Tag Archives: music

Percussion Loops Recorded in Casablanca – Beyond Digital

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Far from being an exhaustive collection of Moroccan percussion loops, this is a small sampling of loops culled from my sessions at the Beyond Digital HQ in Casablanca with Krifart from the local band, Darga.

There is chaâbi, reggada and some hybrid rhythms. Bendir, calabash, darabuka kraqeb and taarija. Some are solid grooves or variations on grooves, some include fills or pickups.

Everything was recorded into Ableton Live using an M-Audio Fast Track Pro interface and an AKG 414 microphone. Not exactly a killer room with great pres and whatever, but we do what we can.

The names include the bpm – in 4/4 – some of these rhythms are in 6/8, but, here the bpms reflect the tempo on a 4/4 grid. The loops are dual mono, 16 bit, 44.1 khz and include the respective .asd Ableton Live files. 34MB

Performed by Krifart. Recorded by Maga Bo. Edited by Colin McSwiggen.

Please use these freely and abundantly. If you do release it somehow, please credit us and let us hear what you did!

Download it here.

An Interview with Ghislain Poirier

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My latest mini-documentary…….with Ghislain Poirier.  The initial interveiw was made at his friend’s amazing rooftop apartment in DUMBO, Brooklyn and then we headed over to the Sub Swara party at Love in the city.  New York City, in case you weren’t sure….There’s also some footage from the Club Transmediale festival in Berlin, as well as some excerpts from his music video clips.

I’ve been a big fan of Ghis’ full, round and sturdy minimal beats for a long time.  He’s curious and open to new sounds.  He does tropical tracks.  In Montreal.  He’s a really sweet, friendly and open guy, which, I think, is a big reason why he’s made all of these great tracks and collaborations.  He makes the effort to get out and connect with folks from all over the place.  It shows in the music.

In the process of editing, I started gathering all of his laughs and putting them at the end of the sequence, not really knowing what I’d do with them.  ghislain breakcore laugh track?  Sorry, they didn’t make it into the final cut, but just so you know, there were a LOT of them!

With this series of mini-docs, I want to demystify the music production process a bit and bring out the humanity of it.  After all, music is a manifestation of history.  of choices and relationships.  This is common to any art, discipline, individual, group or society.  Through communication, real and imaginary differences and similarities become clearer.  Separatist ghetto exoticism cannot exist in this space.  Tamu juntos e misturados.

You can check the rest of the mini-docs (DJ/rupture, Daniel Haaksman, MC Gringo, Diplo, Eritbu Agegnehu Askenaw, Xuman and Keyti, Fletcher) here on Vimeo (better quality) and here on Youtube.

An Interview with DJ /Rupture

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“Last of the famous international sound boys,” Jace Clayton, aka DJ /Rupture, when not singing his own praises (which is quite the exception as opposed to the rule, dontchya know), is a super humble, soft spoken, pleasant and likable chap who does a weekly radio show on WFMU in NYC, heads up Soot Records and co-heads up Dutty Artz, mixes obscure and disparate sonic sources on a three-turntable get up, writes for several different publications including The Fader, Frieze and The National as well as maintaining his very popular blog, Mudd Up!.  A very busy man indeed.

I accompanied him on his trek from Sunset Park, Brooklyn to WFMU just on the other side of the Hudson in NJ.  He had plenty to say about his new album, “Uproot,” on Agriculture Records, life in NYC (where he’s just relocated from Barcelona), shopping for cumbia records, being late…..

Modern Traditional Amharic Music

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Some “modern traditional” Amharic music I got in Addis Ababa. On my first record buying excursion in Addis, I was really disappointed by what I heard at the record shops. Fortunately, most of the shops are very helpful, friendly and willing to play samples of CDs. I was disappointed with the production – the preset sounds, the looped beats with very little variation, the fake saxophones and electric pianos and cheesy sound effects. After spending some weeks riding in local minibuses, taxis and buses, I gained a new perspective on this “modern traditional” music – it sounds TOTALLY different coming out of a crackling and distorted speaker while cruising around Addis (or while chewing chat on bus headed for Harar for that matter). A cheap and easy subsitute for travelling all the way to Ethiopia to hear it in context maybe to plug your CD player into a distortion pedal, close your eyes and will yourself to Piassa……..

I don’t know the artist, title or album of either of these tracks – I can’t read Amharic……..so, I’m just including the covers and tracklists. Track 9 from the above CD and it’s released on the Picolo Music label. Track 3 from the CD below (auto-tune set to pentatonic!) is released on the Master Sounds label.

If there is somebody out there who reads Amharic and would be willing to enlighten me as to the names of the tracks and artists, I’d be very grateful! Thanks!