Ivory Coast sensation Manou Gallo will be on tour to celebrate the 10th year of Polish jazz vibraphone player Bernard Maseli throughout April 2011.
Gallo, a highly-rated bassist and percussionist, released “Dida” and “Lowlin” on the IglooMondo label. More details are available on the IglooMondo site. Click through for the Polish tour dates.
Palestinian/Tunisian/French electro outfit Checkpoint 303 will be appearing (for free) in Rome on Sunday May 31 as part of the “Finding Palestine” event, featuring traditional and contemporary arts. They will also be appearing at the Venice Biennale. Click “read more” for further details.
Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. will host the 4th annual Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival, the first and largest international hip-hop festival in the US, on April 3rd and 4th, 2009. This year, the event is headlined by K’naan, the rising star in international hip-hop. The Somali MC spent the last 2 years touring with Damian and Stephen Marley. His vividly spoken images of war-torn Somalia and fierce criticism of American gangster rap has garnered him appearances on BET, MTV and collaborations with Mos Def and M1 of dead prez. K’naan signed with A&M/Octone in 2008 and released Troubadour in February 2009.
The Palestinian/French/Tunisian electro collective will be appearing at the Générale en Manufacture in Paris on February 2:
They will then appear at the Chabada in Angers the following day, February 3. Click through for details.
Mehdi Haddab & The Speed Caravan
Nutty oud players DuOud will be playing shows in London and Paris over the coming weeks. Mehdi Haddab’s experiment in blending percussive and snappy oud playing with electronics and even speed metal is a sight to see. They’ll be at the K-Wa in Paris on the 22nd and the Ginglik in London on the 27th, notably. Click through for dates.
Shantel, the pioneer of Balkan dancefloor grooves, is touring Europe between October and January. The former DJ combines Balkan and Turkish music with dance grooves, creating a sound which is pretty much irresistible. His music offers a bold, colourful challenge to the wall-to-wall House/Lounge sounds of most clubs, provoking hysteria in more than one venue. He will be touring with an 8-piece band. Check out the album “Disko Partizani” and click through for the full tour dates.
Not a lot of people know that South Africa has a vibrant electronic scene. It gets a little showcase this month, with the release of the “Facebreaker” game on Xbox and PlayStation. The South African group Tone Deaf Junkies are featured alongside people such as Drop Kick Murphys on the game’s soundtrack. The track is from their album “Alpha”.
After their recent live shows in Australia and in Tokyo and the support set with Massive Attack in France (Nuits de Fourvière festival), Checkpoint 303 has been invited to perform an audio-visual electro-acoustic set @ Scala in London, Sat. Oct 4th, 2008. The line-up of this event organized by SOAS students’ union & SOAS Palestine Society:
Checkpoint 303 (live electronics/visuals/oud, Palestine/Tunisia/France)
Ramallah Underground (trip-hop/hip-hop + visuals by Ruanne, Palestine)
Visionary Underground (live D’n'B, UK)
DJ U-Cef + DJ Bashir
Doors open @ 8 pm, CP-303 Live sets start @ 9 pm // so be there early! For details, visit the Scala.
Before that, Checkpoint 303 will be the guests of “Les visiteurs du jour” a daily program on Radio France Internationale (RFI Paris Studios / 44 million listeners worldwide). The radio magazine is dedicated to news about the trends and challenges of the world’s societies with in-depth analysis and conversations with the world press and “audio snapshots” of key players in the world’s social mix. The program starts at 11h40. The Checkpoint 303 interview is scheduled for this thursday (2nd Oct. 2008) live from Paris (and by phone from Jerusalem) at 12h10 (World: 11h10 UT // Africa: 3h10 UT ). Check RFI for frequencies.
Checkpoint 303 - the Palestinian/Tunisian/French outfit that bills itself as “free tunes from occupied territories” - will perform a DJ set at the legendary Tacheles alternative art-house in the center of Berlin on Thursday 7th of February, 2008. The gig will take place at the opening of a photography exhibition organized in collaboration between Tacheles Kunsthaus and the Conflict Zone Art Asylum network. The show starts @ 7 pm (Free entry).
With Middle East talks more or less on track, the Palestinian-Tunisian outfit Checkpoint 303 have released a new tune to the web called “Gaza Calling”. As a reminder, Gaza has been the subject of an air, land and sea blockade by Israel since Hamas took over there and following repeated missile attacks from the territories. “Gaza Calling” is based on a man’s attempt to get through to the UN to explain the living conditions there.
The track is typical Checkpoint 303: snappy Arabic percussion, angular electronics and the occasional oud. They appeared at a major festival in Montreal recently. For details and to hear “Gaza Calling” visit Checkpoint 303.
Apart from the Chehadé brothers, I had never really thought about Palestine as a source of music - and certainly not electronic music. Mea culpa. Checkpoint 303 are a Franco-Palestinian-Tunisian collective that create electronic music using field recordings of life in the occupied territories. Although not overtly political, the sounds they use are often of demonstrations, bullets being fired and voices through megaphones. They combine this with snippets of news reports (most effectively in “Needle Stuck on Lebanon”). Add a touch of oud-playing and you get a rich sound with an overlay of drama.
Checkpoint 303 are about to play a number of dates in Palestine, including a special event at the Beit Hanina college in East Jerusalem for the international Fête de la Musique on June 23. Check their MySpace page for updates, or download their music on Checkpoint 303.
The music of the Balkans must be some of the most incendiary being played today. Outfits such as Taraf de Haidouks, Koçani Orkestar and Mahala Raï Banda play with a trademark brass sound that reaches fever pitch pretty quickly - and never comes down (think of a film by Kusturica and you won’t be far off).
So what would happen if you give their material to a selection of mixers, turntablists and DJs? The answer is “Electric Gypsyland 2″. Tunng, Buscemi (best known for his Latin lounge mixes), Oi Va Voi (a klezmer afficianado) and London’s Russ&Roc accepted the invitation. So what do we get for our time? Click through to find out…
Created in 1998 by two Iraqi brothers brought up in France, Aiwa is one of the most exciting fusion/electronic outfits. Musically, they mix Classical Arabic sounds with heavy dub/electronic grooves and ultra-suave rap. They have released two albums “Aiwa” and “El Nar” (photo), with an album of remixes of “Aiwa” in the pipeline - more about this later.
Aiwa are about to take to the road again, playing a number of dates in France and Poland:
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COMPLEXE CULTUREL | CHAUMONT | ||
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CDQ | WARSAW | ||
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PIWNICA | POZNAN | ||
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MOZG | BYDGOSZCZ | ||
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ZAK | GDANSK |
To check out their music, visit Aiwa Music.
With a title that is sure to get lots of search engine activity, Crammed Discs have started opening their archives. The European label is known for its cosmopolitan genre-bending style such as Bebel Gilberto (see below), the early Zap Mama and Taraf de Haidouk. In the eighties and nineties, they also had a successful electronic imprint called SSR (Sampler Sans Reproche - Sampling without fear). The virtual twin-set includes material such as the Matthew Herbert remix of a Hector Zazou/Harold Budd track, a Snooze remix by Isolée, a track off the long-deleted DJ Morpheus vs Bassbin Twin vinyl EP, sonic terrorist Meira Asher, London jazz/dope beats heads Elixir, Japan’s Tao, Phosphorus and their dreamy, soundtrack-like trip-pop and Finland’s minimal/glitch pioneer Aural Expansion.
“Sex and the Single Rabbit” will only be available through electronic outlets, which most likely means that tracks can also be downloaded individually. If that sounds tasty, try the link below.
