The cunning, big-eared, abstractionist hip-hop producer Madlib has as much Robert Rauschenberg in him as he does Afrika Bambaataa. His works are often sewn from pre-existing material, but he’s less a DJ than he is a die-hard object-oriented composer, forming from pre-existing parts these wide, broad pieces of music that are entirely his own, yet [...]
Reading the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is a sure way to raise my blood pressure, but I don’t necessarily expect the same from its book reviews. In the February 22 edition of the newspaper, Sam Sacks (an editor at openlettersmonthly.com) weighed in on David Shields’s latest effort in literary activism, the book Reality Hunger: [...]
Major congrats to Philly-based outward-bound hip-hop and soul-cutup producer WHY?Arcka, aka Shawn Kelly, who has completed his 26-track series of free downloads, Exhibits A – Z, which he launched last year at arckatron.bandcamp.com.
Each entry in the Exhibits series takes a few brief snippets of familiar songs and creates something new out of these little [...]
Funky glitches? Check. Latin American vibe? Check. Found-sound texture? Check.
Dateline circa 1970? Now, hold on a second.
Welcome to the sound world of Brazilian composer Jorge Antunes (born in Rio de Janeiro, 1942), three tracks of whose music were recently made freely available at that Area 51 of avant-garde culture, ubu.com.
The collection is [...]
The winner of the Northern Arts Prize for 2010 is Pavel Büchler, whose recordings of applause were the subject of an entry here back in October 2008 (disquiet.com). Büchler’s works in various media, and his “You Don’t Love Me” is “an installation that uses a reel to reel tape deck, a bottle of whisky and [...]
Japan isn’t just the home to some of the world’s best turntables. It is also, by no small coincidence, home to some of the best turntablists. The great website turntableradio.com has been celebrating this natural national direct-drive resource with a series of live performances, most recently a massive jam session featuring a who’s who of [...]
Philly-based avant-hop producer WHY?Arcka hit the penultimate this week: the 25th entry in his Exhibits A-Z series of tightly wound, conceptually circumscribed, left-field funky remixes. Each cut takes small slivers of existing songs and refashions them into sonic trinkets. The samples he selects are too purposefully limited to be radio-friendly, and too broad to fit [...]