Image: Tony V

AUSTRALIAN record label Modular Recordings has a great website with dozens of mixtapes or “modcasts” by various artists, acts, and the producers / crew at Modular.

The one I picked for today, Dreamtime – Music For Airports, Planes, Trains and Buses has the following notes:

For the last 3 weeks I’ve been forced to float around Europe thanks to some immigration issues keeping me from my new home in London. A lot of this time has been spent shuffling between airports, planes, trains, buses, hotels, friends flats and footpaths, in Paris, Rome, Gothenburg and Stockholm.

Created with the dual purpose in mind of calming the nerves in the face of tense customs situations and equally sounding sublime while gazing out the window of a moving vessel, here’s a mix of stuff that sounded perfect at various points in time during my exile. More gentle blend than mix so to speak.

This Time Tomorrow – The Kinks
Morning Of The Earth – G Wayne Thomas
The Ballad Of El Goodo – Big Star
Diana – Skip Spence
Copenhagen – Scott Walker
No Other - Gene Clark
Spooky – Gary Walker And The Rain
Tango Whiskeyman – Can
Lullaby – Moondog
Milky Way – Weather Report
Walking In The Rain – Flash And The Pan
Be With – Koushik
Jennifer – Faust
1/1 [Excerpt] – Brian Eno

This was the first mixtape I’ve listened to in a while that wasn’t at least fifty percent beats and breaks. It felt dense and soundtrack-y

Overall I don’t know if I’d say this felt like travel music though. More like travel music for a smuggler in Key West in the 70s or something. Someone with a mustache. At least until the end where it gets to the Brian Eno: then it’s total sunrise in Patagonia or wherever you want it to be.

Still, when it comes to mixtapes, interpretations matter less than intention. They’re like hearing a place and time through someone else’s ears. Bigup modular. Thanks for producing these.

Download and enjoy.

Community Connection

Where do you find good mixtapes? Let us know in the comments.

Debjao del Agua, Dia del Immigrante, Denver.

I LOVE WHEN artists that bring something real and original actually get recognized. This seems to be what’s happening, luckily with Debajo del Agua.

I started listening to Debajo in 2007, catching one of their early shows in a University of Colorado Biology building.

It was among the strangest and best shows I’ve ever been to, not just for the venue but the format, which was a combination of music workshop (demonstrating various wind, string, and percussion elements of Andean music and Afro-Latino percussion) followed by an ass-kicking performance that mixed Caribbean / African rhythms with Latin melodies and laced it all up with rapid-fire hip hop vocals in Portuguese, Spanish,and English from emcees (all brothers), Pablo, Dani, and Elias Cornejo.I don’t think a biology building has ever been rocked so hard.

What I love most about Debajo is how it’s a totally family affair. The patriarch of the band, José Cornejo ( a native of Santiago, Chile), went into exile during the Pinochet regime, eventually settling in Denver and raising his sons, as he says, “listening to songs and instruments of America south of the Rio Grande. . .mixed with the music of Víctor Jara, Violeta Parra, Mercedes Sosa, Atahualpa Yupanqui.”

Now the whole family + friends (most of whom grew up in the same neighborhood in Denver, playing on the soccer team José coached) continue the tradition of songwriting with social justice and human rights as the central message and hip hop culture as the way to deliver it.

I wrote a piece on Debajo del Agua back in 2007, and have kept up more or less ever since. I was stoked to see this week they are being awarded the 2009 Global Justice & Peace Award from the Denver Justice & Peace Committee. If you’re around the area on Dec. 5th, I definitely recommend being there.

Debajo del Agua will perform a full evening of music, plus ndividual band members will speak on issues relating to music and social justice. The ceremony begins at 7:30pm and the concert starts at 10pm.

The event will take place at the Mercury Cafe on Saturday, Dec. 5th. Bigup.

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Bradford Cox. Image: White Rainbow.

I’m still tripping on this Micromix [follow link for free download] from Bradford Cox of Deerhunter.

Even though it was released this summer (and there are a few we-shall-overcome moments that seem like they could’ve only been produced in places with hot weather) the mix has this real autumn-y feel overall, introspective and rainy. But then sometimes you need minor chords.

What I love the most is the momentum that always seems to keep pushing you downstream. It starts with some kind of sweaty handclapping gospel you can visualize somewhere in South Georgia which then dissolves @3:00 to these ambient soundscapes that sound like outer space or maybe Finland.

From there it flows into Pescado Rabioso. This is the stuff my wife and her friends grew up listening to in Buenos Aires, all of them in varying degrees of love with the lead singer Spinetta.

There’s a cool chronological jump then where it goes from Spinetta’s music from the early 70s to current Buenos Aires musical innovator Juana Molina.

I don’t want to keep narrating the rest except to say it all stays tight and ‘in the pocket’ even through a bit of Neil Young and one original track from Atlas Sound, which is Bradford Cox.
Good mixes always reflect the mixer and the person he or she is mixing for, which makes me wonder who exactly “Jeff in Vancouver” is and if there is any connection to Argentina.

I think Bradford Cox is the most relevant musician in the US right now. His mixes are like extensions of the rest of his (and sometimes Deerhunter’s) tracks, many of which get released, like these micromixes, for free at their blog. The original post for this micromix is here. Enjoy.

1. Rev. Johnny L. Jones – Walk With Me / Anonymous – We Shall Overcome
2. Es – Säteet Sun Sielusta
3. Pescado Rabioso – Superchería
4. Juana Molina – Martin Fierro
5. The Particles – Apricot’s Dream
6. Neil Young – Bad Fog Of Loneliness
7. Anonymous – We Shall Overcome
8. Atlas Sound – Coffin Trick (Second Version)
9. Townes Van Zandt – Pancho & Lefty
10. Pescado Rabioso – Las Habladurías Del Mundo

Photo: drumecho

I’ve been in mad work mode for the last 2 weeks and haven’t really been vibing to anything new.

Usually while working [writing/editing] I get distracted if the music is too ‘organic’. If there are too many words or complex melodies or singer / songwriters ‘bearing their souls’ then I’ll find myself stopping to listen.

I work better to straight up beats or hip hop.

The problem though is that it’s hard listening to drum and bass or whatever really early in the morning. Lately I’ve been ‘easing’ into the day with a little dub / steppers / rockers / reggae. It gets a positive vibe going. I’ve found some good work session music at dub session podcasts.

Here’s a link to one.

Each one is long, like an hour of music–and you can fast forward past the cheesy opening sound-effects.

Happy skanking.

I don’t know what it is about Atlas Sound. It’s like it’s always raining in their music. Perfect for out here in the Pacific Northwest. A soundtrack for rain and deep introspection. The title of the album is the best in years: Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Not Feel.

I had this on a few weeks ago as we were driving across the Olympic Peninsula and it seemed to just lock down the drive and the feeling at the time. We were on the 101 West, the terrain alternating between clear-cuts and corridors of cedar and madrona. Rain. Wondering how the surf would be. Slightly nervous.

It seemed like whoever made this vid feels the same way about the rain. The images themselves are ok. . .this is mainly just to listen to.

Travel mp3 of the Week

Bradford Cox (Atlas Sound, Deerhunter) posts a lot of outtakes and audio sketches on the Lotus Plaza / Atlas Sound / Deerhunter Blog.

Here’s a link to the early demos of Recent Bedroom where you can download a few different versions of this track, all of them raw and good for rides or travel. Movement.

Please support Atlas Sound by buying the Album from Amazon or direct from Kranky , a label producing some of the freshest music right now.

Community Connection

Anyone out there seen a Deerhunter or Atlas Sound show? We’d love to read / publish a concert review. Please contact: david [at] matadornetwork [dot] com

Photo by deovolenti

For years I’ve had the thought: ‘what if you could just travel around the world making field recordings of different people playing music and then remix it all into some ill composition?’

Several djs and producers have realized this idea, notably Amon Tobin, whose 2007 release Foley Room, was created entirely out of live recordings.

For the last few years people have also been experimenting with big mashups, only using video instead of just audio. The game has all changed however, with the production of thru-you.

Israeli musician Kutiman explains:

“. . . I collected all kind of different unrelated youtube movies of all kind of different people playing different instruments or singing. I put them together and created new songs and new music. It was really amazing to see how often different movies matched together without me even touching it. “

Instead of famous musicians (except for legendary drummer Bernard Purdie) the people in the videos are mostly unknown. Here’s just a sampling:

• Guitarist who looks like he works at local music store
• Emcee going off on street corner
• High school wood-wind section
• Little kid playing trumpet
• Bedroom diva signing into her webcam
• Middle aged dude ripping on harmonica in his living room

Each person’s ‘part’ is layered on top of another to form different songs ranging from funk and hip hop to reggae and drum and bass.

Listening to thru-you has this unexpected effect, or at least it did for me: you share a little of that same feeling every musician has had at one time or another–that for a second, even if nobody else can hear it, you’re totally going off.

Photo by cinocino. Feature photo by ktylerconk.

As much as anything else, my travels have always been about finding new music. Not that I’m hunting for it (although on occasion I’ve made field recordings) but more just being out there with my ears open.

I’m always ready for the right factors to materialize, say a Saturday night in Cidreira, Brazil when an 18-wheeler converted into a stage with a full Samba band unexpectedly rolls into the town square. Or a quiet afternoon in El Salvador where your host family’s dad breaks out the rum and the guitara.

In the right moments it almost seems as if the music has come looking for you.

Hearing something for the first time.

But oftentimes you keep hearing the same music for a long time without really absorbing it. When I first arrived in Latin America (San Jose, C.R. 1999), everything the bus drivers played—salsa, merengue, bachata—sounded like wheels turning on a broken axle.

It took getting out of the city and up to the cloudforest, and an aguardiente-maddened night where a local dj was dropping merengue on the crowd.

I don’t know what it was exactly, but suddenly I could feel the clave. The rhythm. It went with the terrain, the howler monkeys and hummingbirds. The way people chopped wood with machetes.

Music which defines a moment.

Beyond the music rooted to the places you travel, there is also the music that seems to travel itself, migrating from one area to the next—making its way into hostels and dj stacks, becoming part of local culture abroad, and also returning home with you.

Here are some of those artists and groups producing music which, for the last 10 years, has helped define what world travel sounds like.

Photo by MissKristen*.

1. Manu Chao

1999. Montanitas, Ecuador. Manu Chao’s Clandestino was playing from every hut. It was said he’d been through there earlier with an entire carnival-tribe.

Those of us who’d been traveling for months or years or lifetimes knew immediately: only someone who has spent the better part of his life living with and loving local people could write music like this.

It’s taken a while for him to catch on in the US, but for the last three years he’s been hitting key spots on US tours, and headlined Lollapalooza last summer.

2. Sublime

Sublime, especially the album 40 oz to freedom, was pushed up and down the pacific coast throughout the late 90s and early 2000s by surfers, and picked up by local groms wherever they lived. I remember hanging out in baja and hearing the kids asking to put on Sub—lee—may.

What kind of music would Bradley Nowell be creating right now were he still alive? What a loss.

3. Balkan Beat Box

In their own words, BBB is “a natural reaction of musicians who wanted to erase political boundaries.”

Balkan Beat Box’s two Israeli-born and Brooklyn-based founders, Tamir Muskat and Ori Kaplan, routinely collaborate with Palestinians (at one point having Israeli and Palestinian rappers side by side on stage in Jerusalem), Syrians, Bulgarians, and Moroccans, among others, in a constantly evolving group of musicians and artists around the world.

Last year, Matador interviewed Ori Kaplan just after a break from tour in Tel Aviv.

4. Bajofondo Tango Club

One night after going out in Buenos Aires, I waited at the Correo Central for the 22 to take me back to Quilmes. That’s before I learned the bus doesn’t pull into the Correo at night.

It got super late and I was completely alone but I kept listening to Bajofondo, this drum and bass remix of an old tango. It felt like the city was all mine.

Bajofondo is made up of veteran musicians and producers from Argentina and Uruguay who mash up tango, candombe, and other South American rhythms with breaks, drum and bass, and hip hop.

Member Gustavo A. Santaolalla has also produced soundtracks for Amores Perros and 21 Grams, and later received a 2006 Academy Award for Achievement in music written for motion pictures (original score) for Brokeback Mountain, then a second Academy Award in 2007 for the film score to Babel.

5. Daft Punk

Photo by Caesar Sebastian

Daft Punk built on early Detroit techno, perfecting a brighter, funkier sound that’s remained in clubs no matter where you’ve gone over the last decade.

Anytime I hear “Around the World” I get flashbacks of discoballs in San Jose clubs at the end of the millennium.

6. Buena Vista Social Club

Buena Vista’s story is one of the greatest in modern music. American guitarist and producer Ry Cooder went to Cuba and reunited musicians who had performed at the club 50 years earlier—some of whom hadn’t touched an instrument or performed in decades.

Their recordings and performances were international successes throughout the late 90s.

7. Bebel Gilberto

Bebel is the daughter of bossa nova legend João Gilberto. Bebel’s music is a fresh and smooth and has spread from Rio and New York (where she lives) worldwide.

8. Amon Tobin

Another Brazilian, Amon Tobin is a key innovator and producer of electronic music, and one of the all-stars on the Ninja Tune label. He has collaborated with various artists and influenced countless djs and producers worldwide.

9. Kevin Johansen

Kevin Johansen is half Argentinean, half American, and plays a mix of rock, cumbia, reggae, tango, and other rhythms. He keeps getting better known each year.

10. Marley Family

Damian, Stephan, Julian, Ziggy, Rita—no other family has so many projects and tours going in so many places around the world. From Ziggy’s new album Love is My Religion to Damian and Stephan’s recent albums which have taken dance hall emceeing to new levels of social consciousness, this entire clan just keeps bringing more fire.

These are my top picks for the heavyweight musicians shaping travel culture over the last decade. There are many more to be sure. What’s yours?