The Milksap Montage

YouTubemusicology c/o Phillip Tagg — who adds — This video is part of the ongoing feature-film length “movie” project “Fernando the Flute – The Film of the Book of the Music”. To find out what the I-vi-ii/IV-V matrix might actually mean you will also need to view “Fernando Museme 3 Part 1” and Fernando Museme […]

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Draft Charlie

In the wake of the Obama administration’s nomination of Elena Kagan, Dean of Harvard Law School, for solicitor general, a movement is afoot to draft my dear dad-in-law, Charlie Nesson, for the deanship. A blogger describing himself as “HLS’s least wealthy and influential alumnus” makes the case: He’s good at building organizations (and getting money […]

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Tonight at Beat Research: DJ Pace

via the Beat Research webpage — Friend, Party Rocker, Bassaholic DJ Pace (aka Pacey Foster) is a multi-instrumentalist with deep hip-hop roots, he was the turntablist in the Franc Graham Band and the experimental live electronic act Elk which included members of Count Zero/Think Tree. He has performed as a club and party DJ for […]

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Earworms of 08

I know that 2008 is, like, totally over — but that doesn’t mean we can’t already begin revisiting it in ironic/nostalgia mode. And what’s the best vehicle for that? The mashup, of course. DJ Earworm, who put together a similar roundup last year, has not only spliced together — super seamlessly — the Billboard top […]

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Audio Theory from a Media Masseur

Ubuweb is a deeeep archive of avant art, music, speech, etc. I spent some time today on Marshall McLuhan’s page, delighted to find his classic work (recently reissued) in audio collage form! Side A [audio:http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/mcluhan_marshall/Mcluhan-Marshall_The-Medium-Is-The-Massage_01.mp3] Side B [audio:http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/mcluhan_marshall/Mcluhan-Marshall_The-Medium-Is-The-Massage_02.mp3] a few rndm pull quotes, some sarcastically spoken — We shape our tools and thereafter our tools […]

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Seeing Stars, Punk Hijabi Girls

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 […]

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Baby New Year Too!

I’m pretty sure this will be the last January 1st that I get to do this, but I’m thrilled to announce yet again that the coming year will bring us a baby! In lieu of any ultrasound mashups this time around, I offer instead a few ultrasound flicks — Kid B, as we’re calling her […]

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E-cologies & High Resolutions

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 […]

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Mirrors, Mics, and Membership

There is much that might be said about why urban Africans in the Northern Rhodesia of the late 1930s should have been so interested in ball- room dancing and formal evening wear. But the Rhodes-Livingstone anthro- pologists were right about at least one thing: when urban Africans seized so eagerly on European cultural forms, they […]

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Sunday Videyoga Double Feature (Holidaze Special)

You may have seen these here before, but I’m reposting b/c — oddly enough — they’re among my favorite YouTubes of the year (and in lieu of year-end lists, which I just don’t do, a little revisiting seems ok). The first one is even appropriately seasonal. Whattayu think the greatest gift of the holidays izzzzzzz? […]

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Holidazeeee

It’s that time of year again, even if the incongruously balmy weather suggests otherwise. So, this past weekend Bec & I made another set of black cakes. This time, in anticipation, we started the fruits soaking in black-strap rum and Manischewitz a couple weeks in advance. And man, did they come out sweet. To vibe […]

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Gyangsta Flicks

Pace this post (see comments for continued convo), thx to Christina — who also wonders how hip-hop’s use of East Asian imagery fits into all of this (I think it leans more toward the I-talian than the A-rab) — for pointing me to three mashup “valorizations of the gangsta” via the dancehall/Mavado’s imagination (both of […]

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Fun with Phonemes

Since last week’s zungu-fest, I’ve had my eyes peeled for similar (semi-)Swahili utterances. And whattaya know, scanning the tracklist for Taliesin’s Apricity mix (which I recommend you listen to — it was a nice soundtrack this past Wednesday, when December actually felt like April), I noticed that the jumpoff track was by a group called […]

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See, Saw, Seen

The Best Recordings of 2008: Sasha Frere-Jones: Online Only: The New Yorker i <3 SFJ for sentences like this — "The song is rooted in the jiggling rhythms of James Brown, the motherlode for sampling producers from the eighties, and now entirely irrelevant to any rap being made in New York, Atlanta, Rio, or Miami." […]

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I-talian Money?

“Arab Money” may not have musical legs to stand on (remains to be seen — I think it’s still climbing up urban radio playlists), but it sure is the talk of the virtual water cooler. Most of my posts and comments on the song & its fallout have been distillations of email conversations with awesome […]

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