October 22, 2009 • 6:36 pm 0
today is a feel good day. let’s feel good and jam out to disco jams.
Double Exposure, “My Love is Free (Tom Moulton 12″ Mix)” ゲット [DL]
Linda Clifford, “You Are You Are”ゲット [DL]
post-disco, but amazing, so it counts!:
Alexis
Filed under: video , disco, double exposure, linda clifford, raffaella carra, the scene, tom moulton
• 5:40 pm 0
my friend gio sent me a bunch of haitian zouk and kompas this summer that i have been sleeping on for a while. i started listening to zouk in the most roundabout way possible. in my search for kuduro and kwaito a few years back, i stumbled upon a bunch of kizomba tracks.. kizomba is angolan zouk sung in portuguese that migrated over from the caribbean. in the near future, i will post some of my favorite kizombas, but i wanted to share some zouk first.
k&z are really chilled out r&b genres heavily influenced by the older and more dancey kompas. when i’ve shared my appreciation for kizomba/zouk to some of my music nerd friends, they’ve been vaguely derisive about it. it’s really not as musically compelling or exciting as something like kuduro or funana; its not as rootsy as cumbia, or as universally celebrated as soca. it’s just really laidback bar music. when i listen to it, i imagine being in some beach town on a hot night. fans are blowing on the pastel paint-chipped dance floor. a half-drunk couple dances slowly to their favorite jam. yes, i feel these songs.
Talina, “Pour Te Revoir” ゲット [DL]
Jocelyne Béroard, “Siwo” ゲット [DL]
andres and maggie, doesn’t this song remind you of similar japanese r&b pop jams?
V-Ro feat. Rimshot Crew “Jou” ゲット [DL]
gio also sent me some tabou combo. this group has been around forever and ever. i remember loving their jams when jenny and i took c. washburne’s salsa, soca, and reggae class in spring ‘04. i fell deep into some old tc footage youtubing last night and found these gems celebrating their historical tour of panama in ‘79.
Tabou Combo, “Tu As Vole” ゲット [DL]
Filed under: video , jocelyne beroard, kizomba, kompas, kwaito, rimshot crew, tabou combo, talina, v-ro, zouk
October 9, 2009 • 3:42 am 0
friend of 音楽CLUB from our old WBAR days, ned milligan, has started to blog on green owl records’ news page, which is super exciting. i am currently mellowing out to the brazilian latin jazz of triorganico, which ned aptly describes here… looking forward to more goodness!
Alexis
Filed under: links , brasil, triorganico
October 6, 2009 • 4:28 am 0
This post is kind of random. I have been doing a lot of research on the slow life. Like the slow life movement in Japan, and the slow movement everywhere else (slow food, slow travel…) and then I came upon this nice little image (courtesy of Japan for Sustainability) which contains so many ideas:
At the same time I was cleaning out my Gmail box and I found a couple of folders long neglected, with a couple of gems. One, Daft Punk’s “Interstella 5555,” which you can watch on a pretty big screen here:
… and two) this in-depth video on the famous “Amen Break” (even if you think you don’t know it, which I doubt you do, you do know it – even my mom knows it) called “Can I Get an Amen?” by Nate Harrison.
Here are some more good slow links:
Great talk on TED by Carl Honore
Slow Down Low
Wired Article by Momus
Momus Blog Post (sorry, 2 by Momus!)
Unrelated but good (サンクス to Jenny!):
Mayer Hawthorne, “Green Eyed Love (Classixx Remix)”
Andres
Filed under: links, recommended reading, video , amen break, amen brother, classixx, daft punk, grizzly bear, interstella 5555, japan, japan for sustainability, mayer hawthorne, momus, slow food, slow life, slow movement, the winstons
September 30, 2009 • 2:37 am 1
this is another follow-up post, of sorts. side b of discos tormento’s new comp, wow 2009, features many of the artists from may’s “la super cumbia futurista” post. i am currently mourning the impending denouement of nacotheque and will be on hand for the final hurrah featuring pint-sized powerhouse amandititita on oct.. 24th, but there is something in the hipster electropop of side a that has never appealed to me. i’ll stick to the warm and familiar minimal tropical vibes of side b for now. (thanks claire! and @djrupture for the heads up).
speaking of amandititita though, this is an amazing and informative article about the current state of women in cumbia. thanks, juan data (and monika’s fabulous google reader)! by contrast, this is an annoying blurb featuring so-called girly girl cumbia from the often reliable generation bass. having a dude introduce you to music because he thinks you’d be into that girly shit is a definite dealbreaker.
The Black Liz Lemon
Filed under: links , dealbreakers, la super cumbia futurista, los wendys, sonido desconocido, sonido trucha
• 1:37 am 1
cool places steeev has offered up a postscript of sorts to the caju e castanha post from a while back. my portuguese is still non-existent, but apparently this is the soundtrack to the documentary from that post. also, here is part one of another c&c documentary. he also offered this brazilian psyche album from recife as an unrelated bonus.
Alexis
Filed under: guest post , Caju e Castanha, embolada
September 21, 2009 • 6:23 pm 0
Calling somebody “the Maurice Sendak of rap” makes me really want to listen to them. What a wonderful description. To think that that is how she has been described, in general! Speaking of Maurice Sendak, I was at the library this week in the United States! and was able to check out a Taiwanese-made movie set in Japan and completely in Japanese called Cafe Lumiere. Hou Hsiao-Hsien is the director – he is so good. The movie is pretty good. Worth checking out, not sure if worth renting. But in it the girl is obsessed with Maurice Sendak’s “Outside Over There.” In it, a little baby is stolen from a room.
I have been going through this list of artists I wrote down while in Colombia, basically plugging them into YouTube and seeing if music I like pops up. Some are OK, some get me listening to various songs before I can decide what I think… But Octavio Mesa was the first that was instant satisfaction. Octavio Mesa is a Colombian singer from Antioquia, the department that contains the warm, charming and now gringo-filled city of Medellín. His music falls under the rubric of “música guasca,” a denomination I don’t know the meaning of, but which is definitely campesion/country music. Also, he was one of Juanes’ mentors.
His music is filthy, full of curses, and very ordinary expressions (especially the 2nd and 3rd songs, after the jump. Really vulgar). I mean ordinary in the base sense, not “normal.” It is wonderful to hear someone curse so unabashedly, because it is not cursing in the extreme. He is speaking/singing in a way that sounds very natural. But I am not used to hearing so many bad words in music that sounds like this. It sounds like Colombian folk music, and it certainly is. It is satisfying to hear such flavor. Check out these 3 videos. There are many more online, I think. I also have to mention how much I like his video style. Real videos, especially compared to the quality of videos out there for many older Colombian artists.
Filed under: responses, video , antioqui, colombia, juanes, malas palabras, medellín, octavio mesa, octavio meza
• 6:21 pm 1
i had the opportunity this week to catch the band glasslines twice this week. glasslines is actually glasser backed up by the dudes in tanlines. glasser is from LA and came to new york to do a series of shows the past few weeks. affectionately referred to as “the maurice sendak of rap” on her myspace, she offers beautifully melodic singing over muted aux percussion. it’s really lovely. she also has a confident energy live i find really refreshing. there were a few too many technical problems at both the glasslands and littlefield, but i still fell in love a little and have a new lady-crush.
i first saw tanlines open for fauna and douster at the zzk showcase at santos party house back in april. naturally, my friends and i were there to see the latter, but i was told by a friend to get there in time to see tanlines, because they were that good. from the moment they took stage, we were all like “who ARE these guys?” definitely the yang to glasser’s yin, they have a tight exuberance that’s really infectious live. there’s nothing corny about it like some other bands that riff off of african-inspired percussion and vocal melodies. they’re not poseurs. no stunting. just happy polyrhythmic electronic delights.
andres, i also thought you might like the oh-so-casio remix they did of telepathe’s “chrome’s on it.” i am ever so excited to see them again next thursday open for LA band HEALTH at the bowery ballroom. thx @johnnnyAa for some recon work.
who else is excited for fall?
Alexis
August 26, 2009 • 9:37 pm 1
jenny and i went to the lagos disco inferno party at glasslands in williamsburg on saturday night. i can’t think of any music that i am more dazzled by than nigerian disco. i copped the nigerian disco funk special comp a year or so back and jammed on it for weeks. since then, i kinda forgot about digging deeper into it. i put it on a shelf of abandoned subgenres such as french rap, kizomba, bhangra house that seemed far too massive for me to attempt to get into, especially since they seem under the radar in the blogosphere. luckily frank from voodoo funk is THAT DUDE when it comes to getting into anything nigerian disco related. cousin cole put me on to this older post that he did for the fully fitted blog and it is beyond sweet.
jenny, claire, and a whole posse of others rolled into lagos disco inferno with the highest expectations and it completely delivered. there was hours upon hours of sweaty, musky, grooving. there are few dudes who showed up in costume with polyester shirts, slacks, gold chains, and i even spied some snakeskin shoes. it was wild and unreal. the height was when he dropped 2,000 blacks got to be free by fela kuti and roy ayers. it was one of those moments that make all sociability disappear, everyone stops talking, and your soul floats above you while everyone dances transfixed. it doesn’t happen often on a saturday night out.
there were equally as intense drawbacks: it was stiflingly hot in there (and no apologies, because it seem more equatorial or something), the mixing was uneven, and the crowd was a little off-brand. it was entirely comprised of writhing hipsters emanating a vibe of “i’m sooo cultured!” it reminds me of the time when a good friend of mine who is actually a really good dude told me in all seriousness “i’m the most cultured white dude you’ll ever meet.” in my head, i thought two things: a) you most definitely are not. i don’t know who that is, but it certainly isn’t you, and b) i wonder how many of my guy friends think this also and are proud of it. probably a lot. it’s not a good look. i just had a really heady convo with friend-of-ongakuclub, lily, where we discussed contemporary exotification in the new york scene, hipsters who trade in cultural capital, and the drawbacks of desiring a cosmopolitan sensibility. i think i just need a break from hyped parties and just go to the shrine and barbes to drink wine and hand out with old heads and listen to live music for a minute. yeah, never going to happen.
oh, and speaking of nigeria, this post on nigerian rap is beyond epic.
Alexis
Filed under: Uncategorized , hipsters, lagos disco inferno, nigerian disco, nigerian rap
• 3:44 am 1
I just came upon all these things. First what happened is I was finally looking at David Guetta videos. I first heard of him a few months ago when Toy Selectah put out his free album [here] and there was a remix of a David Guetta song on it that I loved. But I never looked into it.
Then, here I am in Pasto visiting my family, and my uncle is always watching this channel – Euro Channel – and David Guetta videos keep popping up. Then the other night watching Miss Universo with him and my grandma, David Guetta was the DJ. Finally tonight I looked at some of his videos and just stopped at this one – with 34 million views! – the one Toy Selectah remixed, I think it’s great.
Here is what for me was the original, Toy Selectah’s remix: David Guetta, “Love is Gone” (Raverton Remix)
And then I was trying to remember the name of that famous DJ in London with his radio show – I heard Toy Selectah on that show a few months ago and I wanted to link to it – but in the meantime I found this video of Toy Selectah visiting IsaGT (Colombia!) at her place in London [link to the video en español - watch it!]. And in this video they are calling out shout outs and he mentions Plastic Caramelo, and she freaks out. So I went to see. Maybe you know her? I did not, but she is in NY.
Disfruten,
Andres
Filed under: Uncategorized , colombia, david guetta, france, isa gt, isagt, mexico, plastic caramelo, toy selectah
August 25, 2009 • 7:47 pm 0
Bappi Lahiri is another of India’s more famous Hindi film music composers. He seems to have thrived in the 70s and 80s, during which time he drew extensively upon western beats and music such as disco (see “Disco Bollywood” here) and early hip hop (see his adaptation of Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” here).
However, despite how much he appears to have copied from popular western music, he did come up with some goodness of his own. I like this intro sequence to the 1980 film Saboot:
Here is his song “Dance Dance” from the film “Kasam Paida Karnewale Ki,” downloaded from Dharavi.org, an interesting website that tracks news on the famous Dharavi “slum” area of Mumbai. (For more on slums here is an interesting article.)
Bappi Lahiri & Salma Agha, “Dance Dance”
Andres
P.S. Highly recommended, though not related except for the fact that they are Indian and came up during my search, here is a video of a small person dancing, and a video starring Chiru (of Indian “Thriller” fame) which also features a great number of animals dancing incredibly.
Filed under: links, music sites, video , bappi lahiri, dharavi, disco, hindi film, india, indian animals dancing, indian thriller, mumbai, saboot, salma agha
August 24, 2009 • 7:25 pm 0
Juan de la Cruz, psychedelic rock band from the Philippines. In the Phillipines, “Juan de la Cruz” is apparently the equivalent of Joe Blow, or John Doe. Says Wikipedia:
Juan de la Cruz is symbolically used in the Philippines to represent the “Filipino”. The name is roughly the equivalent of the American Uncle SamJohn Doe. Juan de la Cruz is usually depicted wearing the native and Salakot hat, Barong Tagalog, long pants, and slippers (called tsinelas in Filipino). The term Juan de la Cruz is also used when referring to the collective Filipino psyche. The terminology was coined by Robert McCulloch Dick, a Scottish-born journalist working for the Manila Times in the early 1900s, after discovering it was the most common name in blotters.
I rented this CD from Small Music in Tokyo (in the Koenji neighborhood), one of the best music stores around!
Here is the song “Pinoy Blues” (Pinoy is a term Filipinos apparently use to refer to themselves – to Filipinos):
Juan de la Cruz, “Pinoy Blues”
Andres
Filed under: links , cd rental, juan de la cruz, koenji, philippines, pinoy, rock, small music, tokyo
August 16, 2009 • 11:19 pm 0
I don’t really have that much enka, but here are the songs I like. Since I’ve been at the university the whole time, I can’t do any illegal downloading, so I made a YouTube playlist (here) of enka and kayou (folk songs), and I’ve been listening to it constantly.
Also, I think you can probably learn from watching these three channels’ uploaded videos: 1, 2, 3.
So enjoy these for now. They’re not the best, but…
Have fun in Colombia!
Maggie
Filed under: guest post, video , enka, japan, youtube playlists
• 10:58 pm 0
I’m doing a project on enka music right now. I thought I already liked enka, but I have been finding amazing shit on YouTube recently. [This music is from a TV Asahi show from the 70s that eventually spawned film and theater versions called "Hissatsu Series"]
Maggie
Filed under: guest post , enka, Hissatsu Series, japan, japanese tv, tv asahi, 必殺シリーズ
• 10:37 pm 1
this song is fucking hilarious. and great.
listen to it about three times in a row. sorry if you have it already… but then you should just re-listen.
Los Super Elegantes, “Africa” ゲット [DL]
you’re welcome,
claire
Filed under: guest post , hahas, los super elegantes, people we met in japan
• 2:58 am 1
This issue is on the heavyweights of Vallenato.
I am in Bogotá right now. I am staying with my cousin. His wife is from Valledupar, in the north of Colombia (see map). It is a small, very hot city near the coast, that sits beneath the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It is widely regarded as being the home of Vallenato, though many argue vallenato was born on the coast. Regardless, Valledupar plays host every year to the Festival Vallenato (this year will be the 42nd!)
So I did an unscientific study to find out what the best Vallenato is. I asked each sister independently (one is around 40 years old, the other I think late 20s, and they are both very lively, dynamic women) to recommend some vallenato to me. Both of them said, in the first place, that they prefer classic vallenato. I was happy to hear that, because I think I do, too. They both added that classic vallenato has more substantive lyrics and beautiful songs.
Then they both mentioned almost exactly the same artists. I also found this exact same list of artists later while doing research on the internet. It appears that these are the undisputed kings of “classic” vallenato. I say “classic” because in fact it seems to me that these artists aren’t all that old. I will try and dig deeper to find some more old school vallenato.
I also found a great Vallenato website, where you can download mp3s and even whole albums, Mi Valledupar.
Also, to learn more about Vallenato, there is an incredible documentary called “El Acordeón del Diablo” which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube. Very good film, made by a German filmmaker. I really recommend it. More information here.
In the meantime, enjoy Los Betos, Diomedes Diaz, Los Hermanos Zuleta, Ivan Villazon, and Jorge Oñate (después del jump).
Filed under: links, music sites, video , colombia, diomedes diaz, los betos, los hermanos zuleta, valledupar, vallenato
August 9, 2009 • 12:20 am 0
Jeanette.
Janette Anne Dimech (October 10, 1951, London), who performs under the name Jeanette, is a half-Belgian, half-Spanish, English-born, American-raised singer who has resided in Spain since the age of 12, and who sings primarily in Spanish. (Wikipedia)
First heard this song on DJ Chico Sonido’s “Paisadelic” mix a few months back (referenced in the 3.2.09 post). Always wondered what it was, but never looked. Then I moved to southern California a few days back, and lo and behold, it’s appeared on Mexican radio twice already. So today I jotted down some of the lyrics, and easily found it on YouTube. I think it’s great, though I accept not everyone will think I look cool blasting Spanish-language soft rock driving through the suburban strip malls.
Andres
Filed under: links, responses, video , 8106.tv, california, chico sonido, janette, jeanette, mexico, paisadelic, spain
August 4, 2009 • 12:31 am 0
I haven’t had time to look into all the artist/composer/film names I took down while I was in India, but this video is the first result of my so far superficial research. The song, “Piya Tu Ab To Aaja,” was composed by the iconic beat-maker/musician R.D. Burman (R.D. = Rahul Dev), who is famous as far as Hindi movies/Bollywood are concerned, and is from the 1971 film “Caravan.”
I think he also made a lot of Hindi disco for films, so hopefully we can find some! He was one of three composers featured on a CD I saw featuring Bollywood’s beat kings. The other 2 were Kalyanji Anandji and Bappi Lahiri. Kalyanji Anandji are also a little famous in the West thanks to DJ Shadow and Dan the Automator’s album “Bombay the Hard Way,” which sampled their songs. Here is one of the best, most simple songs from that album, “My Guru.”
Andres
Filed under: video , bappi lahiri, bollywood, bombay the hard way, dan the automator, dj shadow, hindi film, india, kalyanji anandji, r.d. burman, rahul dev
July 15, 2009 • 8:53 pm 1
taliesin has completed a trifecta of sick mixes in the past month. i’ve basically linked to all of the mixes that i could get my hands on this year in our “mixes we’re feeling” blogroll because there is something about the heavy, dubbed out, crunktastic, hauntingly romantic mixes that take me to an expansive inward-looking place. he doesn’t seem as consumed with hot, new hits or showboating mixing as other mixtape djs. they just take you through moments like a sticky 5am subway ride in the summer, an impromptu drive through the south at midnight… ok it’s definitely night music!
the best news is that his batture mix is the first of a new mix series curated by blogbro, dave quam. soooooo looking forward to the forthcoming mixes/podcasts!!! after an early summer music lull, i feel mucho invigorated!
andres, miss you! can’t wait to hear more news from india. the first few emails have been epic!
alexis
Filed under: Uncategorized
July 14, 2009 • 11:33 pm 0
hello strangers. I’ve missed you muy mucho and send many abrazos colombianos and sanitizing wipes to our beloved andres in india. here is my first post since april and “a thousand pardons” for falling off so so very very hard.
cannot, cannot appreciate this and its creators, el p and double l, enough. in june, I spent a lot of time at work listening to past Home for Carnivals and daydreaming about climbing atop a gas truck in panama and wining until my legs fall off. (claire and I warmed up for this in costa rica a few years ago at a pacific coast festival). this mix could not be better timed, esp. now that the sun has come out again and decks, roofs, and for real for real summer stuff is the haps. I am especially feeling the bacchanal session at this moment and wish that you all would be joining me at prospect park for celebrate brooklyn.
jenny
