Dancefloor Friktion, Almost From Any Font

The Frikstailers first came to my attn via DJ Ripley and Stu FatPlanet, both of whom seemed to admire their “fidget groove” (thx, stu!). I too was instantly enamored with their glitched-up, tech-housey (blog-housey?), syncopated dance traxx. They helped me to imagine Argentina in a different way, hearing Córdoba as another outpost of the EDM […]

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Reggaeton’s Contempo Indexical Lexica

As I’ve argued before — and will be arguing next week in Mexico City — one can hear reggaeton’s embrace of tecno synths and “Latin” loops as an audible shift from (explicitly, sonically marking itself as) “música negra” to “reggaeton latino.” Such a change, I contend, corresponds to an attendant shift in the cultural politics […]

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