Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Oto.” Their 2007 album Cendre inspired this video by Denis Mujaković.

I’ve just spent 3 weeks in Puerto Rico with a holy shit cast of characters. I haven’t been down to the island in almost five years because of the general apathy that’s become commonplace en mi islita, but the timing was right and I think Puerto Rico may finally be ready for change.

Within days of my arrival I found myself in the midst of some of the top dawgs of the reggaeton and electronic music scenes and I wanna take a few to hip ya’ll to whats gwarnin out there. Its way too much for one post so I’ve broken it up into three that will air this week.

First off, shouts out to Toy Selectah who was also in town to work on some tracks for Calle 13 and Argentine reggae artist Fidel Nadal. At Toy’s invitation, I found myself at Visitante’s home recording studio where C13 have been working on their new album.  Hand’s down, what the boys have built is the most beautifully decorated and acoustically engineered studio I’ve ever stepped foot in. Cherry oak walls engraved with logos from their various releases, persian rugs, top notch gear, blah blah blah. I got to hear what Toy was contributing and what is coming down the pipe is explosive. Visitante their producer, Ismael their drummer and Mark, the dread in the video who doubles his duty as guitarist in the video and the carpenter who’s been building the studio, are all hella cool peoples and you should definitely peep this new single Calma Pueblo which has been riling up the religious censors.

Yo soy el que quiere que coman, aunque no tengan hambre – Residente-Calle 13

I’m the one that wants you all to eat, even if you’re not hungry

I feel like with that line alone Rene’, better known as Residente, summarizes one of the most disenfranchising aspects about life on the island and the reason that his band is so popular. It’s what my friend Yari calls The 100×35 Mentality. There is a serious apathy plaguing the island when it comes to embracing change. New is completely disregarded until its cool and there are very few artists (or members of the general populace) that break norms there. C13 has consistently pushed the envelope. As do we..

Toy Selectah and I played together to a capacity crowd of 550 party people, on a monday night. The resident DJ has been building the night for 4 years and leans toward hip-hop and dancehall. I played about 45 minutes of dancehall cumbia mashups, crunk cumbia refixes, panamanian plena and hip hop in spanish. I’m happy to announce that it was received fairly well received by most of the audience, the bartenders and even by the resident DJ (*you’ll never kill a top 40 hip hop crowd with all new underground sounds, but do dare yourself to try).

The part of the audience that comes to dance liked it more than the guys that were there to drink and pose off but I’d definitely say it was the first time for almost anyone in the room to hear this stuff and something went right because I had alot of hits on FB the following day as a result.

At the end of the night, we had an honest conversation with the DJ about having built something that could change island. He could be the one to introduce a world of new latin sounds to the island, to which he replied… that’s really not my thing. And therein lies the problem on the island. They need more leaders like c13 to set trends and propel them forward. The people are getting tired of la misma mierda. The strike at the University of Puerto Rico en April was a perfect example that the people want things to be done differently. They are willing to stand up for change.  What they need is a movement, and in my next post I’ll tell you more about how I’m getting that ball rolling.

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Baths – Lovely Bloodflow
Cerulean (anticon., 2010)

The latest release from anticon., debut album by Baths is in heavy rotation this week. It has some extremely lovely moments – worth checking – also worth spending money on, if you all are still into that.

THE PURE CAPITAL DANCE PARTY

WITH DJS
N-RON AND REAGANOMICS

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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& from Reaganomics SoundCloud page:

E boi by dj reaganomics

20 meninas remix by dj reaganomics

fuego puro by dj reaganomics

While delving a bit deeper into Kayhan Kalhor‘s repertoir following a Mudd Up tip-off, I came across bağlama player Erdal Erzincan, who he collaborated with on the album The Wind. I can’t really tell you too much about him, except that the following video is amazing and that you should watch it in its entirety.

It’s mostly a showcase for his jaw-dropping technical prowess (the guy actually makes the tapping technique popularized by Eddie Van Halen sound cool), which goes beyond the virtuoso habit of playing a ton of notes and actually tells a story. There are a ton of subtle structural and sonic details (rhythmic shifts, open spaces, buzzing strings) that keep me coming back to this clip, which now that I think about it, has been pretty time-consuming…Anyway! Kalhor has this to say about him (via):

“I appreciated at once that Erdal is a very good musician, a very serious baglama player – but he is still, normally, working within the demands of Turkish music today,” says Kalhor. “Ihis means songs and maybe a minute of playing in free time, and then another song. In Turkey, if you have a CD the market says you need 14 tracks and you have to have singing. I didn’t ask Erdal to sing. I explained to him, ‘I’m looking for something that departs from nothing and then goes into developing material and then goes into something else really improvised. Maybe we’ll go for a climax in terms of melody and energy and keep it there…And I’m looking at this for a form for maybe an hour of music.’ And he said, ‘I haven’t done that before, but I would like to do this.’ And he showed that he was indeed very much able to do this, and many of the things he played surprised and delighted me. What I’m trying to do in these kind of projects – whether with Shujaat or, now, with Erdal is to learn the music and experience the world through their eyes. And I am not trying to change what they do so much as offer them another vision of it. Musical Turkey, for instance, is very much based on composed songs. Improvisation of the kind that Erdal and I undertake, developing material, is something that has been forgotten…”

And here’s a video of them playing a beautiful piece together live, with Ulas Ozdemir and Ali Akbar Moradi:

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):

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Cults – Go Outside

I really want to go out / I really want to go outside and stop to see your day
You really want to hole up / You really want to stay inside and sleep the light away
But I know what’s good / Exactly ’cause I have been there before…

Enjoy the sun… today!

Cults 7″ will be released 23 December 2012, but you can download it now here.
Props Pitchfork

Kenyan superhero/first viral internet sensation from Kenya – with a massive following on Facebook and Twitter

“After platinum, albums go Makmende”

“They once made a makmende toilet paper, but there was a problem: It wouldn’t take shit from anybody!!!”

“Makmende hangs his clothes on a safaricom line and when they dry he stores them in a flashdisk!”

(via …My heart’s in Accra)

(props to Chief Boima for the heads up)

[cross-posted to Mudd Up!.]

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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DJ /rupture & Andy Moor – The Sheep Look Up (this is from our album of live recordings, Patches)

“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!):

dubstep choir, London collective, AN ALTERNATIVE TO BURLESQUE, SHIT TV AND BAD BOY BAND WATCHING – Gaggle “I Hear Flies” from their forthcoming Life Stand.

The world will be tested by Texas Instruments and English diction…

One of my favorite bands released an album sometime in mid-2009, and I’m only coming across it/listening to it now. They have been gone for so long, and their buzz so quiet now. Nevertheless, it’s great to see Tjinder Singh & Co. return with more brilliant tunes. When I Was Born for the 7th Time is their most cited album and it’s charm is undeniable, a true classic— but (in high school and college) I found myself listening to Handcream for a Generation and Woman’s Gotta Have It more than anything else. 

Lucky Dragons’ performances overturn conventions of electronic music with generosity and grace. On Monday October 12, they will join DJ Rupture to share sounds and discuss the relationship between social and sonic experimentation, Los Angeles, erasing the barriers between performer and audience, and more.

(Also, something I’m aware of but completely forgot to mention:) Lucky Dragons opened for Thom Yorke’s new band debut (both nights) in L.A. last week!! You know, that new band that also features Flea of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Thanks to Big Brother Rupture for the reminder!

…and on Tuesday LUCKY DRAGONS will perform @ Industry City out in Sunset Park, BROOKLYN.

Subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast if you want downloadable versions: , Mudd Up! RSS. Listen, get involved, throw in comments, questions. Again, Mondays @ 7PM.

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

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jj – Ecstasy

“Lollipop” has been sampled by David Banner, covered by rock and country musicians, and now versioned by a mysterious Swedish pop outfit, with a radical lyrical shift, a stretch, an expansion – bottles are replaced with pills, and shawty is getting high on her own supply.  The same aesthetics, but more drugs and less sex. Either way, Wayne, Jonsin, and Static will be/would be proud.

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Jahdan Blakkamoore featuring 77Klash – Best I Ever Had Freestyle

Jahdan’s album Buzzrock Warrior drops in September. In the meantime, we’re setting the Summer on fire with Jahdan’s Bazooka Shot mixtape, which is coming sooner than you think.  The night this freestyle was done, I think the guys (Jahdan, Klash, and Matt) recorded five other tracks, and this was the last one.  It was pure fun.  I gave the instrumental to Matt, he edited/re-shaped it in less than two minutes, Jahdan & Klash went in.  Jahdan was alredy familiar with the hit song by Toronto’s own Drake, and was singing it the minute he heard the beat. I had never heard this song by choice.  Klash wasn’t familiar with it, so he start singing Radiohead’s “Climbing the Walls,” and I was like yeah! Anyway, the vibe at Casa de la Jones (Geko Jones’ home-studio, where it all goes down) was great, and everyone was having a good time.  We’re doing it again next week, putting the finishing touches on the Bazooka Shot tape.  Jahdan and Klash are going in again, and they might be remixing, freestyling, covering whatever tune they feel like again.

New York Tropical is exactly a week from today! Check the flyer – we are designers, you already know. To get ready, I have put a podcast together containing mostly women voices over beats and sounds composed by men. I wasn’t specifically looking for female voices on male constructed instrumentals, it just happened most of the tracks I gather are refixes and songs with women voices recorded by gentlemen producers (I was tempted to call this Women… In The Vicinity Of Men. Thankfully, I settled on Mousso.  We need some more gyals in here… too many man, too many, many man!

 

 Lamin Fofana - Mousso | duttyartz.com podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

I was going to post the tracklist a little later but we all know how Björk feels about writers not giving credits, so here it is -

Umalali – Uruwei (The King)
Clouds featuring Tiiu – Protecting Hands Part 2
Oumou Sangaré – Dugu Kamelemba
Björk – Nattura (Switch Refix)
Geiom featuring Marita – Reminissin’ (Shackleton Refix)
Amadou & Mariam – Sabali
Taken By Trees – The Sweetness of Air France
Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move
Various Production – Deadman (Milanese Remix)
Filastine featuring Jessika Skeletalia Kenney – Fitnah
Love Joys – Stranger
Tanya Stephens – It’s A Pity
TOTAL FREEDOM and NGUZUNGUZU – Total Ciara (Like You Refix)
Matt Shadetek – (Tanya Stephens) Can’t Breathe Remix
Nicki Minaj – Beam Me Up Scotty
Uproot Andy – El Botellón Remix