Dutty Artz will release Lamin Fofana‘s debut EP What Elijah Said on September 21. Lamin has been steadily working on beats for the past few years, and he’s about to make a public birth.
When we asked him to describe the music, Lamin sent us this sentence: “Yet, he would refer to the Mother Plane, a mysterious space ship with superior beings, giant black gods or something like that, that patrolled the universe, keeping an eye on the devil and ready to rescue Black Muslims from Armageddon.” Sounds like sci-fi, but turns out it’s from the New York Times 1975 obituary (!) for Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad.
Everything is not what it seems, and this music’s mark of greatness is the way it so effortlessly calls for repeat listens.
What Elijah Said EP:
01 Happy 2010 // Dark Days Are Coming
02 “I will admonish you and give you absolution”
03 What Elijah Said // Eye on the Devil
04 Dance In Yr Blood
Artwork: Boy holding fluorescent bulb, photo by Brendan Bannon, Dandora Dumpsite, Nairobi. 8/29/2006. Hundreds of trash pickers scavenge the dump for food, plastic, glass, and metal. Areas of the dump smolder from a slow burn of plastics and detritus just under the surface. Local activist have attempted to close the site due to pollution concerns.
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Lamin Fofana was born in the West African country of Guinea. When the political situation got bumpy, he moved to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where his routine involved listening to Goodie Mob and Organized Konfusion as well as attending Quranic schools/mosques. In 1997 Lamin’s family had to flee worsening conditions in Sierra Leone – losing friends, belongings, documents, a home. They spent several days crossing roads and bridges destroyed by rebels to prevent people from escaping. At the end of the year, Fofana found a new home in Harlem, New York, where he lives today.
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My daytime employer Dubspot is sponsoring this event at Love with a who’s who of bearded NY dub guys (including your’s truly) at Love. It’s on 9/11, a date easy to remember if not for pleasant reasons. Jahdan will be in the building and we’ll do some songs together and I’ll be throwing some wamp at the Love sound system. It should be a lot of fun.
Lineup:
Dub Gabriel
Matt Shadetek
Liondub
Emch
DJ Kiva
MCs: Jahdan Blakkamoore & Infinity
Where: Love 40 W. 8th St. New York, NY 10012
Sept. 11th, 2010 $5 before 11PM, $10 after
Sponsored by Dubspot, Halcyon, Konkrete Jungle and Brooklynradio.net
Gotta love the fact that we’re moving past the studio and the night club, into a visual realm. Tropical Bass doubles down this week with two new music videos from a few of our favorite artists this year.
First up, Mexicans with Guns new video “Dame Lo” shot by System D-128 could possibly represent more elements of chicano culture than Danny Trejo’s tattoo collection.
So the music of Abidjan’s CIAfrica crew does sound a bit like a grimey, glitchy elephant staring you down as angular new-money architecture burns or smolders or looms in the background and the sky’s color stumbles from white to black with a few lasers for good measure, because we’re not living in the future, they are.
Sometime last year the visionary ringleader, Amadou aka Green Dog (RZA to their Wu) gave me access to their deep hard drives — packed with singing, rapping & fwd-thinking beats. Thrilling material. I pulled out my favorite 17 songs for a CD which will be released later this month, DJ Rupture presents CIAFRICA. This coincides with CIAfrica, Nettle, and myself performing at Gotenburg’s Sweden Way Out West festival next Friday, August 13th. I’ll be DJing separately from them, in a party with Sleigh Bells and Fool’s Gold (the band). It’s a 3-day affair, with folks like Wu-Tang, M.I.A., Jay Electronica, The xx, etc performing, so if yr in Scandinavia, might be worth the trip… & I’ve found that drunk Swedes tend to still be really nice, at least in Gotenburg.
It will be the first time the CIAfrica MCs and vocalists perform outside their Côte d’Ivoire/Ivory Coast home base! They have this awesome Pam Grier video for one of their female MCs, Nasty, but it keeps getting censored by YouTube. So here’s a vid from one of the guys coming over, Manusa:
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New mix (Park Here) from our good friend Waer Rock/Culture System focusing on New York area producers making garage-y beats. This one is thick with unreleased jams from folks like Incyde, Peter Gunn, Mikey Dubs, and more – plus a track from our very own Matt Shadetek, “Beenie Eyes” from the album Flowers.
PS – I’m still here. Money calls, but indeed family is always first!
Last Monday we had a great show here in the basement of Dubspot on Dutty Artz radio. We streamed live on UStream as usual and had a bunch of people logged in while Taliesin, Mosholu Park and myself played some short sets followed by an epic 80 minute throwdown from NguzuNguzu. Listen through to the end to hear Daniel playing congas over juke beats live. I was a little drunk by that point but I remember it sounding super duper dope. You can check our ustream channel to see video of the session. I’m told that not all files in these posts are being pushed to the podcast stream so I’ll put their set first and you can click to stream or download the rest of ours.
Me and Lamin are both working at Dubspot now and we are doing a new radio show out of the Dubspot basement! It’s being streamed and podcasted. Subscribe at the original post!
Our first guests on the Dubspot Radio Podcast are two New York heavyweights: Dave Q and Badawi. Dave Q has played a pivotal role in bringing Dubstep to NYC through his respected Dub War parties and his forward looking DJ sets. Badawi aka Raz Mesinai is a long time participant in many mutant strains of dub music in NY and internationally and has now teamed up with Dave Q to start The Index, their new label project. Among his many activities Raz is also an instructor here at Dubspot teaching students to produce in Ableton Live. The broadcast contains a mix by Dave Q playing from Serato followed by a short set from Raz on Ableton and at the end an interview with host Matt Shadetek.
Check out the mix and interview on Dubspot’s soundcloud:
This week Konkrete Jungle has NYC culturalists Dutty Artz touching down in advance of Matt Shadetek’s forthcoming solo album Flowers. He and Moshulu Park (aka Lamin Fofana) will be turning out their homegrown sounds, funky steps and bass heavy wares alongside Hipstep master I-Cue and KJ soldiers Krunchy and Junglez. Human? and Lifeline will be making sure there’s plenty of dutty to go around at the bar while Goldenchild and I-Cue bring you the real art of mixology. Follow Man Like Mac http://twitter.com/konkretejungle for the Holla For A Dolla and $5 all night passwords Dont Sleep!
“iHop” excels as a futuristic dubstep number with its focus on strong shuffling rhythms, thick bass melodies, and soulful, pitch-shifted vocal sampling on par with UK funky’s finest” – Patric Fallon, XLR8R
“excellent throughout… It’s always possible that he just went so deep into Detroit that he arrived in Africa by mistake.” – Eddie Stats, The Fader
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Matt Shadetek – iHop
Earlier this afternoon, the good folks over at XLR8R liberated a track “iHop” from Flowers,Matt Shadetek’s first solo instrumental album which drops June 8th – just a couple of weeks from now. This will be the first time we announce the album on this blog! We’re all excited about Flowers, which is Matt’s most beautiful and light-hearted work to date. Read Patric Fallon’s review and download the tune at XLR8R.
“A raspy-voiced and diminutive queer rapper in throwback-eighties-chic screams overtly sexual call-and-response commands. A special-ed teacher with the authoritative demeanor of an army TAC officer instructs you to “Walk it like a dog” and “Do the Jubilee All”, a middle-aged mother yells fighting words at a rival. All of this over frantic, break-neck beats sampled from a small smattering of funk and hip-hop oldies. This is the sound of New Orleans Bounce. From darkened clubs to tricked-out cars, high school dances to neighborhood bars, family reunions, barbecues and birthday parties, New Orleans locals of all ages have been bouncing to “Dat Beat” since the early nineties, incorporating the rhythms and vocal styling of second-line street parades, undulating Caribbean and African dance moves, and stolen hooks ranging from Beyonce to Bill Haley. It’s the sound on the street in the City that Care Forgot,, the booty-shaking cousin to Miami Bass, Detroit Ghettotech, Baltimore Club, but with the chaos and audacity of punk, a spirit that reflects the chaos and audacity of the Crescent City that birthed Bounce music.
A native Dirty Southerner and long-time New Orleans resident, Deejay Karo offers up this mix as a taste of Bounce from the last several years. These tracks were recorded off of burnt cd’s, traded back and forth by local dj’s, producers and performers and bought out of car trunks beneath the live oaks of uptown or in beauty supply store parking lots. Because of this, making a track listing would be next to impossible, but here are the names of some of the performers and producers in the mix:
Blaq N Mild, Peacachoo, J Rock, Showbiz CJ, Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby,Magnolia Shorty, 10thWard Buck, Gotti Boi Chris, Katey Red, Smitty Out Da City, Monsta wit da Fade… Respect and Love to everyone featured and deepest apologies those we didn’t rep in this list”
COME FOR THE CASH AND STAY TO DANCE TO THE SOUNDS OF
BAILE FUNK + CUMBIA + BRASIL + BHANGRA + KUDURO + BASS + TREBLE + EVERYTHING ELSE IN-BETWEEN
FRIDAY MAY 21, 2010
11 PM ON AT B.EAST NYC
171 east bway
FREE
Here’s DJ N-RON’s M-C-M1 Mixtape to get you hype for the free party. Head over to Spannered, where it was originally posted for download link, tracklist, + info.
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This party is going to be multiple varieties of bananas. serious – cumbia villera pioneers Damas Gratis (for those who don’t know, read up my Fader article on cumbia which involves careening around Buenos Aires w/ Damas Gratis leader Pablo Lescano), Bomba Estereo, Toy Selectah, and me with special guest vocalist Jahdan Blakkamoore, raising temperatures down in Monterrey Mexico. Puro fuego!!!
also on the bill, Instituto Mexicano del Sonido, Sonidero Nacional, etc….. BOOM.
Ghostleg, our VJ friend in Australia re-ups the visual remix of some United Fruit Company propaganda he started on for New York Tropical, this time with Uproot Andy‘s Vale La Pena remix.
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