Joro-Boro's Very Occasional Bloggings

BBB for the People

2011-11-21T14:19:00.001-05:00

BBB (Balkan Beat Box) just released a new video that hints at things to come on the next album. The sound is still theirs yet it is noticeably updated for today's bass-loving audiences.

Curiously the video was made in late winter, partly coinciding with the Arab Spring and anticipating the Occupy Wall Street events of the fall.
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Cargo Cult Science Mix

2011-09-28T01:24:00.000-04:00

Tracklist:
Shukar Collective - Pam Paraï
Untold - Stereo Freeze
Slavoj Zizek - The Reality of the Virtual (documentary/lecture film)
DJ Zhao - Cheikha Rimitti / Mohammed Ay Sidi vs Roska (Squark Edit)
Ibrahim Kashoush (ابرهيم قاشوش) le chanteur de la révolution (YouTube video of protests in Syria)
Soulico - DarboukaTron
Dixone - 3ballstep
Joro-Boro - Crunky Cumbia Beat vs Dizzee Rascal - Jus a Rascal (Acapella)
DJ Laura Howett - Milli Takes a Drive
Caravan Palace - Jolie Coquine (Ruff Hauser Remix)
Watcha Clan - Gypsy Dust (Joro-Boro's Footwork Rework Remix)
Son Of Kick - Guacha Rekix
Poirier, Burro Banton - Ghetto Living (Chong X Remix)
Sebastian - H.A.L. (Munchi Bootleg Kuduro-More remix)
Nacobeta & Puto Portuguäs - Mama Kudi
DJ Massacre - Ku Lagode' 1
Bumps feat. MC Gi - Berimbau (Brilla Remix)
Mijangos feat. Sexy Love - Habla bien de Aca (DJ Münki Swagg Remix)
Cloud-D - Kick'n Yelawolf Refix
Balkan Beat Box and Eugene Hutz - Tromba De Zingari
Helmut Lotti and The Russian Dubcore Band - A Wan Bushi
Joro-Boro - Goran Bregovic vs Boreta
Kid Kishore - Dhola Dhola
Alayev Family - Boe Boe (Joro-Boro's Family Banger Remix)
Slavoj Zizek reprise
Timothy Wisdom - Represent The Real
Sazon Booya - Bam Bam
Shazalakazoo feat. MC Maiquinho - Tô Com Saudade (Neki Stranac Moombahton Mix)
Guapo Feo - Chant Down Bombay
Feral aka MC Kinky - Tweet Retweet (Jon Kwest Hard-Hall Remix)
Feral aka MC Kinky - Tweet Retweet (Dutty Mix)
Keak Da Sneak - Who Started This
UBK - Yemen Bros. (Firewater)
Missy Elliot - The Rain (Douster Tropical Remix)
Rolling Stones - Get What You Want (Blunt Instrument Mix)

8bit Balkan

2011-09-14T13:54:00.001-04:00

The post-national music community still continues to impress me every once in awhile and this is one such occasion: two friends of mine have joined forces to present a fantastic project out of leftfield. My brother by way of Romania/Japan Stevhen Koji Iancu aka Dolomites (whom I discovered when working on the Mehanata compilation years ago) has been working on his own version of West Coast Bass based on his melancholic accordion sound filtered through 8-bit video game glitch aesthetic and has created a unique musical niche in the Bay Area. Now he is expanding the niche with the help of another friend DJ Mohak from Berlin (read her fantastic blog here) and releasing an EP of his new sound on her recently founded label If The Kids Records:

Dolomites - 8bit Balkan

Available in digital stores worldwide on September 19th 2011.

Ali Mrabet/ Aly Mrabet/ Aly M'Rabet

2011-04-09T23:39:00.003-04:00

It is inspiring to find a fresh and unique voice in the post-national music DJ community and it makes me optimistic when that voice comes from Tunisia. The soon-to-be-24 year old Ali is primarily a professional dancer, secondarily a professional actor and only doing music mixes as a hobby on the side. He publishes tracklists with his sources which makes his cultural range (Balkan Beat Box, Björk, Saint-Saëns, Snap!, and Yasser Arafat speeches) even more impressive.

Last time I heard something this fantastic was years ago when I discovered Maga Bo and Filastine.

Tsunami Project by Aly Mrabet - علي مرابط

Fatwa Mix - فتوة by Aly M'Rabet

لوحات من التراث by Aly M'Rabet

TSUNAMIX by Aly M'Rabet

The Return of the Virtual?

2011-01-19T12:30:00.003-05:00

I've been reading 'Sonic Warfare' by Steve Goodman (aka Kode9 for the bassheads out there) - a powerful critique of, among other things, the concept of the virtual approached from rhtythmanalysis point of view. Instead of a jargon-heavy blog post elaborating on this, I thought a Youtube video might do the job much better - an example of the recent 'return' to (or discovery of?) Native American and/or Prehispanic sounds and rhythms in the context of global bass (this one replete with a virtual reality video):

'Sonic Warfare' was also extended as a blog.

2010: “The ©loud Sucks” vs “Only Toys Buy Their Paint”

2010-12-27T15:11:00.011-05:00

Looking back at the past year it started with Google’s musicblogocide, continued with Facebook’s series of privacy blunders, appeared to come to a close with Wikileaks/Anonymous publicly clashing with governments and corporations, and yet managed to surprise us with Soundcloud being forced to take position on Copyright.
I haven’t had to deal with Copyright-related rejections since a few years back when my meta-capitalist charlatan scheme to copyright the Copyright symbol was promptly denied. But in an ironic embodiment of the spirit of Christmas my attempt to share the last MoGlo radio show of the year through Soundcloud was blocked. What I can broadcast freely in the analog world of airwaves via radio companies on two coasts (New York’s WNYE and Seattle’s KEXP) cannot be gifted digitally anymore through my favorite cloud platform.

The first immediate result of the Soundcloud Christmas special will be that *if* DJs continue to use it for posting mixes, they will not include tracklists in the description - I know I won't. A huge part of the appeal of Soundcloud was the fact that the mixes gave exposure to great unsigned music (hosted on Soundcloud again). The track that triggered the block on my latest MoGlo mix was 'Villa Donde' by King Coya from Zizek (the infringement claim was from Nacional Records) - apparently in 2010 digital cumbia completed the Copyright circle (while ZZK retweeted my Dec 16 promo of the new Chancha Via Circuito album). Digital cumbia is a great example for this changing dynamic, since it is a genre that gained its international momentum primarily because of the existing ecology of music creation, sharing and distribution (in the form of blogs, YouTube videos and of course Soundcloud).

The more interesting result though was that it triggered a blogo-storming of speculation on the possible alternatives:

First was Wayne’s prescient post (from December 13!) which traces a range of possibilities and partly anticipates a Web 3.0 retreating from “the clouds” back to servers and archives (and Rozele brilliantly anchors the discussion with the Situationist poster seen in the beginning of this post).

Then Timeblind's “Only Toys Buy Their Paint” (a quote from 'Bomb the System') came somewhat in conflict with Ripley’s appeal to proactive mobilization with focus on the infrastructure of the digital community (with one of the commenters memorably concluding “the ©loud Sucks”).

So here's to the next most likely unexpected development of the theme in 2011!

You can download the blocked MoGlo show here and get the tracklist here.

PS. And in yet another twist of demarcation of Wikileaks frontlines, Soundcloud apparently deleted Assange’s dubstep mixes

The Fall Mix

2010-10-04T14:58:00.001-04:00

We Are All Immigrants

2010-04-26T15:19:00.004-04:00

Just in time for the Arizona events, M.I.A. releases a new single: Born Free. The sound is decidedly more electro-punk than anything she has done before (think Suicide, ATR, Kap Bambino), but the true bomb is the video directed by Romain Garvas of the Kourtrajmé collective. Romain Garvas is previously responsible for the Justice Stress video controversy, which in France touched on some uncomfortable memories of the banlieue riots of 2005 that started in Clichy-sous-Bois (triggered coincidentally by the death of two teenagers in a police chase to avoid identity check). He continues his tactical mix of violence, resistance and the global urban condition but detonates it into a universal slogan:

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Mutamassik is back (finally)!

2010-04-18T02:52:00.004-04:00

After five years of silence Mutamassik is finally back with a new album:
That Which Death Cannot Destroy

What earlier was Sa'aidi Hardcore & Baladi Breakbeats, has now become

"AfrabiQ BaroQ.+Martial MelanQ.+DarQ PunQ Qubti FunQ.+

Musically motivated by funk & apocalypse - before, during and after which is the Soul.

always the SA'AIDI MARTIAL SOUND (blood unable to be washed out with high-tech detergents), MELANQOL BAROQUE parq dunq ARABIFIED SWAMP MUSIC darq punq QUBTI BEATS.
a.k.a. pioneer of Sa'aidi Hardcore & Baladi Breakbeats: Egyptian & Afro-Asiatic Roots mixed with the head-nod of hip-hop & the bass and syncopation of hardstep. RELENTLESS RHYTHMS FROM THE PAN-AFROARABIC IMMIGRANT SOUND SOURCES. (afro-oriental punk roots in a rich broth of hip hop; garnished with junglistic bass and syncopation: first-generation punk jaw electronic hip hop roots raggamuffin pan-african derivatives) in addition to transcendental sonic experiments."

The album is a free download from her website.

Also buy a digital copy of her previous album Definitive Works.

LISTEN!

Noise Makers In Large Numbers

2010-03-12T00:50:00.001-05:00

The Answer (Die Antwoord)

2010-02-04T13:20:00.004-05:00

Die Antwoord is South Africa's answer to:
M.I.A.?
Global Ghettotech?
Eurodance/electro?
redneck, white trash, chav, zef?
Coloured culture?
Gummo?

Whatever the answer, whatever the question ("whatever" being one of their signature catchphrases), seems like they are "taking over the interweb": Vice interviewed them, BoingBoing did two features on them in three days, and the blogoshpere is buzzing, calling them everything from fake to (my personal favorite) identity busters. Lengthy discussions aside, they seem to be manifesting a local scene involving Afrikaner rapper Jack Sparow, DJ Leon Botha - an artist with progeria (featured in the secret chamber), and instigators of "the best party with the worst music" - The Wedding DJ's. Speaking of whom, here are The Wedding DJ's riding a taxi with a swearing and mooning Yo-Landi Vi$$er and Ninja:

Their album $0$ is coming out this month on Magnetron and you can stream it on their Facebook page or here.

Finally, you can download a leaked promo lo-res album torrent here.

Konbit Pou Ayiti / Fundraiser for Haiti Tonight

2010-01-27T12:57:00.003-05:00

MEHANATA
113 Ludlow ( F train- Delancey/Essex stop)

Featuring BAD BUKA live @ 11PM!!!

With Performances by:

Frank London
MAGGES w/ Belly Dancer
Elina graypel
Cookie & The Madman
Escarioka
Alexander
IVAN LENIN

DJ's Katapulka & Uproot Andy on hand for musical ambience...and the Images on sale, generously donated by some great NY Photogs-including one very special surprise!

ALL PROCEEDS WILL GO TO:

· Medicines Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders

· International Rescue Committee (IRC)

· Habitat for Humanity

· Partners In Health

$10 at the door

$5 drinks ALL NIGHT!

EVERYONE attending will receive a FREE Mehanata's Double CD($20 value)

Pyongyang Hardcore Resistance

2010-01-08T16:21:00.003-05:00

Pyongyang Hardcore Resistance - Corea [Resistance 2] with MV

H.J.Freaks | MySpace Music Videos

An inspiring example of etnoteck flow: a digital hardcore duo in Pyongyang processing loops from North Korean propaganda music and South Korean pop as resistant feedback in systems of monoculture. The product was smuggled through China and was released on Dramacore - a netlabel.

In their own words:
Pyongyang Hardcore Resistance is an extreme electronic music duo. I, the founder of the duo have lived most of my life outside North-Korea, but I wanted to move back to my family in Pyongyang. I love hardcore music very much, but there is no room for this kind stuff here so it's best to keep it a secret. The other half of the duo has spent his whole life in North-Korea and got in touch with hardcore through me. We decided to start making Korean hardcore anarchy, bassdrum of truth! We use Fruityloops and get influence from smuggled South-Korean and foreign music and movies and raping North-Korean nationalist music. Hardcore gives us lots of strength and courage to fight the system from underground and keep on living despite the shit we have to see and experience. We are very grateful that you are spreading our music in Internet! We wish for a peaceful reunion of both Koreas and for G.W. Bush to mind his own fucking business!

Download their entire album (5 tracks totaling less than 14 mins) here

Decompressia Tremens Mix

2009-11-02T20:37:00.002-05:00

My favorite local dirty sounds from the West Coast, the Deep South, and choice places around the globe - much of it is older material but classic

Free Chalga/4alga downloads

2009-10-10T19:58:00.003-04:00

Finally, after promising for so long, I managed to find a link to a decent collection of chalga - in this case mostly in the kyuchek (kuchek/Q-chek/cocek, etc.) rhythm (some insane instrumentals there!) Just click on any of the search results and fill in the captcha code to enable preview/download. Right-click and save whatever you like, then on the bottom of the page follow the links to any other tracks compiled in the "Super luti kucheci cd2" category.

And here is an example of the cocek rhythm:

Dama do Bling vs ZsaZsa Land

2009-09-21T19:43:00.003-04:00

Mozambique's queen femcee with a video game video that seems to come straight from ZsaZsa Land:

Three and a Half Minutes of Etnoteck

2009-08-14T00:23:00.003-04:00

I've been using this as a demo mix since April (mixed it up in Miami), so it's high time I released it for general consumption. It's not your usual hour-long transnational cocktail (tune in to the radio mixes for that), so think of it instead as a hyper-concentrated shot for generation ADD.

Distilled Mix by joro-boro

iPods, Iambs and Art without a Frame

2009-08-10T22:08:00.003-04:00

A situation for a violinist, a Stradivarius, a metro station, a camera, and 1,097 pedestrians - the Washington Post article (which won the Pulitzer Prize) maps out something beyond journalism and art and science and even language. It points to a different plane of storytelling magic. Instead of narrating along an arborescent plot line, some storytellers create indexes: setting up lists of things from which one pulls out and weaves a story. Favorite examples: Wittgenstein's Philosphical Investigations, J.G.Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition (as well as obviously The Index), and most of Matthew Barney's work. But let's not hastily limit this magic to the hands of (post-)modern white men. The first book to turn me onto this style of writing/thinking/perceiving was Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book.

The reason I bring this up here (and the reason I insist on calling it magic) is that it avoids the causal bias of after-the-fact explanations. In trying to make sense of the events in our life, we recognize patterns and project them backward onto the past: we call this history. However, these patterns are almost always presented to us as causal relationships (the assassination of the Archduke "set in motion a series of events that shaped the world we live in today"). Still, the world is not a direct input > output system and nobody at the time of the assassination (which was just one of many that year) predicted that it would lead to WWI (a central example in Nissim Taleb's brilliant and suddenly very current Black Swan). Patterns can have more than one explanation/application: other than causality they can point to a correlation, can be presented simply as fascinating data or used to make a dress. A pattern is something the observer may notice or create. It is magic inasmuch as it permits us to look and act in a reality unrestrained by causality. And it is magic if it makes us stop and take notice of what is outside the traffic flow.

Neuroscience and the Pentatonic Scale

2009-08-10T10:53:00.001-04:00

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Daito Manabe: Body/Sound Interfaces

2009-07-24T01:22:00.004-04:00

Sound ==> Muscle (Traditional Choreography):

Muscle ==> Sound (Traditional Production):

Roma Interiors by Carlo Gianferro

2009-07-15T14:07:00.004-04:00

Carlo Gianferro won the World Press Photo 1st prize ('Stories' category) for his work on Moldovan and Romanian Roma homes.

The World Press:
The homes of affluent Roma in Romania and Moldova are a visible demonstration of material wealth as well as family prestige and power. Little is allowed to disturb pristine interiors. Kitchens serve primarily for display, as women prefer to cook outdoors in communal cauldrons alongside friends and neighbors. Well-to-do Roma parents start to build and decorate homes and apartments for their offspring long in advance of anticipated marriages.

The High Line

2009-06-11T02:10:00.002-04:00

After ten years the High Line of New York finally opens to the public:

2009-06-01T09:31:00.003-04:00

Discovered this somehow:

and couldn't help but admire the trickster use of a stealth bomber / fighter jets Google image inside the Obama logo. I used the same image here, but who'd have thought that the propaganda critique for W would apply for the big O?

Chalga, Pig Flu and Wall Street

2009-05-04T11:58:00.004-04:00

Just participated in an exhibition in Sofia on the role of chalga. I wrote an essay placing chalga in the context of nu-whirled music and globalist hipsterism: a network (or even networks?) of cultural flows and exchanges seems to have emerged as a specter double of the economy of monoculture (organized along a center-periphery logic of power) and chalga has come to inhabit a unique niche in that ecology. Disdained by the Euro-Balkan DJs, it has achieved some underground popularity in the US, falling between the cracks of a racialized bass culture (even though sometimes compared to funk carioca) and the Balkanist authenticity invoked by brass music.

[Then over the weekend finally completed the XAYC project in Syracuse, NY and met Dusan Bjelic - his brilliant and often funny analysis of Julia Kristeva's internalization of the power system played a major role in the final definition of the project. But more on that hopefully later.]

Culture, it seems, has developed its own style of globalization. The copyright paranoia of the RIAA, though somewhat akin to the financial meltdown and the current flu pandemic, has never reached the intensity of a "crisis". While it has affected the agents of distribution of music and is gradually condensing the experience of live music in the hands the Live Nation behemoth, it has also permitted the development and spread of hybrid genres along completely different modes of organization than the monoculture power structure. So in light of Mike Davis' fantastic essay (via rupture's mudd up!) on the link between global capitalism and pandemics, how useful would it be to interpret chalga (or cumbia or kuduro or tomorrow's "x") as a viral mutation?

A new mini-doc by Maga Bo: interview with Ghislain Poirier

2009-04-13T15:01:00.003-04:00

Two amazing global producers meet on both sides of the lens. Of course it all takes place between New York and Berlin:

7:20 - the ghost of authenticity creeps in and Ghislain exorcises it with the powers of "collaboration" and "misunderstanding"[:)]... Yes, I also believe in error as the engine of progress/evolution (history is but a string of black swans), but even more fascinating to me right now is his idea of collaboration as bracketing of the social.

I am currently working on a project dealing exactly with authenticity and collaboration - be in Syracuse, NY the first weekend of May. More information coming up soon.

Kolbasti

2009-01-14T12:39:00.002-05:00

Recently I accidentally discovered this:

It is kolbasti and according to my Turkish friends it is a style of music and dance originating from the Laz communities in the Trabzon area. I am desperate to learn more, so please do post a comment if you have any information about it. Musically it fits with other keyboard-fetishizing styles in the region (from the slower Albanian tallava to the Syrian take on dabke, as popularized by Omar Souleyman's "Leh Jani").

The dance seems to omnivorously appropriate global elements from the C-Walk to Chechen sufi stomping.

9/8 Timbaland

2009-01-08T04:36:00.006-05:00

Just got the remixed album of chalga veteran Kali - most of it is genereic pop-folk, but a few tracks really stand out. Among them was this gem which finally gives me some hope for the future of Bulgarian music (and yes, you do need to see the gratuitous slideshow):

The last few years saw the rise and fall of a few global south ghettotech styles (Brazilian favela funk, kwaito from South Africa, and Angolan kuduro). Still, despite the proliferation of cosmopolitan producers, traffickers and listeners, the 4/4 supremacy remains mostly unchallenged.

So here's to a happy 2009 full of more odd rhythms!

20 of 20o8 - Mix and Playlist

2008-12-30T18:32:00.007-05:00

Part 1:
Bate Sasho feat. Tina: Toplofikacia
Ghislain Poirier feat. Face-T: No More Blood
Maga Bo feat. Tebo: Nqayi
Omega y Su Mambo Violento: Si No Me Amas
Goran Bregovic: Soferska
Fagget Fairys: Samo Ti (AC Slater Remix)
Filastine & Maga Bo feat. Mr Catra: Os Asassinos
Kap Bambino: Krak Hunter
Buraka Som Sistema: Kalemba Wegue Wegue (Reso's Aguardente Eletro Mash Mix)
DJ Mujava: Township Funk

Part 2:
Kiril feat. MC Wasp & Rucl: Jungle Shadow
Dub Gabriel feat. Dr. Israel & Maga Bo: Battle of the Righteous Man
Chrif Weld Saber: Zide s'kini (Remix)
Kocani Orkestar: Sahara Dreams
Balkan Beat Box: Joro Boro (BBB Remix)
DJ Cutson: Dancehall Killa
Al Haca feat. Warrior Queen: Fuck It
Stefano Miele Remix: Zion Train
Chancha Via Circuito with Kumbha Kethu: Bosques Via Temperley
Sub Swara: Belgrade Riddim

20 of 20o8

2008-12-26T03:01:00.022-05:00

The following are the 20 tracks that kept finding their way back between my headphones during 2008. This list is intended as basic information about the "etnotech must-hears" of this last year and is in no way a hit collection. There is no order of rating not because I don't want to offend any friends included, but because I find the concept of a "#1 track" ridiculous at best (in the current state of the media markets) and dangerous at worst. So the tracks are arranged just sequentially in the order that makes sense to me. I'll post an actual "20 of 20o8 Mix" soon to fit the playlist (the original will be broadcast tonight at midnight on MoGlo on Radio New York WNYE 91.5).

The opening track is rap-chalga "Toplofikacia" by Bate Sasho. I just discovered the track about a week ago and can't get over how smartly it subverts Shantel's "Tziganizatsia" by repositioning its Orientalist cliches of the Roma, the Balkans and Eastern Europe back in Bulgaria. The theme of the song is heating - as in central heating and the lack thereof - and to follow the variations of the central metaphor (sex heat, heated "rakiya", hot soundsystems, paris hilton's "that's hot", down to an old communist commedy which hinted that a swiss-cheesed condo's lack of heating infrastructure is not unlike the general situation in the country) is to follow an irresistibly street-smart trickster, who rules the region somewhere between heating (see above) and civilization ("civilizacia").

Next up is "No Blood" by Ghislain Poirier featuring Face-T. The Montreal-based minister of cosmopolitan bass released several interesting mixes this year and the fantastic "No Ground Under" album from which comes this track.

Along similarly cosmopolitan and collaborative lines was Maga Bo's album "Archipelagoes", released on DJ /rupture's Soot Records. While primarily based in Brazil, Maga Bo traveled across Africa where he did most of the recording.

Omega (and his band called Mambo Violento) released the album "El Fuerte" this year and dominated clubs and airwaves with "Tu No Ta Pa Mi" - the crowning hit of Dominican Mambo (also known as Merengue de la calle). I personally prefer "Si No Me Amas".

"Prawy Do Lewego" (Kayah & Goran Bregovic) was an undying classic at Mehanata (Bulgarian Bar) during my residency there. It was even sampled on Tomer Yosef's (yes, from Balkan Beat Box) "Little Man". Now it is released as a live version on Goran Bregovic's new album Alkohol, this time around retitled "Soferska" (or Driver's Song)...

...Crashing directly into two Muslim lesbians from the Balkans, currently living in Copenhagen. They are called Fagget Fairys and here you can watch half of them smoking and drinking. Track is "Samo Ti" remixed by AC Slater.

After the crash, we're making a small detour back to Maga Bo who finally released his project with Filastine as Sonar Calibrado. Track "Os Asassinos" features Mr. Catra.

"Krak Hunter" is a B-side of a single released by Kap Bambino this year. Their electro-punk debut insanity "Zero Life, Night Vision" was released last year and you should buy it immediately (CD sold out long time ago).

Buraka Som Sistema rode the wave of kuduro's popularity all the way from Angola to Portugal (and eventually to New York). Their catchy "Yah!" was destined to be this year's M.I.A., I find "Kalemba (Wegue Wegue)" somehow more interesting (especially Reso's Aguardente Electro Mash Mix).

DJ Mujava's kwaito psyc-anthem "Township Funk" created such an impression on the blogosphere that it landed him a deal with Warp Records.

I got Kiril's "Jungle Shadow" from the "Balkanbeats 3" compilation produced by Robert Soko. Can't recommend his series enough as introduction to the Balkan clubby sound.

Dub Gabriel came back from Berlin to NYC last year and then emigrated to San Francisco. There he released "Anarchy & Alchemy" his strongest album to date in my opinion. It's hard to choose a favorite track (Michael Stipe covers Suicide!), but after repeated listening "Battle of the Righteous Man" with Dr. Israel and Maga Bo (yes, again!) seems to be it.

Next up is Moroccan Chrif Weld Saber. Got the album "Gasba Fever" from emusic, so I have no information on the artist. Track is remix of "Zide s'kini".

Kocani Orkestar finally broke their six-year studio silence and released "The Ravished Bride" - not their strongest album ever. Still, "Sahara Dreams is a fantastic track.

Balkan Beat Box released a first this year - an album of remixes. Unfortunately it is not available in North America, so you'll have to pay import price just for that baile funk remix of "Joro-Boro" (long story).

Parisian resident DJ Cutson made a blowout riddim called "Dancehall Killa". The album features heavyweights Lord Kossity and Neg Marrons.

Unquestionably, Myspace has changed the way people find music and I am no exception. That's how a week ago I discovered Warrior Queen's collaboration with Al Haca on the Austrian Crunchtime Allstars project. It is called "Fuck It" and it is massive! Big big ups to producers CEE & Stereotyp for sending it to me on such a short notice.

And speaking of producers, Stefano Miele is Italy's current best IMHO (as my niece likes to write). He's remixed everything from tarantella to jungle (and not always separately), but I'm hooked on his take on Zion Train.

Cumbia cameos were everywhere this year and the biggest promoters (with some help from DJ /rupture) of the genre's export hailed not from Colombia or Mexico but from...Argentina. The Zizek Collective came to the U.S. to flex their digital muscles at the Latin American Music Conference. Chancha Via Circuito represents with "Bosques Via Temperley" with Kumbha Kethu.

Finally revisiting the "Balkan Fever" (huge in Europe, but still more or less latent in the US), Sub Swara's "Belgrade Riddim" features March 4th Marching Band.

This wraps up the year and the Top 20. Feel free to ask me for more info on any of the tracks included.

Here's to a Happy 2009!

Fall Is Spring: 5 Rituals, 4 Shoes, and 8 Bits

2008-12-07T22:36:00.005-05:00

Somewhere on the intersection of 84th street and Central Park:
While Jill and I are performing ZsaZsarian rituals (caution tape, blindfold, boombox), a few yards from us Joshua Fried set up his own Radio Wonderland ritual camp (steering wheel, shoes, boombox):

And in Brooklyn, the Blip Festival.

Fall in the city is a spring of wonder.

Booty Balkan & Gypsy-Tech

2008-03-30T21:01:00.002-04:00

Just came back from Troy for a killer edition of Troy Night Out Afterparty. Got to spin with Pandemic Pete from Pittsburgh who, at 5:30 am, turned me onto this freakout session:

Schobbejak - Booty Balkan & Gypsy-Tech

According to the label's blog, it is the bastard child of Gorgl Nietietsch Medior (from Amsterdam), Typsy Gypsy and Dj MNO. And a loud bastard child it is, seemingly screaming for over an hour:

"In your face, Balkan purists!"

Visual Propaganda, Visual Pollution 2

2008-02-23T00:17:00.003-05:00

Sao Paolo is no longer just the first city to reclaim its public space as public, it has now become an icon for a very private interest:

Saw this on firebrand: a TV channel / website which erases the difference between streaming and broadcasting content (its shows on air are just segments of the content presented by a WJ (web-jockey?!); and speaking of content, theirs is entirely limited to commercials (selected from around the world), which eliminates the need for commercial breaks during their cable show. The city that banned advertising becomes a banner in a commercial on a commercial-free channel dedicated to commercials.

Keywords: urban planning sci-fi, metanational media, endocolonizing mindf*ck

2008-01-21T02:16:00.000-05:00

How many things come to mind when Utah is mentioned? Mormons? Salt flats? Utah Saints?

The world Premiere of DISCO DISORIENTAL:

Tracklist here

It rained in New York on December 23rd.

2007-12-25T18:27:00.000-05:00

It rained in New York on December 23rd.

A cargo trailer truck loaded above legal capacity with a shipment of stolen headphone noise cancellation plugins, pirate DVD players, circuitbent cableboxes and hacked cellphones propelled itself over desire, greed and gravity, gained terminal speed at which fraction could no longer be maintained with the laws of market capitalism, and skidded off the Long Island Expressway into the Brooklyn Navy Yard industrial park. Not a single person witnessed the event.

Fallout from the accident contaminated the East River and spread undetected across news filters, satellite signals and search results, exponentially altering billions of psychoacoustic structures.

The neurotransmitter mutation had two major effects:

- individuals have reported propaganda alexia - difficulties in "making sense" of some forms of information (newsfeeds, economic forecasts, history-after-the-fact explanations) while exhibiting a noticeably emotional/aesthetic response to others (e.g. finding statistical data and noise in the environment "sublime" or "playing" language as a game of metaphors exclusive of communicative function);
- consumer pattern recognition was suppressed; this has been linked by some to the subsequent global Christmas Credit Card Crash but it's dubious whether the two events were causally linked or even correlated.

On December 25th, two days after the 18-wheeler crash, music was heard everywhere, the hunters/gatherers returned to the megalopolis and the desert spanned the world.

What did the crashes sound like?

The Siege of Babylon Directory

2007-11-03T02:27:00.001-04:00

The playlist for the November 1st edition of Radio Nomadi Mundial:

Happy Dia de los muertos!

2007-10-31T23:28:00.000-04:00

Reverse Graffiti In A Tunnel

2007-10-13T23:16:00.000-04:00

Playlist for Radio Nomadi Mundial, October 11th, 2007

2007-10-13T02:35:00.001-04:00

2007-10-12T22:25:00.000-04:00

On The Dynamics Of Global Kitsch
or
Circuit-Bending The Culture Industry

"____________________"""""""""" _______________________
|...........................|"""""""""|.................................|
|.HOLLOCORE Trash Hit|=====>|.CHINA Pop Kitsch Cover....|
|...........................|"""""""""|.................................|
|..From Paris To Berlin.|"""""""""|...From Taipei To Beijing...|
|.(Tron Quote/Parody).|"""""""""|.................................|
|..........||..............|"""""""""|.Part1: Japanese Schoolgirl.|
|..........||..............|"""""""""|...........Fetish Video.......|
|.........\||/.............|"""""""""|..............||................|
|..........\/...............|"""""""""|.............\||/..............|
|...........................|"""""""""|...............\/...............|
|From London To Berlin|"""""""""|.................................|
|(World Cup 06 Parody)|"""""""""|Part2: Madona Bling Cabaret|
|___________________|"""""""""|_______________________|

The songs as forms move completely outside of the sphere of cultural hegemony: the U.S. is conspicuously absent from that level (direction is Eastward: from Denmark to China). It is only the videos (as expressions) that introduce references to American pop, be it as an obsolete Disney movie (the aesthetics of geeky techno kink), or as a template for superstar image production on screen.

This diagram is not intentionally hermetic: it can easily be decrypted with Wikipedia and Google

2007-09-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

Playlist for the September 27th edition of Radio Nomadi Mundial

PART 1:
romica puceanu & orchestra florea ciaoaca - erau zarzarii
filastine - palmares
infernal noise brigade - nagarawallah
unkown - shaab
mutamassik / omani revolutionary army - a'aish el shaab (raggamuffin mix)
gypsy caravan - stick dance
fighting cocks - dance of the fighting cocks
jaipur kawa brass band - moriya
tartit - chargouba
fnaire - tagine loghate (feat. providence)
digital mystikz - anti-war dub
taraf de haidouks - indiaca
victoria hanna - 22 letters
skampida - zu atrapatu arte
milena - iskam
kontrol - lele kako
la phaze - elsol (l'eclipse)

PART 2
felix lajko - citeras
nomadic noize - uncommonly grounded
nomadic noize - streets of calcutta
napalm death - multinational corporations
burhan ocal - kara cali the intruder
77 clash - brooklyn anthem
orkestar karandila - chesi kyuchek
muslimgauze - valencia in flames
linton kwesi johnson - bass culture
kultur shock - zora
kultur shock - nadjia
sabaya al intifada - min al mukhayyam toulad al ru'aya
dayna kurtz - i belong to the wind
el watson - el watson's fox chase
frank budgen - ol' rattler mirror 2
gnawa njoum experience - leila a kanur jak (radio edit)
j.u.f. - muskat (slishal, no ne zapisal)

2007-09-11T02:34:00.000-04:00

FASHION WEEK IN NEW YORK IS OVER

2007-08-29T23:10:00.001-04:00

2007-08-29T02:15:00.000-04:00

Staff Benda Bilili band from the streets of Kinshasa

Jupiter's Dance: manual for guerrilla musicmaking or the new mode of antitourist marketing

2007-08-27T20:14:00.003-04:00

VISUAL PROPAGANDA / VISUAL POLLUTION

The island of Manhattan still balances between its "culture of congestion" (vs. culture of dissemination, dispersal) and concerns over privacy and tourism. A figure is needed on a scale very different from Bloomberg's grid imagination, to effect a radical reorganization of the urban system/landscape. Such experiments for now are reserved for the metropoli of the unexpected (formerly "3rd world", whatever that meant) future:

* São Paulo's mayor's war on "visual pollution" (advertisements, logos and displays) became an unprecedented reclamation of public space;

* Curitiba's master plan (dating back from the late 1960s), managed to integrate a transportation system in a city with a rate of population explosion that would effectively paralyze most modern administrations;

* Lagos, longtime fetish of Rem Koolhaas, offers a working version of megalopolis outside of accepted scenarios of modernization and/or development.

New York on the other hand, inherited and perpetuates the "quality of life" campaign that roughly translates into the suburbanization of America's most spectacular city (ban on smoking leads up to regulating photography and video). Maybe instead of exporting the culture of suburban paranoia (along with its ex-mayor's consulting practice), this city should consider importing foreign experience. Not likely, even if the metropolitan hubris leads to a spectacular tragedy.

And speaking of hubris, here is a libertarian critique of suburbanization mythology and the Vice mythology of travel.

2007-08-23T18:01:00.000-04:00

One day, weeks after the event, the few survivors will have retired into adapted underground shells, while the entire infrastructure will continue its existence and maintenance on its own. Spambots will keep creating profiles, sending friends requests on MySpace, tracking each other's browsing habits, and posting comments with gift shopping cards for clinically deserted department stores.

A global synaptic network not unlike a brain stretched thinly across the urban surface - a brain, continuously involved with networking and marketing parts of itself to itself.

True exteriority achieved on a planetary level, one could almost hear its soundtrack.

2007-08-01T04:10:00.000-04:00

Summer dripping oily residue from the overpass onto the amplifiers: traffic music abandoned for the unexpected pedestrian. When discovered, one is reminded of the proximity between heat intensity and sound pitch. Barebone rhythms and liquid beats... or is it rather liquid bones and bare rhythms?

Which brings me to this trash gem sent by my friend Al Jerrari; let's call it "The Liquid Bones Kid vs. Casio 8-bit Kuduro":

2007-06-08T01:25:00.000-04:00

Carioca Ghetto Dialectics

A short documentary explaining the genesis and evolution of baile funk (and tamborzão more specifically) focuses on the opposition global-local: 100% imported origins (Miami booty bass) -> appropriation through sampling and reworking into homegrown beats (based on the maculele) -> export of the newly hip Brazilian "product" back to the States or Europe:

Any comparisons with Gypsy music's recent popularity in Europe?

2007-06-02T20:25:00.000-04:00

Mobile Sound-System Balkan wedding stylee:

2007-05-30T10:44:00.000-04:00

Of Movies And Music

Watched Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers the other day and loved it. I have avoided that movie for awhile since I was feeling sore for him dropping me last minute to have "a friend" spin at the production end's party some years ago. Bruised egos aside, a fantastic movie written it would seem almost as an appendix to an even better soundtrack. Then two days later I run across this:

Inexplicably, it is the second least watched video of the David Byrne's Luaka Bop label archives. The least watched? A short documentary (doubling as a compilation promo) on the mangue beat scene in Brazil's Pernambuco state. Most watched? Anna Karina dancing in perfect time to a Nouvelle Vague song - the scene is taken from Godard's Bande à part, which happens to be the title of the band's 2006 album from which the song is taken - wrap your brains around the game of signifiers while you watch this:

2007-05-24T00:36:00.000-04:00

1 assistant professor of English and film studies at Bucknell
University (Eric Faden)
+
7 of his students
+
8 months of editing videos (some of them retelling stories collected and published by 2 German brothers many years ago)

=

2007-05-17T18:05:00.000-04:00

This weekend I'm off to Steel City to do a gig with Slavic Soul Party! at Pete's Pandemic event:

Naturally it is one of the best weekends not to leave the city: the first NYC dance parade is taking place during the day ("Salsa, Contra, Disco, Clogging, Ballroom, Irish Step, Hip Hop, Swing, Tango, Ballet, Break dance, Japanese, Sufi, Samba and more" boasts their website) with a lineup of DJs to rock your socks off including Timeblind. Meanwhile some of the best producers and studio engineers will be delivering their treasures for free at the Remix Hotel. To wrap it up Kode9, Shackelton and (my personal favorite) Badawi will wage the DubWar.

So how, you ask, do I manage to still convince myself to take the plane? Two reasons: seeing the city from above

and seeing the airport on the way back knowing that
Monday is DeepSpace with Kode9 and Dub Gabriel.

2007-05-15T11:37:00.000-04:00

Chuck Cheese's submission to the Balkan Beat Box remix contest - some sick grime beats, dash of favela funk and all sorts of other goodies:

2007-04-13T18:27:00.000-04:00

Architecture, Avant-guard And New York's Unstoppable Disneyfication

R.I.P. Tonic:

"The neighborhood around us has been increasingly consumed by "luxury condominiums", boutique hotels and glass towers, all making the value of our salvaged space worth more then our business could ever realistically support. We have also been repeatedly harassed by the city's Quality of Life Task Force which resulted in the debilitating closing of the ))sub((tonic lounge in January. Coincidentally, this campaign began as our immediate neighbor, the Blue Condominium building - a symbol of the new Lower East Side - prepared to open its doors."

2007-03-01T23:09:00.000-05:00

For the 1st of March and the Bulgarian pagan celebration of spring, here is a TransGlobal MashUp New York stylee:

"Pullup The Underground" M.I.A.& Diplo vs. Goran & Joro-Boro

Will be officially premiered/unleashed to unsuspecting audiences this weekend at the location containing the poster above.

2007-02-26T10:05:00.000-05:00

Gizmodo announces war on the RIAA during the month of March. OK, it's not a war, but a boycott, which is still a continuation of politics by other means - in this case economic. So it would seem like such schemes can circuit bend capitalism for a positive feedback into democracy, not just its distortion/negation. And if a DJ/producer getting arrested by the same companies that paid his mixtape productions doesn't seem like having anything to do with democracy, consider this video:

Still not sure?
Compare Copyright vs. Creative Commons and consider what the music culture might be if imagination could run independent of industrial/corporate law. Here is a trashy cult-movie example of such "unimaginable" exploration.

So here's to a month free from the rule of RIAA (emusic is a great legal alternative), higher concert attendance, and imaginative future.

2007-02-10T05:50:00.000-05:00

thanks to ori for waking me up to this track.
since last november, warrior queen has been one of my few "myspace" friends from the london grime/dubstep scene, so an oriental core remix will be coming shorty

Sunship 'Almighty Father'

2007-02-09T19:38:00.000-05:00

Grand Central Terminal, New York City, February 2007: chocolate-caramel, pornmags & maybe Kafka

2007-01-29T02:33:00.000-05:00

Back to MEHANATA with a vengeance - dirty and crazy as ever.

In honor of the new place:
Taliban Q-check by Orkestar Kamenci

2007-01-26T00:36:00.000-05:00

This post is orginially from November last year, it's republished only for archive purposes

On Saturday a girl came to ask me why I don't play Bulgarian Rap music. My standard answer is that it sounds pretty much the same as American Rap except the lyrics. The unspoken part of the answer is that Rap was the voice of the ghetto when it was interesting and the voice of the Bulgarian ghetto is chalga.

Except that by now Chalga is old news in Bulgaria and seen as something not only in low taste but also over. And in this, just like Rap, Chalga is not alone.

There seems to be a history of these other musics (or maybe this other music) opposite the history of music as we've come to know it. For example, if the accepted model uproots African slaves' chants into a white boys' Rock'N'Roll through the concentric gravity pull of a Mainstream Assimilation Machine (MAM), the eccentric counter-movement throws the copyright-infringing 382nd Greatest Song Of All Time in the Mutilation/Appropriation Machine (M/AM) - also known as a sampler/sequencer - of a Brazilian slum.

Erotic becomes explicit, sterling productions become lo-fi, Punk becomes Dionysian orgy. And we would be none the wiser in dismissing the event as an exception. What about Raï as it appeared in Algerian sleaze bars? What about the Rembetika of Greek opium dens? And of course, what about Reggae and its humble Kingston origins?

This other music is generally frowned upon if one knows its language. It is (morally) dirty, (politically) phobic, (culturally) cheap. Yet it carries such a strong libidinal momentum that it's inevitably and instantaneously appealing to the ears of the foreigner and the hips of the native. The world's ~~lumpen~~proletariat might have managed to unite only in its music's unanimous rejection and subsequent hypocritical endorsement through MAM.

As an enquiry/tribute (in)to M/AM and this other music, the theme of this week's Radio Nomadi Mundial will be The Global Ghetto.

2007-01-18T03:38:00.000-05:00

An often invisible castle quietly vibrating opposite the Luna Park, across that oil-black water stretch.

The castle's doors are open night and day to an endless stream of travellers, refugees, sideshow runaways from the Luna Park.
Its twin towers vibrate in and out of phase and at times and from certain angles they would cancel each other out rendering it invisible. Even more rarely one would be standing across the tiny gulf and would see the castle's water reflection, but not the thing itself - a reverse Fata Morgana, a missing mirage, a negative dream.

They stay there up to three days before continuing on their ways.

At times the first day they would gather around the storyteller, the discreet charm of his voice growing a fragile architecture; then the second day they would make music from the epic story and spread it between them as a thin thin web reverting to a pre-Babylonian memory; and on the third, somebody would have made a recording of that music and would play it for everybody to dance: half orgy / half exorcism of the egos.

Other times they would start by playing a game, follow with a puppet theater and finish with a video recording of both, projected on top of each other onto the castle wall.

An often invisible castle...

2007-01-11T21:53:00.000-05:00

Here's to a year of a fast democratization of music (and video) making:

Sayonara Mehanata!

2006-12-30T16:08:00.000-05:00

the end of 2006 in music/kitsch/propaganda

2006-12-27T02:10:00.000-05:00

Europe annexes Bulgaria at midnight on Sunday.

Three days before, on Thursday, Radio Nomadi Mundial in a preemptive critique of post-millenial tourism/terrorism will turn to the (Middle) East and to the (Communist) Past. Expect Ottoman core, distortion chalga, filtered turbo folk, and some megalomaniac choir mix productions.

Tune in to WirelessFM at 7pm EST or midnight GMT

2006-12-25T19:25:00.000-05:00

2006-11-30T02:03:00.000-05:00

bulgarian borat video via ljova.
according to comments on youtube, this is several years old, so it's not a conscious emmulation of the khazakhstani journalist.
notice the solo around 3:10 and the proto-reggaeton beat

2006-11-29T00:20:00.000-05:00

The Guardian is tracing the recent clash of egos on the trans-Atlantic "Gypsy/Balkan music scene". As it turns out, neither is it a scene ("most of these musicians have never met" if we're to believe the author), nor is there Gypsy or even Balkan music (according to Shantel). Still in this definitional vacuum there's an (un-)surprising amount of finger pointing and name calling.

I don't find authenticity particularly interesting these days (any Roma musician in Bulgaria claims to be more "authentic" than the next, just like in any other music scene, existing or not); even less interesting are rigorous definitions of the genre - leave it to the gurus in the World Music section of Virgin to come up with the most marketable category. What is fascinating to me is Zach's pseudo-naive question "Isn't a melody enough?"

A DJ would never (I hope) permit herself such innocence in using/appropriating a style of music. When I spin an Arabic track form Israel, mixed into Palestinian rap, going into Albanian hip-hop with a cocek beat, I can't let myself forget what a risky juggling act this is. Same goes for favela funk, Balkan brass, kwaito... Even when everything flows organically and the set feels to put itself together, it is built on choices upon choices upon choices - not unlike a fractal graph. Unlike a fractal graph though, I retroactively stand by my choices. Or is this what a neo-Marxist would call "false consciousness"?

Through DJ /rupture's blog, I ran across Orlando Patterson's piece on the dialectic between Western/American culture and Third World cultures and the weakness of the enduring stereotype "globalization=homogenization". Clearly American hegemony doesn't mean the rest of the world just passively swallows WASP values; just as clearly American culture - especially urban/metropolitan culture - is extremely heterogeneous. And Fanfare Ciocarlia did play 'Born To Be Wild' on 'Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan'. Still, Borat's Soundtrack and Putumayo's upcoming release of 'Balkan Grooves' (to which I decided not to contribute) seem to have been produced under the same carefree artistic license as 'Gulag Orkestar'.

So, when all is said and played, "isn't a melody enough"?

2006-11-23T04:24:00.000-05:00

overheard at the subway platform: "the train is coming. that's so cute, i just smiled."

people display an uncanny sense of poetry when it's cold. is the advertised advent of another ice age - global warming's ironic isotope - going to usher in a new age of poetry? language's ecological return?

two stops later the subway operator gets inspired: random act of kindness toward the runner-up-the-stairs, reopens the doors to spare him from night chill's dog bite. things begin to acquire crystalline shapes in fahrenheit's lower 40s. gestures become simpler, movements get stripped down and choreographed to an urgency.

mode: rushing to get home...