Photos: Jesse Ting
Probably about three quarters of the night recorded due to new year's eve shenanigans
AN HOUR OF…..NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
2 hours ago
MOⒶNARCHISM
This mix is dedicated to the memory of Paul Bowles, an incredible writer, music curator and itinerant traveller.- The Bug
It is for those that seek to keep borders open, when so many, with a vested interest in population control, are trying so hard to shut doors, and limit freedom of thought and movement. When Julian, at RBMA Radio, asked me to put a show together that featured my tracks of the year in 2016, my step off was an incredible 10” by Mark Ernestus where he remixed Nigerian band Obadikah, and set adrift his Rhythm & Sound-past into a seductive, afrodelic future. And that record, together with three jaw-dropping performances I witnessed by Senyawa in solo mode, or together with Rabih Beaini as KAFR, triggered memories of rhythmic fire and bliss, from all four corners of the globe, that I had immersed myself in heavily down the years. I knew I didn’t want to rehash another subjective year end list on radio – I chose instead to centre this show around a coupla personal highlights of ’16, and how those tunes opened up percussive paths, backwards and forwards simultaneously for me.
I remember many years ago, being graciously invited to visit the Jajouka village, deep in the Rif mountains of Morocco by the tribe’s internationally recognized musical leader Bachir Attar, and how, on my first night there, I had been woken by the distant, swirling, magical tones and drones of pipes and drums, sounding like an intense soundtrack to an unforgettable fever dream…
When I later asked Bachir about the music which had greeted the dawn light, he told me that the Jajouka musicians had been playing for a mentally disturbed villager who had been chained to the main village tree, whilst the music was being administered as hypnotic therapy, to cure him of his schizophrenia. That tribal cure for madness had resonated deeply with me, as a fully willing member of McLuhan’s “Global Village,” where digitized tribes amplify cross cultural raids, perpetually morphing electronic nomads ride on phrase shifting alien rhythms, and transgressive 4th world voyagers transform surreal geographical conjunctions into unforgettably fresh mental landscapes.
I remember also, when I finally tracked down Brian Jones’s (Rolling Stones) infamous album of Jajouka field recordings, which he had mixed down thru a wall of phasers, delays and reverbs, how the album had completely washed me away, with its genuinely dreamlike results. And I recall previously, how my first polyrhythmic baptism had bizarrely come c/o Adam & the Ants/Bow Wow Wow shamelessly stealing the infectious stomp of African Burundi drummers, or how 23 Skidoo had eclipsed the legions of goths with their brilliantly exotic melting pot of hand drums, tape looped voodoo, and furious industrial ethno-funk, inspired by gamelan and dub at the ‘Futurama’ festival. Those formulative sonic encounters with mutant wayfarers would lead to me hiring two drummers, and eventually inviting Nana Tsiboe’s phenomenal Ghanian percussionists into the band I formed and led, called GOD.
Transmitting from the echo chamber, deep in a reverb tank, I chose to submerge this mix in a wall of delays, reverberations and filters… it’s a celebration of the joy of movement, so I hope you enjoy the excursion. Hail percussion power.