birds

carnival

ausencia in threes, vol. 2

i have no idea where this came from but i've been listening to salsa for about two weeks. just salsa. from the '70's. from new york. mostly big names, eddie palmieri, ray barretto, fania all-stars. pretty obvious stuff i guess. and willie colon. the cut-off line seems to be about 74-75. after that it just got too coctailish. for me. but the stuff willie colon did with hector lavoe, damn.

willie colon seems to have branded himself as some sort of salsa 50 cent. bad man this, gangster that, blah blah. nothing ever changes. reggaeton folks seem to wear t-shirts with his picture on it. but ok, i'll humor them, the music's great.

anyway.

my favorite song right about now is ausencia, there's this really crappy youtube clip but the essentials will translate through the pixels. there's this trombone breakdown at 1:50-2:10 that just kills me. note TWO microphones! true stereo!

this is also pretty cool.

el michels affair turns wu-samples back into analog funk. some things work, the shimmy shimmy ya with kids' choir is great for friday mornings. here too.

also.

these have been making rounds in the music blogs for a while now. all these are pretty amazing, but the one on latin music has willie colon on it. my other personal favourite is the one with rahsaan roland kirk. check.

temp

photo by balakov

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do read: zadie smith on things and obama. it's good. via here

three things: the move edition

the labbit, the dude from le mans, and the ukulele have moved house. yes, like marilyn, i too play the ukulele. well, not so much "play" as hold it when i feel anxious.

there's a line in john berryman's Dream Songs that must be about moving: "he stared at ruin. ruin stared straight back."

a comment on my last post! turns out somebody does read this.

coincidentia

a while back i got some books from amazon. one of them was this collection of morton feldman's writings.

one was saul bellow's Humboldt's Gift. here's the cover picture credit at the back.



i like things like this. of course there is the obvious connection of both men and their work being closely connected to new york. but still. i like a good coincidence every now and then.

south africa in threes vol.2

new year, new sound every day

new year, some of our fellow capitalists still clinging to the olden days

new year, old president

new year, same old israel

south africa in threes vol.1

i guess old news by now, but relevant to this post, i guess: spoek from sweat x
has a mix out that everyone is posting (so it must be good, right?)

it be here.

it's ok, and it's been slim pickings in south africa lately, music wise, so i guess gratitude is in order. sweat x always sounded a bit too eager to please but maybe it's time for second chances.