble Society – Mama So Divine (Marcus Visionary rmx)
22. Matt Shadetek – Strength In Numbers

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Juelz Santana f/ Yelawolf – Mixing Up The Medicine

Juelz Santana and Yelawolf echoing/channeling Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. If the rest of Born To Lose, Built To Win (his much-delayed third album– push-backs and title-changes) sound anything like “Mixing Up The Medicine” then it’ll be a decent album, but I doubt that after hearing that awful radio single/standard club number featuring Chris Brown.

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Pill f/ Freddie Gibbs – Run Up To Me

Pill continues leaking out great materials from 4175:The Refill which drops sometime this week — check The Educated Villains. He once again link up with Freddie Gibbs, and each time these two get together, the result is great.

h/t the unfuckwithable leif

Radio tonight: special guest Bendude from Montreal’s Masala crew! Topic: Digital digging. (aka Secret Google Cheat Codes). We’ve hosted ‘analog’ diggers like Beto from Soundways and Sonido Martines, now it’s time to learn about the other side…

KEYWORDS: Cd-rs, rapidshare, mp3s, coupe decale, cumbia, world music 2.0, internet submarines, poorly rendered turtles all the way down, francophone.

Directed and animated by Sara Taigher – in 3 minutes, she offers a perfect accompaniment/visual narrative to the music and short story you’ll find in the CD packaging. Solar Life Raft BBC/Amazon 5-star review.

Unrelated Submerged Second Life Picture- but watch for an amazing video coming soon from Sara Taigher

Solar Life Raft- the mix that keeps on giving- has finally made its way to your local record stores. /rupture and Shadetek working together is a serious Voltron force. It’s safe to say that I have listened to SLR over a hundred times since it was recorded- and I’m still finding reasons to go back. Opening with Time-Blind’s abstract tone poetry and closing with a gorgeous re-work from /rupture and Shadetek of Telepathe, it’s easy to miss all the ground the mix has covered.

Tracklists are the weird anathema of the DJ Mix- always reminding us as producers and consumers that for some reason the sounds cant just stand alone. A tracklist can mark a DJ’s access to dub-plates and exclusives or their prodigal digging- but always the tracklist serves as a sort of roadmap for listeners that want to go beyond the mix and gain some traction in it. Often I’ll look to a track list before deciding whether or not to listen to a given mix. Or I will return to the tracklist after hearing something amazing that I want to be up on.

SLR stands alone without the tracklist- and the hype that goes along with it- people read the tracklist and think, “Wow, this sure is eclectic”- but it’s not grab bag by any means- its laser precision etched in bass. It is hard to believe after listening to SLR that you’ve just digested sounds as seemingly diverse as Cardopusher, Paavoharju, and Luc Ferrari. One you get used to these sorts of mixes- where genre-orthodoxy and rigid notions of sonic-geographies are left behind- it gets pretty fucking hard to go back to an hour of any BPM mixed seamlessly at the start of 8, 16 and 32 bar phrases and movements.

/rupture and Shadetek can really cook in the lab. I’ve always rated Matt for his back-from-the-crossroads skills in Logic. I mean- from what I know- he was the first stateside producer to actually be doing production for grime dudes in London. /rupture on the other hand has always been off in a zone that seemed far more experimental- where quantization was frowned upon and standard timing or track development was laughed out the door. Through the last few years they seem to have tempered each others workflows and styles in all the right ways- and SLR should be an announcement that these two can make tracks with the very best of them. The album is almost a third original production and its the home grown tracks that really provided the convincing narrative that holds the mix together.

Effusive praise can ring hallow coming from ones own crew- but I’m not just trying to ramp up sales- Solar Life Raft is remarkable. Do whatever your ethical radar tells you in regard to consuming music and somehow, someway, find yourself a copy. If that happens to be amazon, boomkat, itunes, or beatport….just think of it as investing in more music.

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Matt Shadetek – Strength In Numbers

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Gang Gang Dance – Bebey (DJ /rupture and Matt Shadetek Remix)

, u mean

“…the five-letter English word tribe. The Western media’s analysis of events in Africa reveals the word as the main obstacle in the way of a meaningful illumination of dynamics in modern Africa. Tribe—with its clearly pejorative connotation of the primitive and the premodern—is contrasted with nation, which connotes a more positive sense of arrival at the modern. Every African community is a tribe, and every African a tribesman. We can see the absurdity of the current usages, where thirty million Yorubas are referred to as a tribe, but four million Danes as a nation. A group of 250,000 Icelanders constitutes a nation, while 10 million Ibos make up a tribe. And yet, what’s commonly described as a tribe, when looked at through objective lenses, fulfills all the criteria of shared history, geography, economic life, language, and culture that are used to define a nation. These critical attributes are clearly social and historical, not biological.

Nonetheless, to the analysts, tribe is like a genetic stamp on every African character, explaining his every utterance and action, particularly vis-à-vis other African communities. Using the same template of Tribe X versus Tribe Y, print and electronic media and even progressive thinkers simply look at the ethnic origins of the leading actors in a conflict and immediately place them in the category of X or Y. So, whatever the crisis, in whatever part of Africa, in whatever time period, the analysts arrive at one explanation: it is all because of the traditional enmity between Tribe X and Tribe Y. It is like looking at John McCain, seeing that he was born in Panama; then looking at Barack Obama, seeing that he was born in Hawaii; and then concluding that their political differences are due to the places of their birth or that their differences are rooted in an assumed traditional enmity between Panamanians and Hawaiians.” – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

from the current issue Transition magazine