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.
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:
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:
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and a re-up of a great clattering Tunisian beat workout (nobody commented on the original post. sigh.)
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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 3-9pm, I’ll be playing toward the end of the day. Hot weather music. Like maybe this tune but pitched down to compensate for heavy humidity and sunstroke conditions?
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:
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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.
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[???? - 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 longest 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 of ‘soon’, like in Mexican Spanish with its ahora and ahorita.
Where where we? Brooklyn. Andy Moor 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.
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& 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.
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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!
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.
New York Ravers, next weekend come get dutty with me on Saturday night at an underground party in Soho details here. Thanks to everyone who came out to Oceans of Blood and skanked out this past Friday, great party. Seems like I’m getting asked more and more to play at these underground jams in informal locations more and more, I’m really happy to see them happening again after many years of being verrrry bored going to regular clubs in NYC. Support these events and let’s keep ‘em happening.
In which our Intrepid Soundboy shall perform in front of a mandala made from bioluminescent toothpaste…
I’m looking fwd to this gig, Pittsburgh it’s finally happening!
DJ /rupture +
James Gyre & Edgar Um
@ Garden of Earthly Delights
9PM – 2AM April 22nd @ Brillobox
4104 Penn Ave. Pittsburgh, PA
$7 pre-sale $10 at the door
Late night this SATURDAY, Washington D.C. DUTTY ARTZ rolls deep: Me, Matt Shadetek, and Jahdan Blakkamoore live pon di mic. We’re hoping Michelle & the girls will make it out of the White House for this one. This is the 1st time I’ve ever played D.C. so let’s get sweaty.
off to Knoxville’s Big Ears festival! It sports an action-packed lineup (The Ex, The xx, jj, GGD, Nico M, Joanna N, et al). I’ll be performing three times, in fairly different contexts:
a late-night dance set on Friday (with Ben Frost opening).
a Saturday afternoon set in a theater. w/ Dirty Projectors and William Basinski! Remember: a seated audience is a captive audience.
and finally, Saturday night The Ex’s guitarist, Andy Moor & I will do our improv duo performance. Here’s a nice preview writeup of my hyperactive weekend.
Sometimes Andy & I go way out. Sometimes, like here, I’ll let a beat play for awhile and we gather corners together until it feels like a song.
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“Nothing lasts forever” writes Cesar Aira, “something else always happens.” Needless to say, it sounds – is – much better in Spanish.
A side-effect of Andy playing with me is that he gets confused even more frequently with the popular British trance DJ of the same name. Eventually we’re gonna accidentally get booked to play with Tiesto, I know it.
This snippet is from a show in Orleans, France. Photos by Andy.
and this audio is from a gig we did in Holland last summer, here overlaid with an anonymous Iranian video on the eve of election protests (remember those green twitter jpgs? ah, slacktivism! ah 2009!):
I can’t believe I missed this phenomenal banger from Quik and Kurupt… I guess singles culture kept me from listening to all of BlaQKout… BUT DAMN!!
If your feeling like getting out on Friday in NYC- Mosholu Park, Tombs and myself will be tearing up one very small part of the massive FLUX FACTORY space up in Queens. I used to live in the old space they had- and they KNOW how to throw a party. NES.Avi will be on live video duties – even if we wern’t gonna be there this party would be fucking insane. From Flux facebook event-
Join us on Friday, February 19th for Housebroken, Flux’s inaugural show! In celebration of our newest home, we’ve invited dozens upon dozens of artists to create works throughout the building. Housebroken is easily our biggest project ever, with over 100 installations, performances, and homey additions to our factory. Eclectic performances and unparalleled reverie begin at 8 pm, continuing on into the night. 39-31 29th Street, LIC, NY 11101
Suggested donation, $15 (tax-deductible)
Open bar courtesy of Campari, 21+
Please rsvp to rsvp@fluxfactory.org
Housebroken will remain on view every Saturday and Sunday from 12 – 6 pm until March 21st.
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.
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To get in touch, send us tunes, hate mail etc. write: family AT duttyartz.com
