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Thanks to the wonders of Microsoft Entourage I've managed to lose all of my incoming mail from the past week, plus seemingly about 90% of mail received since about October or so. If you have sent me anything important recently and are awaiting a reply, don't hesitate to write back; chances are your message has disappeared into the either.
But I have at least managed to upload part two of the Radio Isla Negra sessions to good ol' YSI; download here, you lucky few. Lemme know when it expires and I'll reupload. (Anyone tried zShare? It seems to have unlimited downloads but I can't actually upload anything to it. Time to go back to bed and start today over, I think.)
Oh yeah, part two includes tracks from Robag Wruhme (Mute), Minilogue (Wir), Luciano/Melchior (Cadenza), Zombie Nation, Matias Aguayo (Kompakt), Tigerskin (Dirt Crew Recs), Luciano, Matias Kaden (Vakant), Daniel Stefanik (Mobilee), Anja Schneider & Sebo K (Mobilee), etc... Rave yr hearts out.
... is that I have heard part two and it is, like, way better than part one. The bad news is that I cannot for the life of me upload the MP3 file to my iDisk, owing to some sort of advanced technical hoo-ha. Please stay tuned, and for the time being, listen to something really good, like the new Knife album.
Speaking of advanced technical hoo-ha: if anyone knows a good reason why an MP3 file edited in a typical audio editor (Amadeus, in this case) and then re-saved as an MP3 (and/or imported into iTunes and converted back to MP3) should provoke an error when being uploaded to my iDisk (something about "this file can't be copied because it contains information of a different format..."), do let me know.
*Photo: Paula Germain.
Last week I was honored to play records for a couple of hours on Chile's fantastic web radio, Radio Isla Negra; you can check the first half of the session here, in a 68-minute, 48 MB file. (Clinking on that link should start the download; if you experience problems, try going directly to my mixes page and download from there. Apologies, also, for the low bitrate.) I'll be uploading part two as soon as I get my hands on it.
There are a few bone-crushingly, uh, awkward transitions, which I blame entirely on the caliber of Chile's stickiest (no, not guano). And maybe a little bit on my own clumsiness. But if you can get through the rocky bits you'll enjoy recent tracks from Minilogue, Rhythm & Sound (Villalobos mix), Pantytec, Bruno Pronsato, Nathan Fake, and more. I'll try to post a tracklisting if anyone cares.
Like Soylent Green's La Forca del Destino (Klang/Ongaku/Playhouse), Crowdpleaser & St Plomb's 2006 (Mental Groove Ltd) is totally setting the pace for this year's house- and techno-leaning longplayers. A sticky Chicago fixation that can't help from going knock-kneed, a dab of Captain Comatose's unhinged soul, some gaslit gumshoe scuffery, a nose for the long groove and an eye on the mirror-bending horizon. Jawdropping stuff, really.
Mali's Ali Farka Toure has passed away.
For those who don't know his work, go to eMusic, subscribe, and download his The Source, like, pronto. That was my introduction to him, and while I'd recommend working backwards from there, it'll open up a whole new world for you.
The world's a far smaller, less beautiful place today.
In the Latin American edition of Rolling Stone, Atom Heart appears in the social pages (alongside Grammy shots Jay-Z, Sir Paul McCartney, Green Day, et al) and Ricardo Villalobos gets a full page interview (in which they even quote big Jess' review in "el quisquilloso sitio musical pitchforkmedia.com").
Sadly, I have no idea what the fuck "quisquilloso" means. Perhaps if I did, I'd actually be able to write for the kind of magazine that would, like, commission a Villalobos piece (and pay you for it!).
Don't think I ever posted this link before, but the liner notes I wrote for the Seńor Coconut-curated Coconut FM CD are finally online. I was a little disappointed that this album didn't make more of a splash last year, and not just because I'm quite fond of the notes, to be quite honest. The comp is pure fire, and you might have thought that the reggaetón and funk carioca portions (2/3 of the album's coverage, the other genre being cumbia, with a killer cumbia lunática selection from Dick El Demasiado worth the price of entry alone) would have resonated with a hipster listenership and critical consensus swayed south by Diplo's efforts at ambassadorship.
But for some reason, Coconut FM didn't garner much buzz. (Props to Chuck Eddy for singling it out in one of his download columns — even though, oddly, the stream links at the time were to Coconut original compositions.)
So for the unconvinced or uninformed, take my word for it: it's worth checking out; one of the record's strengths is the way it bridges "underground" and "mainstream," ignoring hipster cachet in favor of pure sonics. So you get reggaetón's Tego Calderón (w/ a song way better than "Gasolina," IMHO) side by side with Argentina's cumbia villera gangstas Los Pibes Chorros, alongside "fake" reggaetón from Chile, a country not particularly known as reggaeton central. That's the whole point: fake and real get shown the door altogether, under the belief that the sound's all that matters. If you can move your cintura to it, what else matters? (Listen to me, I'm turning all popist.)
Anyway, enjoy the liner notes. Me in not-writing-about-techno-for-once shocka!
PS. For anyone intrigued by all this, a mysterious entity known as the Surtec Collective will be making waves with more Southern Cone-sourced reggaetón (reggaecón?) very soon...