Join us at Vaudeville Park, 26 Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn, on Saturday January 28th 9pm-late… we’ll play good music and drink delicious drinks. Dutty hombre Taliesin will be there. Long time internet/blog friend Dave Quam, now producing music for Kingdom’s Fade To Mind label as Massacooramaan will also DJ.

I started the Mudd Up Book Clubb as a celebration of books, readers, libraries, IRL meetups, and all the hot people who love slow media. But the biggest thanks of all goes to the writers themselves. Keep us burning! We see you and salute your work. Furthering that end, here is a gift straight from my muddy heart –

Hand-drawn portraits of all the authors we’ve read so far by artist Rocio Rodriguez Salceda, fitted into digitals for maximum spreadability. Each drawing measures 600 x 800 pixels — formatted for Kindle screensavers, but they work well in a variety of situations: say, an iPhone background, a regular screensaver, or a razor & octopus ink tattoo.

Click on each author’s name for the individual JPG, or grab this ZIP file (2 MB) containing all 8 images. (Here’s a detailed guide on how to jailbreak a Kindle).

MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB KINDLE SCREENSAVERS:

Cesar Aira

Lauren Beukes

Samuel R. Delany

Juan Goytisolo

Nalo Hopkinson

Maureen F. McHugh

Vladimir Sorokin

Mudd Up Book Clubb

Our friend Daniel Perlin (a.k.a. N-Ron, but you’ll soon know him as Merlin) is throwing a crazy end of year houseparty at a space in downtown Brooklyn – Please join us in celebrating the amazing year that was 2011 and the arrival of 2012! Help us push away the spirit of apocalypse… He’s gone and invited the incredible Ripley, yrs truly, and some special guests. MORE details after Saul Williams, c. the year two thousand:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Low Income Tomorrowland, a project studio run by artist & musician Jace Clayton (DJ /rupture) seeks a bright and resourceful studio assistant to work closely with Clayton on a number of installation, performance, and software-based art projects for 2012.

For more info, check out the New York Foundation for the Arts listing.

In our world, “art project” is a code name for “crazy shit.” 2012 gonna be fun.

The first show in Mudd Up Radio’s new Wednesday night time slot is now streaming! SOAP BLEACH SOFTENERS. Gentle beginnings. New music from Cauto, Vladislav Delay, Ghanain gospel, Erothug, and, yes, Lana del Rey:

WFMU’s Winter 2012 schedule shuffle means that, starting this week, Lamin Fofana will host a show right before me on Wednesdays! We’ll do our best to give you good apocalypse in 2012. Our ice cream comes in 5 flavors: regular black, mudd, noir noir, soft bop, and dust bowl.

December 7, 2011, Mudd Up! w/ DJ Rupture on WFMU – tracklist:

Pimmon Passing, Never to be Held The Oansome Orbit Room 40
Vladislav Delay Luotasi Vantaa Raster-Noton
Drake Marvin’s Room Take Care Universal
Cauto 8 DisBoot 0:18:56
Erothug Savages Touching Brothersister
Pimmon Vicco The Oansome Orbit Room 40
Lana Del Rey Video Games
Antonio Sulca (“Sunka Sua”) Yaravi and Fugue Garsila Mountain Music of Peru Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Chancha Via Circuito Malandrozo Cumbia Dub Norte Sonoro look for this coming out on FREE EP in a few weeks from out friends @ NRMAL in Monterrey Mexico
Divine Healer’s Church Abigail’s Praise Song
Drake The Ride ft Kendrick Lamar Take Care Universal
Tim Hecker track 7 Dropped Pianos Kranky
Wolves in the Throne Room track 1 Celestial Lineage Southern Lord
Christ Believer’s Ministry Glory Be Ohene I Have My Liberty! Gospel Sounds from Accra, Ghana Dust to Digital
Moulay Ahmed El Hassani track 1 Dah Labhar Dah FesMaatic

[Brian Degraw, Untitled John Lee Malvo, 2005, pencil on paper, 36 x 28cm]

As part of our ongoing efforts to keep radio exciting…

Tune in to Mudd Up! on WFMU next Monday, November 14th, for a show with special guest Brian Degraw, visual artist and musician from Gang Gang Dance! It’s gonna be a good one.

And below you can stream this week’s show — a live FM broadcast (& YouTube/film screening) from Spectacle Theater. New formats to help us unfold.

Big thanks to the behind-the-scenes team who made the 100% Arabica night a success: Bill, Dave, Mike, and Liz from WFMU, Spectacle’s Akiva, Tony, and the theater volunteers whose names I didn’t catch. Generosity mob!

Once we were actually broadcasting live and direct, I got overexcited and bumped up the volume without bothering to check the meters — the the 2nd half of the show has a bit of (nice) distortion, and a few minutes of unintentional overlapping audio chaos. Fidelity realism! Can’t be beat.

Adding the element of visuals and a live audience to the usual radio experience was thrilling — so we’ll return to Spectacle at 7:30pm on Monday December 5th for another live Mudd Up! remote broadcast and film screening. Details soon!

 Marvin’s Room (Shlohmo’s thru tha floor remix) – Drake by shlohmoA question I hear frequently asked about Toronto based Hiphop/RnB rapper/singer/child actor Drake in the press is why his new music is so depressing sounding and what does he have to be unhappy about? He’s young, rich and famous! He’s got a seemingly endless supply of adoring fans, pretty women, drugs, alcohol, money and a venue for his artistic expression to talk about his feelings. Hot97 is his psychotherapy couch.

When he sings:
‘Cups of the XO
Bitches in my old phone
I should call one and go home
I’ve been in this club too long
The woman that I would try
Is happy with a good guy

But I’ve been drinking so much
That I’ma call her anyway and say
“F-ck that nigga that you love so bad
I know you still think about the times we had”
I say “f-ck that nigga that you think you found
And since you picked up I know he’s not around”

(Are you drunk right now?)

I’m just sayin’, you could do better
Tell me have you heard that lately?
I’m just sayin’ you could do better
And I’ll start hatin’, only if you make me’

Drake strikes me as being honest here. Even though he has all of the above material and ego-enhancing things that many of us want, he is still not happy.  When artists are honest and speak about what’s really happening with them instead of repeating tropes that seem like the ‘industry standard’ (I’m balling! I’m awesome! I’m getting money!) it adds a richness of meaning, the texture of personal reality.  The current vogue for sipping XO (aka sizzurp, purple drank, or cough syrup made with promethazine and codeine) popularized by many rap/rnb artists including recently Drake and The Weeknd seems to support this pretty well. Codeine is an opiate, the same active ingredient found in heroin. It’s a central nervous system depressant that makes you sleepy and dulls pain when used when you’re sick. If consumed when you’re healthy it pushes pleasure buttons in your brain and feels great.   Taking codeine also kills you.  If you slow your central nervous system down enough you’ll just stop breathing. RIP DJ Screw and Pimp C. My question is: how much must you be suffering to make this glamourous lifestyle choice? Scientific research has pointed to links between the way we experience physical and psychic pain, like the pain of depression, including the fact that depression sufferers seem to have more acute physical pain.  As far as I can tell people who are happy and fulfilled don’t need to constantly take large amounts of central nervous system depressants like codeine and alcohol.

Where does this pain come from?  For many of us who are artists or musicians we, secretly or not, spend a certain amount of time thinking about why so-and-so got their name put above ours on a flier, or got a better review or record deal or  fee for their show or more views on YouTube. Why are they more loved than us? It feels unfair and can be demoralizing. This is because our feeling of self-worth is connected to our rapidly fluctuating ego. One moment we just had a great gig, review, bit of feedback from a fan and are flying. The next moment something goes badly or we notice someone else doing better and suddenly we are dissatisfied with our own success that seemed great a minute ago. I feel that whether they admit it or not many, many people who are perceived as successful suffer from these same feelings. In fact I think that many people who believe that material and ego success will make them happy, then achieve it and realize that they’re still not happy are actually in a tougher spot than those who are still striving.  If you are still trying to get there you can at least believe that once you get rich and famous you’ll leave your current unhappiness behind.  Once you get there and realize you are STILL unhappy and that a change in external factors isn’t going to solve it that must be pretty difficult to deal with. Elvis and Marilyn Monroe come to mind.

I recently read a book by the Dalai Lama called ‘How To Practice’ about ways to a meaningful and happy life.  For those unfamiliar with him here is a person who absolutely radiates satisfaction, kindness and deep happiness. This is in spite of the fact that he is a leader of a nation in exile who have undergone brutal cultural genocide at the hands of the People’s Republic of China including torture, mass murder and attempts to undermine and eradicate the Tibetan Buddhist faith which the Dalai Lama is a senior figure in.  A key distinction he makes which I found to be very helpful in thinking about these issues is the distinction between Pleasure and Happiness.  Pleasure is the result of a state change: from sobriety to drunkenness, hunger to satiety, arousal to orgasm, feeling un-appreciated to feeling admired, and so on.  We experience a momentary burst of pleasure which can be pretty awesome. What tells us that these things are not intrinsic sources of happiness is that we cannot continue to experience them indefinitely. Drink too much and throw up, smoke too much pot and get nervous and paranoid, eat too much and get a stomach ache, receive so much fan adulation that you can’t walk down the street and consequently feel isolated and lonely.  All of these, while resulting in transitional pleasures which feel great when they happen, do not satisfy our inner desires for things like meaning in life, a long term feeling of satisfaction or freedom from the roller coaster of egotism.

The Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Buddhist prescription for these things is instead of constantly looking at ourselves and trying to scratch our own itches for more fame, food, drugs or money to look outward and look at who we can help, how we can be more caring, how we can contribute to others happiness and lessen their suffering. In a word: compassion.  If you’ve ever experimented with compassion you’ll find that it provides a much less fleeting and much longer lasting feeling of happiness, even if sometimes in the immediate moment the act itself is not directly pleasurable. For me the major experience I’ve had in this department is being a father to two young boys. Even though at times it is not easy and can feel like a terrifying and overwhelming vortex of poopy diapers, extreme and prolonged sleep deprivation, yelling, crying and trips to the emergency room there is nothing I have done in my life which has given me more deep and lasting happiness. Counter-intuitive though it may seem the realest happiness I’ve found is in sacrifice, giving freely of myself and serving others. It doesn’t fluctuate, increase or decrease based on external factors or go away when I scratch the itch. In fact, the more I scratch the more it deepens, expands and the richer and more satisfying it becomes.

I am not holding myself up as an example here for admiration. Loving your children is a bare minimum necessary act for any human being. In order to feel like I’m actually doing something that is a net gain for humanity and to deepen my compassionate practice I need, and plan, to do more than that. I’m only speaking from my own, limited direct experience to convey my point.  It’s possible to be happy, but it doesn’t come from consuming anything or from stroking the ego.

cross-posted from my personal blog at mattshadetek.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

DJ Kiva will be dropping this freshness November 10th at Le Poisson Roug with Africa Hitech, and he will be rocking Webster Hall with Matt Shadetek November 12th.

The following material was pulled from the Dubspot blog, which Lamin wrote:

Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist producer and musician DJ KIVA returns with a superb new solo album 1000 Sunrises out October 18 on his  Adios Babylon imprint via Destroy All Concepts.

Navigating beauty and pain with deep, mesmeric, off-centered beats, soulful, dub-wise electronic impressions, twirling synthlines, and reinforced sub-bass, 1000 Sunrises is a perfectly balanced album. The six tracks presented here are meticulously and lovingly put together, and they move with an unhurried, reassuring pace. From the opening “Feel It,” with its extra-bouncy thump and unrelenting, catchy synthline to the meditative “Tayyib,” which maintains a solemn and contemplative mood with eerie voices but holds a propulsive groove, and the staggeringly beautiful, mind-expanding title track “1000 Sunrises,” DJ Kiva remains remarkably self-reliant and uncompromising in aesthetic throughout the entire album. Album closer “City Of The Dawn” is the uplifting, post-future, and soulful electronic music you can only get from an experienced and self-assured electronic music producer, whose style and range go far beyond arbitrary and trendy sub-genres. Electronics, melody, dub, and soul come together – same as it never was.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Diana and Liz are SUPER TIGHT. Public-access heart inside a Youtube pop melt! This is their first episode. The High Maintenance Brides are particularly inspired.

Let’s take things up a level. Let’s get glossy.

The November issue of WIRE magazine has Rupture on the cover lookin’ all grown and sexy.

Congrats! Go buy that shit! They say: “Peter Shapiro meets prolific producer Jace Clayton to hear about post-colonial Bass music, The Shining remade in Dubai and Sufi Plug-Ins.”

>recent remixes from Dutty Artz stalwart Lamin Fofana.
_both remixes out now on Grizzly and Diskotopia

Jay Weed
On The Nile EP
GRIZZLY009
March 2011
http://bit.ly/nk6m5u

>

Visionist
Rock The Flock EP
DSK003
July 2011
http://bit.ly/nOX8Eh

[screenshot from the June Mudd Up Book Clubb's Ustream]

The Mudd Up Book Clubb continues! Every six weeks or so we gather (preferably on a rooftop) to talk about a good muddy book, stream the conversation so The Internet can participate, then eat delicious food. The Clubb is meant to be a realtime feast-for-the-senses thing, but I’ve started a low-activity Mudd Up Book Clubb mailing list, which will mostly be used to remind folks about the dates and give out location info. For the inaugural Casablanca edition we read Maureen McHugh’s Nekropolis, a novel set in 22nd century Morocco. For the second edition, the Clubb will meet in on a Madrid rooftop on August 10th or 11th (date to be confirmed soon), to discuss César Aira’s Cómo Me Hice Monja, a novel translated into English as How I Became A Nun. Este edición del Clubb va a ser bilingüe.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Argentine novelist Cesar Aira, I suggest that you simply read the book. No spoilers! It’s short and deliciously strange. Aira has published over 80 novels in Spanish, often scattered across small presses. The act of simply finding his work has a magical easter-egg hunt quality to it. How I Became A Nun is his most popular book, and a decent entrance. All Aira’s novels are quite brief. I’ve read around fifteen of them. I keep reading him. Some are terrible. But even the bad ones have special moments filled with an uncanny freshness and surprise and moments of aphoristic clarity.

I first learned about Aira from this comment on my blog:

I’m sort of obsessed with Cesar Aira, Argentinian, ridiculously prolific, starts from a premise and then writes forward, throwing up all these absurd obstacles and traps and pitfalls that he has to write himself out of, like some kind of perfromer trapped on stage who has to keep on improvising tricks and art out of nowhere and without knowing why, until for a second you glimpse a pattern in the chaos – and the whole theatre collapses.

There is nobody else writing like Aira, yet his writing isn’t at all “difficult.” Even at their weirdest, Aira’s books are syntactically uncomplicated; the big picture might be bizarre but he doesn’t clutter his prose with a lot of adjectives or challenging vocabulary — so he’s perfect for a non-native Spanish speaker like myself to read in the original. If you’d like to give it a shot, this website appears to have the entire text of Cómo Me Hice Monja.

[the lovely Madrid rooftop where we're gonna meet!]

“Pero no hay situación que se eternice. Siempre pasa algo más.”

‘Nothing lasts forever. Something else always happens.’

- Cómo Me Hice Monja / How I Became A Nun