Modern & Im/material Things

As a joke the other day, I referred to all 50s era Lebanese Dabke music as “Old School Lebanese Trap Music.” Screw the Harlem Shake. It’s all about the Beiruti Bounce. If that’s not a thing already, then I’m making it a thing. Consider it ‘a thang.’

But in all seriousness, I’ve been in love with this album all winter. Some of these arrangements are just blowing my mind.

Here’s a preview of a new track for my 2013 EP. The track is a work in progress. 

The song contains a sample of Marcel Khalife’s “Asfoor” from the At The Border Album. The sample is of the Oumeima El Khalil version of the song.

(via modernandmaterialthings)

Here’s a preview of a new track for my 2013 EP. The track is a work in progress.

The song contains a sample of Marcel Khalife’s “Asfoor” from the At The Border Album. The sample is of the Oumeima El Khalil version of the song. 

I’m breaking apart my favorite songs of 2012 into two mixes: the slink + the sass. Why those titles? No clue. They came to mind and I am sticking with them.

Mix 1: The Slink

20 songs that are quieter, melancholic and lend themselves to a winter broodfest.

Mix 2: the Sass

20 songs that are dancey, spirited and lend themselves to dance parties in your bedroom (alone or with friends).

I’m basically saying my life oscillates between slink and sass.

This is my stripped down, minimal remix of Florence + The Machine’s “Cosmic Love.” I have nothing but love for this song and all of its over-the-top, borderline cheesiness. But I decided it might make for a more fun musical exercise to completely strip it down to something almost unrecognizable.

A few pals of mine are in a band called Love and Radiation. L&R is something like Au Revior Simone meets Sleater-Kinney: lovely electro pop with alt girl guitar sensibilities. And to boot, they’re pretty cool ladies: Lakshmi is working on PhD in the Classics at UChicago and Adele runs her own civil rights law office. 

Over the weekend, I took a shot at remixing one of their tracks, “Disco Moon”. The remix is kind of minimalist and eastern(ish). Give it a listen if you’re inclined. And while you’re at it, give their music some love as well. 

Something like Burial meets James Blake with the R&B sensibilities of Disclosure (I think these brothers have the best name in electronic music)

This is one slick, well-produced track. There’s something kind of Old School Brian McKnight-y about this song. 

H/T to Britticism for the lead.

freshmedia2012:

Type Project

by Stephanie Dudzic

This project was for Design Studio 1 class, part of the MFA program in Dynamic Media at MassArt. This project is based out of a response to a narrative in Einstein’s Dream in which the pace of time is dynamic and varies for each individual.

In this project, I explore how to use sound to show the dynamic nature of type. The test cases I used explored type both on the computer and also in the real world existing as handmade letters, found type on a sweater, and also creation of music by the manipulation of letter forms.

See this piece and more at Fresh Media!

I’d love to take some philosophical prose or a great political speech and render it musically using the program they designed in this video - something like politicized synesthesia with fonts. So many political possibilities!

Last night, I read that Paris Hilton is launching her career as a professional DJ. Needless to say, I had a “Come to Jesus” moment with myself and decided if she can DJ, I can certainly learn to do it. So last night, I made my first ever DJ mix.  Because I’m a total nerd and project oriented, I am giving myself a ‘concept’ to work with to keep my DJ efforts disciplined and educational. This first mix isn’t perfect - I’m still learning to work on my transitions and seamless beat matching, etc. I should probably stick with one genre to keep things easy but where’s the fun in that? 

The concept?

Introducing “Summer Reading Playlists,”  in which I teach myself how to DJ by making mixes for the books of my summer reading. Mix One, “Regarding the Jams of Others” is based on the journals Susan Sontag kept in her teens and twenties. The book is Reborn and it’s pretty great. Sontag was a sharp, snarky, and brilliant budding lesbo in her youth. You get insight into her thoughts on motherhood and marriage. Weirder still is that the journal is edited by her son, who is mentioned quite a bit in the journals. 

Some of the artists in the mix include: Thunderheist, Body Language, Flying Lotus Burial, Nicolas Jaar, Portishead, Rhye, Delorean, Holy Ghost!, and Toro y Moi

And my favorite Missy Elliot song ever is on it too (“Let Me Fix My Weave”)

I’ll post a full track list in a few days. The mix can be downloaded directly from the my Soundcloud page in case you’re interested. Hopefully others will get some entertainment out of my “educational” summer project. For a first stab, it’s not all that bad. The second half is smoother than the first half but I gotta start somewhere, right? Someone, somewhere, might even think it’s kinda good. Either way, it’s an experiment in learning something new!

Playlist below (Screenshot)

Working draft of a new instrumental. 

LeXo, a Paris based electronic band, and I have spent the better part of 8 weeks ‘remixing’ and re-situating Slavoj Zizek’s Occupy Wall Street speech as an electronic music track. We are currently working on a more in depth write-up of our process working across countries, continents, DAWs as two strangers who have never met but connected in the realms of musical taste and political ideology. Expect a more formal post about that in the next week or so. In the meantime, enjoy the Zizek remix. Spread the word and share feedback. This is our attempt to reimagine how something like the Zizek speech can experienced and shared. 

#occupychristmas

P.S. I drew the cover art/portrait of Zizek in case you’re interested.

Click through for more information about LeXo’s work or my own.