congrats to the QE2 on 14 years of service to the bostonian soundscape, and beyond :: we wouldn’t listen, or sound, like we do without victor (dj duo) & the navigator :: streaming every saturday night >> http://www.wzbc.org/listen.html
Resident Advisor hosts a new, “post-vinyl,” possib-proto-DE9 mix by the doctor himself (now w/ beard!) :: “even though I’ve perhaps lost the dynamics of vinyl,” sez hawtin, “I’ve gained a more fluid, dynamic, even organic feel to my sets.”
ha! hardly news, aside from that Bruce Golding is but the latest PM to uphold the colonial-era “buggery laws” :: Golding sets the record straight — “I don’t want to speak with any ambiguity about where this yah prime minister rest.”
“The following article was originally published in the US magazine Out/Look in 1989, and looks at house music’s origins in the black gay clubs of Chicago in the 1980s”
Been a while since I did any freelancing, but I’ve got a review in the most recent Fader (#53). Mucho props to J Shep for the invitation. I’m glad I came to mind when Funky Nassau arrived in the mail.
I’ve pasted my take below, where, as I’ve done in the past, I’m publishing my original draft. Not that I’m not happy with the final version, which may be the better for it and which I’m glad is available via pdf (p.142, or 74 in Preview) but, as often happens in the editorial process, the words no longer sound quite like my voice — not least b/c I didn’t actually get a chance to interview Chris Frantz, to my dismay. But someone else did, and I’m glad they added his voice to the piece. The original is a lean 400 words — quite the trick for a prolix mu’fucka such as myself. It also contains some dry humor that, alas, ended up on the cutting room floor, analogically speaking.
The brevity of the review means I didn’t get to say as much as I’d have liked about the whole thing and that I accentuated the positive. (Why waste words when there’s nuff niceness to note?) In sum, it’s a fun and interesting compilation. I enjoyed wrapping my ears around it. No reason a lot of the tracks couldn’t play right into the current enthusiasm for all things touched by disco — reggae and nerdrock alike.
My favorite track, sin duda? Grace Jones’s “My Jamaican Guy” (12” version) — what an oddly awesome mix of sounds and styles! Synth riff juju over Sly&Robbie disco dub?! What’s not to lub?
Funky Nassau
Wayne Marshall
It sounds improbable, or like a recipe for overcooking: Island Records’ Chris Blackwell sets up a state-of-the-art studio in the Bahamas, invites New Wave / No Wave awk-rockers (Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Ian Dury) to come on down, adds an international club icon or two to the mix (Grace Jones, Guy Cuevas), hires a crack house band driven by Parisian-Beninian keyboardist, Wally Badarou, and reggae’s dynamic duo, the drum-and-bass production partners Sly & Robbie, and hands the boards over to influential disco DJs like Larry Levan and François Kevorkian to give the taut, crisp, subtly dubbed-out sounds a proper club mix.
It was Blackwell’s attempt to create a studio that was an island in itself, with a sound as distinctive as Studio One, Motown, or Stax. And although the results now sound dated in their own charming way (though many tracks could once again take dancefloors by surprise), the recordings made at Compass Point Studios from 1980-86 didn’t simply distill the era’s post-disco, post-punk zeitgeist, they defined it. AC/DC and the Rolling Stones may have recorded there too, but this is, as the title says, a funky compilation, representing the dance underground of the early 80s, a cosmopolitan scene bridging London, Paris, New York, and Kingston. The tracks brim with an open-minded adventurousness, drawing on the funk, reggae, hip-hop, and African pop animating these cities’ soundscapes and cooking it all down into a lean, mean disco stew. Intended for the club, many of the cuts (collected here in their 12” versions) stretch out into extended instrumentals, seven minute drum and bass workouts that can make one forget the sometimes silly, often whimsical lyrics and focus on the groove.
“Reggae’s expanding with Sly and Robbie,” sing Tom Tom Club on their immortal single, “Genius of Love,” and they hit the nail on the bloodclaat head: if nothing else, Funky Nassau affirms the central role that the “riddim twins” played in shaping late 20th century pop. A dubwise approach pervades the proceedings (nuff reverb, echo, flanging, and stereo panning). Sly’s drums sizzle and pop while Robbie’s basslines keep things grounded, making room for the avant-rockers’ flights of fancy. They achieve a remarkably consistent sound despite bringing together so many eclectic styles and idiosyncratic performers. Offering a punchy tour through early 80s international club culture, Funky Nassau arrives just in time to inspire today’s improbable soundtracks for increasingly polyglot cities.
“The genital theory of history may be novelistically useful, but it is analytically silly.” :: that, and other gems, in a skewering review by leon wieseltier
“As summer 2008 approaches, a theme– not a genre– has emerged across many existing styles of music: the mid-range is being hijacked by off-kilter, unstable synths. Crossing hip-hop, hyphy, grime, chip tunes, dubstep, crunk, and electro…”
‘After shifting explanations, the White House eventually said the “Mission Accomplished” phrase referred to the carrier’s crew completing its 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq.’
Que hay, brother? (said in a boricua accent…loved how these chaps drop the ‘brother’ in spanglish)
I don’t know if it’s just me, but reggaeton game is jus getting jiggier, and a lot of today’s hits have influences from southern bounce (tamo a lo loco) to electronica (’sexy movimiento’)…am sending you the names and youtube links (most are the videos) of some of the current big tunes…LOVE de voltio, dred…de man flow on dat jus wicked for days. Otherwise, went to Festival de Claridad (heard of it?) and Calle 13 and Tego both performed…mash up de place.
dj fflood re: jamaica and homophobia/masculinity, house music and gender fluidity :: lots that resonates here w/ me, a dancehall devotee and 4/4 booty shaker :: h/t ripley
Internet meme scholar and steward that I fancy myself, I regret I’ll have to miss this weekend’s promising ROFLcon here in Cambridge since I’m due in Iowa City at another conference (and, I’m afraid, one which will leave me rolling on the floor laughing not nearly as much). Wish I coulda joined Kevin to talk about tubedanzmusik. Mebbe next time.
But if you’re around and hip to the scenes memes, I highly recommend checking out the festivities. They’ve got quite a program planned and a lineup that includes a who’swho in ROFLconnery, not to mention a couple fun events happening at nighttime in meatspace –
Saturday April 26
MEEM DREEMZ, ROFLcon afterparty @ Basstown, Great Scott, Allston, MA
ft. Hearthrobbers, Basstowners, Lone Wolf
Roflers only 9-11, n00bs and everyone else after 11pm
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as well as
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Sunday April 27
ROFLcon after-afterparty @ ZuZu, Cambridge, Ma
ft. GHOSTDAD + Lone Wolf
9pm-1am
“Hold Tight remix” = yet another zunguzung riff (around 1:30), this time from a mid-90s recording by an irish hip-hop group :: thx to a student @ Brandeis for spotting it !
“A Portuguese travel guide…warns tourists that they are more likely to hear African music on the streets of Lisbon than the traditional fado ballads. But the Portuguese reception of African immigrants has been far from totally benign…”
Today marks 3 months since Nico joined us in the post-womb world. It’s been a really wonderful time. And I mean that — filled with wonder. Seeing and hearing her learn to interact with the people and things around her has been totally fascinating. The arrival of smiles, focused eyes, a strong neck (keep keepin your head up), and clumsy but effective hands — all of these things have felt like milestones. Just yesterday, we got her to laugh a little bit, a truly joyful development.
As you might infer, we’ve been recording a lot of this: photos, video, audio. And while I’m trying to be cautious about uploading her life to the interweb, I’m glad to have all of this, to share a bit with friends and family now, and of course to share with Nico later.
Last week I embarked on a project to make something that would represent Nico’s first 3 months in the world, aurally and visually. As part of the process, I combed through the 25 or so audio recordings I had made, which were full of little revelations. Not least of which was hearing how the shapes of her sounds — like the shape of her face and little body — have already changed so much in such a short time.
Another amazing thing was seeing the way a waveform could illustrate the dynamics of a good cry –
I’ll spare you the audio on that one. Ultimately, I cut over 100 loops and percussive blips’n'burps to use in the assemblage of some post-natal electro.
I also combed through, with Becca’s eyes too, about 1500 digital photos we’ve snapped so far. A lot of these are throwaways, of course — blurry shots, bad framing, etc. — but rather than throw them away, we’ve kept them, and they came in handy. I decided to match about 700 fast-moving photos to her loops’n'whoops, and a lot of those “throwaways,” in combination with the good shots, made for some stunning sequences, especially at a beat-matched frame-rate (yay Ableton video!).
The end product is a collage/montage that proceeds more or less in chronological order. I premiered it last Friday at an electro-acoustic concert @ Brandeis and it was a big hit (but, of course, beats + baby = surefire crowd pleaser). Hope u digg too –
I'm an ethnomusicologist by training, an MC/DJ/producer by calling, and a blogger by choice. My research interests are American music (in the broadest sense), race and nation, digital technologies, and global public spheres. Those are pretty much my bloggy interests too.
I've lived in Chicago, IL, Madison, WI, and Kingston, JA, but I'm a Boston Jerk for life. I now reside in Cambridge, MA, happily back in my hometown.
