I’m getting ready to head out to Baltimore tomorrow for a visit with my man Gregzinho (of Beat Diaspora fame) before my gig in Silver Spring, MD on Friday night. I normally couldn’t be around B’more without ruminating on that city’s club music which has been such an influence.
Now I won’t be able to be there without thinking of B’more’s club queen, DJ K-Swift. She died Monday after a swimming pool accident and the Baltimore club scene is reeling. She’s been a mainstay in the the scene since the early days, and for the past 10 years had been spreading the B’more gospel as a high profile radio personality on Baltimore’s Q92 station.
As a female DJ, K-Swift was rare in the male-dominated scene she loved. She took club music’s raw and raunchy attitude by the horns and worked it. In honor of her life, I’ve made this little remix using an acapella from one her Club Queen albums. Club on, queen!
Beat producer & party scientist DJ C spreads his fiercely eclectic gospel of bass-heavy, bounced-up dancefloor-blends across the land. Join the mayhem!
For the past few years DJ Flack has been teaching a companion course to the weekly party, also called Beat Research. This year he worked with his advanced Beat Research students to put together a compilation of some of their best work and the outcome is a free CD and download album entitled The Petri Disc Vol. 1.
One of my favorite tracks on the comp is DJ Fraze One’s “Dub” remix of Rick Ross’ Everyday I’m Hustlin’:
More summer vibes comin’ atcha! This one’s a dubstep-centric mix I cooked up featuring big tunes by a bunch of friends (big up y’all!) as well as a few folks who’s paths I hope to cross one of these days.
Check below for more info about the artists involved, including our pals from way down south (Caracas Venezuela), Cardopusher and Pacheko who’ve put together a slammin’ little album that we’ll be releasing here at Mashit in the coming months. Stay tuned…
A few months ago I wandered over to Sonotheque to check out Zizek’s first-ever Chicago performance. The rag-tag crew of Argentina-based sonic alchemists threw down beats the likes of which that sound-system had never before been asked to reproduce. The swaggering shuffle of electronic cumbia with huge bass forced all of the few people in the place to sway and eventually dance their faces off. By the end of the show, members of the crew had formed an impromptu acoustic cumbia jam with traditional drums, percussion, melodica, and vocals. It was a crying shame that there weren’t more people in the house to experience and partake in one of the best dance parties of the year.
Zizek is dedicated to the creation of endless tropical nights of dancing utilizing the emerging sounds of Cumbia, Hip Hop, Dancehall, Reggaetón, Bastard Pop, Mashups and more. The goal however is to give these styles, ideas and rhythms an Argentine touch, with the aim of putting Buenos Aires on the map of the global music scene.
The star of Zizek has been Cumbia, a Latin American sound born from the fusion of old and new worlds in Colombia. Zizek is adapting cumbia’s distinctive rhythm to make it relevant to a new generation of Latin Americans and it´s artists have created a few genres of their own, like cumbia beat, cumbiastep, and cumbia hop. Zizek´s producers are bringing out contrasting takes on a genre that already has a massive following and it is exploding faster than it ever would have up until now.
Following up their much hyped SXSW appearance, the revolving Zizek crew will be in the USA, Canada and Mexico again this July for a coast to coast summer blowout tour. DJ Villa Diamante and Bersa Discos Oro11 together with ZZK Records newest artists Fauna and Chancha Vía Circuíto will be bringing the new sound of Argentina to North America this time around.
The tour will feature DJ Sets and Performances by:
Villa Diamante
B.A.´s “it DJ” and Zizek Resident, specializes in mashing up Argentine & Latin American flavor with Northern Hemisphere Hip Hop, Grime, Electro, & Pop.
Fauna
Fauna´s “Tropitronica” sound blends Latin elements with electronic beats and the duo includes live hip-hop/ragga vocals to round out their upbeat, sonically innovative productions.
Chancha Vía Circuíto
Chancha is one of the hottest names in the new cumbia scene. His productions have caught the eye of international beat hunters and his tracks have been featured heavily on mixtapes by Diplo, Maga Bo and more.
Oro11
Co -owner of S.F.´s Bersa Discos, Oro11 lived in Buenos Aires for 3 years where he developed a taste for intensifying and modernizing cumbia villera through harder dancehall and Baltimore club beats.
Tour Dates:
07.10.08 (LAMC) @ SOBs - New York City, New York w/ Toy Selectah
07.11.08 @ Club Lambi - Montreal, Canada
07.12.08 (Ritmo y Color Festival) @ Brigantine Room - Toronto, Ontario
07.14.08 @ TBA
07.15.08 @ TBA - Detroit, Michigan
07.16.08 @ Sonotheque - Chicago, IL
07.17.08 @ TBA - Cleveland, Ohio
07.18.08 @ TBA
07.19.08 @ SOBs - New York City, New York
07.22.08 @ Nectar – Seattle, Washington
07.23.08 @ Berbati’s Pan – Portland, Oregon
07.24.08 @ Mezzanine -San Francisco, CA w/ Bersa Discos & Drop the Lime
07.25.08 @ TBA - Los Angeles, CA
07.26.08 @ Getty Museum - Los Angeles, California
07.31.08 @ Pasaguero - Mexico City, Mexico w/ Las Kumbia Queers
Chrissy Murderbot, Micada and I will be in the house tonight, Monday, July 7 for our bi-weekly Chicagoland radio series; Joystyxx Radio. Tonight is a Micada birthday special (It’s on Wed.) Happy B-day, Micada!
Every other Monday evening from 8 to 10 pm we’re kickin’ it old-school, new-school, and everything in between-school over the airwaves of Loyola University’s WLUW, 88.7 FM in Chicago and on the web at www.wluw.org.
It’s always a party in the studios, so be sure to tune in and join the fun music, commentary, and antics.
After I posted Since You’ve Been In This Club — my remix of Usher’s Love In This Club and Sasha Frere-Jones singing Kelly Clarkson’s Since You’ve Been Gone — I got a comment from Refusenik asking if I could post the instrumental, or perhaps a version with Kelly Clarkson’s original vocals on it. So I messed around with Clarkson’s vocals and came up with an interesting, but by all accounts annoying (the vocals are way pitched-up) mix, in addition to a dub/instrumental version. Give ‘em both a listen above.
Here’s another in our continuing series of summertime ‘08 mixes to bump at your next sublime experience.
I had been noticing DJ Intel’s name on flyers all over Chicago recently, but hadn’t had a chance to hear what he was up to until we rocked a party together a few weeks ago. His set was so dope! This mix is also dope; kind of epic in fact! It’s not about beat-matching and blends per se, but instead about moods and magic:
Ridiculious Requests Part 2: DJ is spinning. Entire crowd is dancing. Someone comes up and asks: "Do you have anything we can dance to?" Twitter ->2 hours ago
Ridiculious Requests Part 1: DJ is playing James Brown "Sex Machine". Girl comes up and asks "do you have any 'funk'?" Twitter ->2008/07/21
The Water's on Fire! Party in the tunnel at Indie Arts Fest in Providence went off last night. Good sweaty fun! Twitter ->2008/07/20
Most diverse crowd ever! Providence, RI. Twitter ->2008/07/19
Watching outdoor roller derby in providence. Twitter ->2008/07/19
I’m getting ready to head out to Baltimore tomorrow for a visit with my man Gregzinho (of Beat Diaspora fame) before my gig in Silver Spring, MD on Friday night. I normally couldn’t be around B’more without ruminating on that city’s club music which has been such an influence.
After I posted 
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