like the moon
[Here’s another Riddim Method re-post, featuring a couple mashups which I made all by myself (with the help of Kazaa and Ableton). It attempts to embrace a “riddim method” approach to music blogging — to focus more on musical texts that say things about music than wordy texts. I liked the playfulness and directness, as […]
Read More →Now, you know, dear reader, that I don’t want to work, I just want to bang on this blog all day — — but duty calls, whether as a dad, a teacher, a fellow, or a Boston beats booster. At any rate, realizing it’s been two weeks since I last posted something here, I’m starting […]
Read More →I suspect some dear readers out there, much as they like me, are getting sick of seeing my bristly face when they load the page, so I figured I’d get something else up here at the top, though I don’t have time for a proper post right now. One thing about those beard shots — […]
Read More →BIG NIGHT TONIGHT! First, I’ll be making another radio appearance — this time far briefer — via Benjamen Walker’s new show on WFMU, Too Much Information. Friends and longtime readers know that I’ve been a fan of Ben Walker’s programs for some time now. For those who aren’t familiar, Benjamen has been making some of […]
Read More →Sadly, our ol’ group blog, Riddim Meth0d (actually, named after the article), has fallen into disuse and disrepair, w/ 400,000 unmoderated comments and countless foreign phishing outposts that have long slipped past the outmoded filters — not to mention, no new posts for almost 2 years now. I myself last posted there back in May […]
Read More →Afropop Worldwide has a new program, airing currently on terrestrial radio in the US (and soon to appear online as streamable audio), which focuses on a subject near&dear to the heart of this blog: world music 2.0, aka nu-whirled music, aka global ghettotech. Or as they put it — Afropop Worldwide takes us into the […]
Read More →Gavin’s throwing darts again, and he hits a couple bullseyes — or offers some sharp prodding at any rate. The post is on par with his thoughtful and provocative ruminations on the ethics of musical tourism from almost exactly a year ago, and we can read it as something of a follow-up, a continuation not […]
Read More →Longtime readers know I’m quite the devotee of those dear local philosophs / civic superheroes / transcendentalist romantics, Emerson and Thoreau. I’ve quoted them at length and composed songs inspired by their fiery oratory. So I was excited to stumble upon (hat tip forgotten) a blog dedicated to posting Thoreau’s journal entries, pegged to the […]
Read More →I made a mix for modyfier! Go on get it, gig wit it, etc. If you’re not familiar with the modyfier series, here’s a primer, written back at the 50th episode milestone (mine’s #124). Rayna has commissioned tons of great mixes, with ruminations on process, from such lovelies & luminaries as Luomo, Philip Sherburne, Ripley, […]
Read More →photo by Brent Hagerman In the first comment on my Zunguzung Meme post, Droid asked the perfectly reasonable question, Is it possible that Zunguzung itself is an adaptation of someone else’s work? It’s something I’d been wondering myself, of course — for about as long as I’d been noting the melody’s long legs, really. In […]
Read More →photo by zoomar Props to Emynd and Bo Bliz for holding it down over at Crossfaded Bacon, where they’ve been posting some great tracks (nh4nr) — with an occasional soft spot for a bunch of R&B too. Yesterday, Bo Bliz posted re: Stevie Wonder’s new song (a track for Obama’s inaugural soundtrack). Perhaps surprisingly, at […]
Read More →I still haven’t been able to send him those guitars, but Red Pepper has the Ruff Riddims studio up and running (and blogging!) — and it’s not like there aren’t guitars or guitarists in Botswana. Indeed, the first track I’ve heard out of the studio, “Dumelang” by Skeat (pronounced Skee-tee), is an ebullient bit of […]
Read More →First things first, here’s a biographical essay about Kool Herc* I wrote (almost 3 years ago!). I don’t have a good excuse for posting it so late, but I do have a good reason for being able to post it on my site at all: because I made sure I could. In other words, when […]
Read More →You all already know that Ghislain P is a mean beatsmith and that I’m an unabashed bass booster. But if you haven’t been paying close attention recently, you might have missed out on a key development: Ghis has been fitting his tracks of late to such striking visual accompaniment as lightbulbs being smashed and, the […]
Read More →Grooming one’s social ecologies is no small task — in the real or the virtual. At least the real is bounded by the unities — you can only see so many people at once — whereas the virtual, with its asynchronous multitudes and embarrassment of data, can easily swamp a surfer. I became acutely attuned […]
Read More →Wooster Collective: Filippo Minelli's "Contradictions" "what i want to do by writing the names of anything connected with the 2.0 life we are living in the slums of the third world is to point out the gap between the reality we still live in and the ephemeral world of technologies." (tags: art web2.0 critique graffiti […]
Read More →since fruityloopy music by multiculti youngstas has become all the rage, i figure i’m sitting on a goldmine, having run many an FL session with kids in boston and lowell, MA and, kingston, JA from 2002-04. one of my favorite students — b/c of his enthusiasm and aptitude — was a lil dude aptly named […]
Read More →WireTap Magazine – Free Association: Sound of Silence larisa/ripley's article on the recent rash of dubious takedowns in the mp3blogspotosphere :: written for a youth/general readership, so pretty backgroundy, but a good explanation of the current lay of the land :: bye bye blogspots (tags: mp3blog blogging copyright copywrong digital culture p2p) Beat Diaspora: Beats, […]
Read More →Mute magazine – Culture and politics after the net | I Like Listening to Awesome Tapes from Africa nice conversation about african music, "world music," and new circulations thereof, featuring andy moor, other members of the ex, and /rupture (h/t wordthecat) :: my favorite sentence — "It's not fusion, it's collaboration." (tags: internet worldmusic africa […]
Read More →Today marks the seeding of the fiftieth and final episode of the brilliant Blogariddims series, a near-monthly “podcast” with which many readers of w&w no doubt have some passing acquaintance. Indeed, if you’re omnivorous like me, you’ve likely downloaded every one, each time enticed by the loving, careful, idiosyncratic and refreshingly all-over-the-map episodes from some […]
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