I had a grueling fight with Windows Movie Maker last night. Wasn’t pretty. In the end, we reached a compromise, a Pyrrhic victory: I can use Microsoft’s near-useless tools to hack together video, but I cannot spice things up with animated GIFs. So this clip isn’t quite as bugged out as it’s meant to be…
That said, enjoy rare, behind-the-scenes footage from the very 1st week of Dutty Artz “radio“! Later in the episode Kayne West came in (mistaking us for an antique furniture dealership) but by then my flipcam had run out of space.
I’ve been making music in various underground music scenes for the past ten years now. I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Generally you find great people in underground music scenes, people with a lot of passion and dedication who truly love music. When people are able to strike a balance between their underground aesthetic and being organized, special stuff can happen. But there are many times when people can’t strike that balance. One of the ideas that I’ve run into again and again in this world is the idea of ‘doing it for the scene’. On one level this is a very respectable idea: doing something not out of self interest, but to benefit the larger musical community. The problem I’ve encountered with this is that taken too far this can seriously undermine one’s ability to continue to function.
For example, let’s say hypothetically you are a small record distributor. You do it because you believe in the music, you want to support emerging artists and labels and you don’t care about money. You set up shop, take product on consignment from any unknown player with a willingness to press their material and start doing business. Consignment is when you take product before paying for it, warehouse it and pay when it sells. You continue to operate on this basis but because you have so many unheard of records released by labels with no business model or capability to promote them, sales are slow. Eventually, basic costs start to add up. The rent on your office is due every month. The bill for your shipping provider is rising. Eventually there comes a time when you have backed yourself into a corner. Nothing is selling and while you were hoping for an improvement you passed the point of no return. The shipping company has cut off your access to shipping because your owed bill is so high. Your landlord is initiating eviction proceedings against your office where you warehouse your product.
Finish reading this post at my new blog at mattshadetek.com
The second episode of Dutty Artz Radio is up! Me (Matt Shadetek), DJ Rupture, Mosholu Park aka Lamin and Taliesin all got together in the basement of Dubspot to all DJ some short 20 minute sets and do the first episode of our new book club!
The book we talked about is Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.
I chopped the audio into separate parts for your mp3 player pleasure. We streamed it on UStream although somehow the video got lost. The full chat transcript is after the jump though so you can read back if you want. We’ll be doing this weekly on Thursday nights at 7PM NYC time (EST) at http://www.ustream.tv/duttyartznyc
This coming Monday we’ll have a special edition after Dubspot Radio which is at 8 (and I also run) with special guests NGUZU NGUZU! YAAAAA! We’re very excited
Dutty Artz own mr_blakkamoore is ramping up for the release of his new album Babylon Nightmare coming soon on Lustre Kingsand brings us this excellent podcast mixtape for a teaser: Global Warning (click here to download). Me and Liondub, who I produced ‘The General’ with contributed a remix of Jahdan’s ‘Songs of Love’ the first single for the new album. Â There’s a bunch of great stuff on here including some exclusives from Digital Ancient aka Andrew Moon Bain and a feature from Baja of Dry Eye Crew and Delie from Noble Society. Â Check out the post over at Largeup.com for a little bio of Jahdan and enjoy the mix.
Check 1:40 for the real moment(s) of clarity here.
Dutty Artz is a book club. You might have thought we were a record label- given that we’re releasing tracks every month and constantly feeding the internet with audio files- but it goes a lot deeper then that. If you want to be part of the club, you should read Octavia Butler’s Parable of The Sower. If you’re not in the Northern Hemisphere- you might want to wait until Summer, caus this one is dark, and if read before bed, almost guaranteed to induce the vivid nightmares that lodge in your psyche for days before revealing themselves as dreams and not memories.
We’re scrambling just like everyone else right now- trying to figure out what it means to be a record label in an era where recorded digital media has no value- and the only people making money are slicing off pounds of flesh to get branded. You’ll see us move in that direction too. It’s inevitable. Hopefully we can do it without losing too much respect. Until then you can find me steady dreaming of new distribution paradigms as we pass each other printed relics.
“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”
Filastine’s blog is great – check this post on Siberia – and he’s always got interesting things to say. Below, a piece broadcast on Catalunyan TV recently:
Voicemail come first on this Style and Swagga medley.
From Dancehall.Mobi:
‘Oneil Edwards, one-third of the popular dancehall group, Voicemail, was reportedly shot multiple times at the gate to his house in Duhaney Park, Kingston, early this morning, and is now undergoing critical surgery at the Kingston Public Hospital. Unconfirmed reports indicate that robbery was the motive, and that he was shot at least once in the head.’
I’ve been playing a lot of Voicemail tunes lately, especially the Style and Swagga version above and I would like all of them to continue making their great music.
Badmen of Jamaica, I would humbly request that you refrain from shooting any more artists, producers, djs or anyone else. If you need to shoot someone please shoot each other and leave everyone else out of it. Thanks.
I guess were kind of beating a dead meme on this one- (and I guess I’m kind of becoming the joke blog post guy around here) but for real… if you dont fuck with Wayne Marshall we probably cant be friends.
the Dutty Artz digital familia grows! Sisters and brothers let’s welcome Carlos! Like Cauto, Carlos is based in Barcelona, a city he calls home alongside Houston, TX. Carlos and I first vibed out over chopped & screwed Houston rap gems like S.L.A.B. but we quickly discovered shared affinities for drone/noise, flamenco, and I’m happy to say I introduced Carlos to the wonder of Bcn’s Moroccan music shops… He starts off in style with a post about flamenco. – /rupture
Flamenco is a famously conservative style of music. The voice, the guitar, clapping, stamping and jaleo (literally ‘ruckus’) are the key ingredients, and new additions to the mix are often met with some skepticism. This is less true now than it was before 1979, when Camaron de la Isla‘s album La Leyenda del Tiempo pulled sitars, rumba, jazz, and electric guitar into the music, but to this day, most flamenco acts willing to open their palettes to new colors do so tentatively, ultimately sounding like polite, virtuosic jazz fusion music.
This makes Enrique Morente‘s artistic path all the more remarkable. A veteran and patriarch (see: daughter Estrella Morente) of the flamenco game, he’s brought out the duende in its traditional form:
But in recent years, he’s been more interested in seeing what other shapes the duende can take, often through collaborations with surprising artists. Take this duet, with Rebel of Rai Cheb Khaled, where he gives proponents of the Flamenco is the Arabian Blues Declaration a reason to salivate, in appropriately regal settings (the Alhambra, which I used to live right next to). What I like most about this tune is how relaxed it sounds, when a meeting of two giants so often tends to be an overblown affar:
But for freaky noiseniks like me, perhaps the most mind-blowing project(and definitely the riskiest, in terms of flamenco cred) was his collaboration with Sonic Youth. They played several concerts together, but to me the gem is the performance below with just Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley and Morente’s “family”. Here Morente takes a more subdued role, clapping and wailing and staying in the background and Lee Ranaldo does his thing (the video’s out of sync with the audio and you can’t see Morente, but it’s the only uncut video of the whole thing):
We’re speeding up the content production/consumption cycle in the instant update world… and no one does snarky music world twitter better then Disco Shawn (who was also dropping gems on Muddup a couple weeks ago LISTEN HERE) h/t to him for this video which defies commentary beyond the fact that sometimes its cool to live in America where something like Sensation (source of some of the clips below) could NEVER happen.
Here are some photos from Tormenta Tropical at SXSW. I don’t have time to write a long post but suffice to say I was honored to play with all these great people and have such a great party. You are all legendary and I love you. Photos by El Subcomandante Quito, full album here.
ORION REPPING, JONES SMILING
MALUCA AND HER COOKIES GOING IN
POSE
OK WE’RE MOVING
MS MALU MCING WITH ME
NGUZUNGUZU INCITE MAD SKANKING
RAVERS
ME MAKING A MAD FACE TO NGUZUNGUZU, JUBILEE STANDING BY
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Alright, Spring is here & Miss Badu has blessed us with yet another extremely good album. I’ve returned to it already a few times this week — New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh). At first, I was unsatisfied (I had that same feeling when I heard Worldwide Underground, as if the project was unfinished/not completely realized) but for New Amerykah Part Two, with each listen, something magnificent is revealed –subtle, satiric undertones buried in samples, live instrumentation, and that voice – raw emotional honesty (+ sometimes turbulence.) I’ve said it before, if you think Erykah Badu’s music is only serious/militant/political/etc. — which it obviously is — you’re missing the point. She’s more playful, more humorous than she’s often credited for, and this album has some of the most amusing moments in R&B you’ll hear this year.
Normally I delete all the boring press releases I get in my email but this one caught my eye and I thought the readership here might enjoy it. Â Nice to see that the indigenous people in this country still have a sense of humor after centuries of genocide, mis-appropriation of tribal funds and general attempts to erase their nations, culture and selves.
For immediate release: Contact: Kerry Birnbach: 212-825-0028, ext. 212
April 1, 2010 kbirnbach@nyccah.org
Iroquois Leaders Assail Government Benefits for Illegal Immigrants;
Say Aid Should Be Denied to Anyone Entering U.S. in Last 25,000 Years
Tribal Leaders Blast “Broken Borders” that Allowed in Dobbs, Levy, Buchanan
Leaders of the five Native American nations that comprise the Iroquois League – comprised of the Mohawk , Oneida , Onondaga , Cayuga , and Seneca peoples – issued a joint statement today declaring anyone who entered the country without their permission after members of the League arrived (here between 25,000 and 60,000 years ago) to be an illegal alien who should be denied all government benefits as a first steps towards deportation. Under the proposed rules, approximately 98 percent of the current U.S. population could be considered illegal immigrants.
Said the statement, “Since we granted no permission for outsiders to enter the country after 23,000 B.C., anyone who did so is an illegal alien and should no longer be able to receive government welfare payments in the form of corporate agriculture subsidies, tax credits for stadium-building, mortgage interest deductions for vacation homes, or food stamp benefits. In the meantime, if they cannot speak any of the Iroquoian langauges, such as Mohawk, they should leave. People should simply accept that America always was, and always will be, an Indian Nation, and must wake up and realize the existential threat posed to our very existence by the broken borders that allowed in Lou Dobbs, Steve Levy, and Pat Buchanan. The only thing sadder to us than watching trash litter the landscape is watching people were immigrants themselves slamming other immigrants.”
Human beings originated in Olduvai Gorge (in present day Tanzania) about 2.5 million years ago. Kikuya tribal leaders from that area responded to the Iroquois in a statement today that said: “We believe that the Iroquois are illegal emigrants. Since they left our land 2.5 million years ago without our permission, they really have no right to be in North America either.”
In a related development, 10,000 angry Tea Partying Medicare recipients protested against themselves today, demanding that “government health care keep its grubby hands off our government health care.” Said one protestor, “I simply hate myself for benefiting from a program that proves that everything I stand for is flat-out wrong.”
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I have been somewhat of a perennial fan of Shackleton’s music (I think the first tune I heard from him was “Majestic Visions“) but for some reason, over the years I never got around to posting anything from him or his now defunct Skull Disco imprint (with co-conspirator Appleblim.) Shackleton released Three EPs on Perlon late last year. While the album (?) was somewhat of a departure, it was a brilliant one, with well constructed complex tunes free of unnecessary ornamentations. The music is not as depressive as some writers make it out to be. In fact, I actually find some of it very uplifting – Shackleton actually sampled the Christian prayer tune/song “He’s got the whole world in his hands” on one of the tracks!
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Check out this recent Q&A with Dave Segal of Seattle newspaper The Stranger – The Music of Imminent Apocalypse? – “A Feisty Q&A… with one of the world’s foremost purveyors of hauntological, deep-trauma, ethnodelic bass musick.”
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