The Incredible Blog

So I could tell a long story about my history with Ed Brubaker but I’m not up for it right now. Let’s just say that I never thought I’d see the man write a mainstream superhero comic, much less a huge chunk of the Marvel Comics line. So in addition to Daredevil and Captain America (never thought I’d be spening money on Captain America!) and the Uncanny X-Men, and Criminal, we now have the Immortal Iron Fist. Well that image has my inner 9 year old excited. Ed Brubaker once again gets my money, and we’ll see if it’s any good.

11/18/06

Actually went to a show last night. With Anjali. Bass Nectar and edIT at Sabala’s. Packed house of young Burner types. Knit dread caps. Facial hair. Skinny young girls with belly buttons showing. edIT was playing glitchy dancehall-styled beats when we arrived. All the beats were under 100 bpm. Minimal hip-hop and dancehall beats with an emphasis on a very digital sound with some glitchiness and effects. Every song got played for a looong time. Songs would stop and reform many times with the central beat coming back in eventually. Always with some force but not much speed. Hip-hop vocals would appear sometimes, buried in the mix. Part of the crowd was really into him but the transition to Bass Nectar took a long time and some of the crowd was really eager for Lorin (aka Bass Nectar) to go on. First they had to wait through several songs that consisted of breakdowns with sampled voices saying “ediT” and then big glitchy beat bombs hitting. The bass did hit with some force and the sonics were not disagreeable, just repetitive, limited to particular sounds and frequencies, and all in a bpm range that felt slow and enervating.

So Bass Nectar and his four feet of hair finally go on. Bass Nectar is an exceptionally tall and skinny guy with long, long brown hair. Eventually it went up in bun, but that took a while. He was jazzed. Got on the mic and told the crowd they were nasty motherfuckers, they could feel free to come up and dance behind him, (a lot of them were) and that he was looking forward to playing music for us over the next two hours. You should know how we were feeling at at this time. Anjali and I were both quite tired. We dragged ourselves to the show, we had to park a ways away, and walk quite a distance. It was a cold night so I had on thermals, a sweater, and a heavy industrial jacket. The club was packed. Either squeezing by people the whole time, or them squeezing by you. Constant contact and a hot, sweltering vibe that had me pouring sweat the whole time I was there. If there was room to be comfortable, I had been dressed for the club instead of outside, and there was air conditioning, I might have lasted a lot longer.

Neither Anjali or I had ever seen or even heard Bass Nectar before. We had been hearing a buzz ABOUT him for quite a while. Seemed like a Burner focused subculture had sprung up around him. We had gotten the impression that there was some sort of international element to his sound and that had us curious enough to check him out. We blew off his last performance at the Greek so we were motivated to not miss him this time.

First of all, I expected something a lot faster. I pictured a sound more like 130-150bpm breakbeats. Not at all. The pace was very similar to edIT’s set. Dancehall/Hip-hop bpm range, but clinical, digital-sounding, largely intstrumental, with a constant emphasis on squelching midtones. It was those keyboard squelches that seemed to be the focus of the DJ and the crowd’s interest. As his first track was playing (a remix of the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian”) I leaned over to Anjali and mentioned how well it would mix with Bass Nectar’s remix of the Cheb I Sabbah track “Alkher Illa Doffor.” Sure enough, that is what he played next. The crowd seemed unsure of the Arabic vocal but approved greatly when the squelchy midtones came in. The sound was so consistent from track to track that I was basically just waiting for any sort of international content that might break up the monotony of the keyboard-heavy, slowish, digital beats. At one point he was playing a track with an African sounding vocal and then he mixed in a remix of Panjabi MC’s “Jogi.” Anjali and I are constantly drowning in piles of hundreds of new (and old!) Bhangra releases so we have to remember that even in 2006 the Panjabi MC release is still the only official Bhangra release in the US that isn’t a mixed artist comp. People don’t even know that the Panjabi MC release is a collection of oldy, moldy material that predates all his far more interesting material from the last eight years that has still yet to see a US release date.

I kept waiting for the tempo to pick up, kept thinking it would all of a sudden lurch into nu-breaks or D’n’B paced territory. Instead he gets on the mic and warns people he’s going to bring the tempo way down. Down? He brings a beatboxer onstage to show off his beatboxing skills. The beatboxer gets a solo spotlight for a while.  (At the time I thought it was local wonder Fogatron, but Fogatron wrote me after reading my blog to tell me that it wasn’t him.)  Then Lorin brings in the keyboard line the beatboxer has been mouthing and they start playing together. Soaked with sweat and exhausted, we began our long squeeze through all the people whose numbers were now only somewhat less than when we arrived. It was now 1:30am and as we exited people were still arriving.

Both edIT and Bass Nectar had very consistent sounds and tempos, that weren’t that far removed from each other. edIT was a little more glitch, a little more mainstream hip-hop. Bass Nectar was fetishistically attached to acidy keyboard sounds. Both stuck with slower than house tempos. Both did very little if any blending, instead bringing a song down to a single noise and then bringing in a new track. Effects played a big role in how they transitioned from one track to the next. Both moved a lot in place while they DJed trying to keep the crowd’s energy level up with their own movement and projected excitement about their own tracks. There seemed to be very little evidence of any tricks, scratching, blending, or other DJ fripperies. Nothing sounded horrible or awful, its just that the sonics were so samey over the course of the night, as well as the tempos. The international content was minimal in Bass Nectar’s set (I thought I heard some ethnic percussion buried in one of the digital rhythms) and I really look for those ancient textures and rhythms to add some passion and interest to the sterile digital beat array. I’m curious what happened in the next hour but I was far too exhausted and uncomfortable to stick around and find out.
IK

11/18/06

Tonight I’m scheduled to play a party in honor of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the most recent incarnation of the Portland Wobblies. According to the host, Lil’ Pete will also be DJing tonight. The joke is that I owe my DJ career to Lil’ Pete and I’ve never even seen the man perform. Many of you may have heard him throwing down the old school Jamaican sounds at Beulahland. Now, I may have briefly been at that bar while he has performed, but I have never watched him with intention, and having no conscious memories of any of his sets, I will stick by my assertion that I have never seen him perform.

Now back in the ’90s I had briefly been a radio DJ on KWVA, and I had assisted on Nomadic Noize’s show on KPSU, but it was only due to the insistence of friends who were awed by my vinyl collection that I found myself DJing house parties. By the Spring of 1999 I had done a few that were basically total busts with no one really dancing or necessarily even coming near the room where the DJ set up was. I was still intrigued and still up for doing more, but I hadn’t had a very successful experience. May Day of 1999 rolls around and a huge May Day party is thrown at the Borthwick Manor. A large Communist arch has been erected over the driveway and the long kitchen counters are covered in donated artisan Bread and Roses. The house is packed. Everyone is buzzing about Lil’ Pete, soon to arrive and DJ. Even though my prior experience of DJing at the Borthwick Manor had been a bust, with neither I or my partners able to generate much positve interest, I was still hurt that I hadn’t been asked to perform at this party, with a “name” DJ booked instead. At a certain point the hosts find me in the packed house and insist that I must go home and get my music because Lil’ Pete is not going to show. Resentful that I hadn’t been asked all along, yet excited at the possibility of playing for this crowd, my friend Kanoa and I drive to my house to pick out music. This was a new task for me at which I had little experience, and I did play things for Kanoa while I got ready, so it took a fair amount of time. I remember playing the first Eminem album that had just come out for Kanoa. He was quite intrigued by the song about a date freaking out on psychedelic mushrooms. By the time Kanoa and I had returned to the Borthwick Manor the house had cleared out quite a bit. Who knows how long I had taken to return with the music. The DJ set up was an amazingly cobbled together patchwork of home electronics with no DJ mixer or professional turntables in sight. Who knows what Lil’ Pete would have made of it had he shown up.

I had recently returned from Central America with piles of bootleg cassettes I had bought on the streets. Reggaeton, meren-rap, meren-house, and other dance music. At the time I didn’t even know these genre names. I just knew that this was some exciting dance music. The DJ set up consisted of tape decks and turntables and maybe even a CD player. I proceeded to play a mix of my new Central American tapes and my favorite revolutionary hip-hop. The dance floor exploded. Although many people had left, the ones who remained WANTED TO DANCE! People were throwing themselves about the room, spinning, whirling, stomping their feet. This was the DJ experience that got me hooked. I played hotshit material that really excited me and got a vigorous dance floor in response. No DJ can ask for more.  If I had to point out one experience that really gave me the DJing bug it would be this one, May Day 1999.

The night was not without hitches. The electronics that I was playing through included a haphazardly plugged in guitar amp. The sound sources had greatly different volume levels, due to turntables being plugged into line inputs without the proper amplification.  Some songs whispered out of the speakers even with the volume cranked and others screamed out from belly of the guitar amp with such a force that looks of terror would grip the faces of those near to the sound.
Interestingly enough, after most everyone was gone and it was just the hosts and I and a few friends laying about and relaxing, Kanoa got on the turntables. He began experimenting and scratching mostly using that first Eminem record. Although I had never heard it myself, I had heard legends about Kanoa’s radio show at Lewis and Clark. Apparently he would play multiple conflicting sources at once and leave the DJ room. In my own shows I had always prided myself on playing as diverse and experimental a range of music as possible, but Kanoa showed me the box I had yet to think outside of. Multiple clashing sound sources? Wow, I hadn’t thought of that. I had a similar response listening to him shred my vinyl in the wee hours after the party. He was taking a lot of chances, making a lot of noise, and having a lot of fun. Being experimental, basically. As juiced as I was from my performance I was humbled by the fact that Kanoa was taking things farther into the abstract. As perverse as I get when I’m DJing I still have a fundamental part of me that wants to give the people what they want, and get them off. I’ve always admired DJs who go much farther out than anyone is expecting or prepared for. My crowd pleasing tendencies sometimes hold me back from really pushing people in a much more aggresive or experimental direction.  The truly willful make me aware of my own inhibitions when it comes to sharing sound.

So there you have it, the story of how I owe my DJing life to Lil’ Pete, the DJ who didn’t show. I hope we have fun playing tonight.

IK

11/12/06

Thank you to everyone who came out to our ATLAS Three Year Anniversary Party!  There were a lot of events that night and we’re glad so many of you decided to come down and celebrate with us.  Thank you to the dancers and drummers from Samba Sol who made our anniversary so special with their performance.  Thank you to Anjali and E3 for being such great partners!  Thanks to Holocene for being such a cool club.  Here’s to three more years!

IK

11/8/06

Anyone who has spoken to me knows that my speaking style involves a great deal of exaggeration, over-dramatization and hyperbole. I have such a fondness for this way of speaking, perhaps because I don’t often see my words in print. In this week’s Willamette Week article on this Saturday’s Atlas three year anniversary party I am quoted as saying that twenty to twenty-five US dollars is equal to “like a million dollars” in India. Obviously I am well aware that the exchange rate is nowhere near close to such a figure. Even when I was saying the words I was aware of how much I was stretching things, no doubt thinking, “I hope they don’t print this.” Well, they did. I was stretching things to make a point, that night club prices in places like Delhi put admission far beyond the reach of most Indians. For the majority of India the admission may as well be a million dollars if they are going to charge 1000 rupees. Yes, there is a growing middle class, but this is still a tiny part of the entire Indian society.

Anjali figures anyone that has ever talked to me will know it is straight hyperbole. I imagine a hyperbolic tone doesn’t always transfer to print with the intended meaning intact. Perhaps next interview I will remember the dangers of exaggeration in print.

IK

11/05/06 am

We just got back from DJing Shringara in Seattle, a new night dedicated to “Seattle’s new Asian sound.” An Asian underground night that Anjali is infinitely qualified to DJ and I thought,”I’ll come up with something.” I’ve been following the Asian underground sound since the ’90s but I’ve never found more than a few tracks that I thought were dance floor smashes and I figured Anjali was going to play those so what was I going to do. I knew I had a couple new Bhangra D’n’B tracks up my sleeve but was that going to fill an hour plus? When I am booked to play an “Asian Underground” night that means nothing but D’n’B and breaks to me, but I never know if the promoter and crowd are on the same page as I am or not. There is so much conflationism and confusion when people try to use different terms to describe South Asian music. I know what I am talking about but I often question how much other people do. I assumed originally that the night was all about the breaks but when I was assured that Bhangra and Bollywood were OK I thought, “I guess I can make it work.”

Whenever we play another city I have no idea what to expect in terms of who the crowd will be or how many people will make up that crowd. We do such a good job of promoting ourselves in Portland that I often want to play a role in promoting ourselves in other cities when we have gigs there. I know that promoters can have very specific ideas about how they want to promote a night and who they want to promote it to so I usually don’t do anything, despite my desires, because I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes. I was really hoping that word had gotten out to Seattle’s massive (compared to Portland) South Asian community but I wasn’t sure if that had happened or not. I was concerned when we arrived in town and checked the papers and saw not a mention or a listing or anything. I know there had been a fair amount of online promotion so I could only hope that that would do the trick. When I realized that there were no competing South Asian parties in Seattle the same night that made me hopeful that we might be able to draw a crowd. Unfortunately when we arrived around 11pm there was hardly anyone there. We walked through a dance floor of maybe two or three people to leave our things on the stage where DJ Osiris was playing. Fortunately our friend DJ Collage was there (even though he had to leave for work shortly) and his good energy and good spirits really helped to make us feel a million times better about the night. We met the very friendly percussionist who was going to be playing with us. His name is Pak Hanafi and he is Copy’s Dad!! What a trip. Very friendly man. He informed us that their was a HUGE Burning Man event going on and apparently that is a large part of their crowd. Everyone he had invited to our event was surprised he wasn’t going to be at the Burning Man event. Oh well.
Anjali went on with a few tribal dancers on the floor. She feeds off a crowd and tends to perform better the more people there are in an audience. I knew she was going to have trouble in such an empty room. Sure enough I could tell she was feeling awkward and having a difficult time reading the room as I watched her onstage. She really wanted to play experimental and I couldn’t help but notice that the strongest crowd response was for her one song that was a fairly straight Bhangra track. I knew this wasn’t going to make her happy because of how leftfield she wanted to play but it reassured me because I was feeling like playing a straight Bhangra set. Sometimes I want to play everything in the world in the space of an hour and sometimes I just want to hammer home some Bhangra. Before I discovered the Panjabi sound I thought I would never be able to play a set of a single genre because nothing would hold my interest to that extent. After absorbing a bunch of Bhangra back in early 2001 I thought, “Wow, I could play a whole set of this music.” And lo and behold I sometimes do. Give or take the aforementioned Bhangra D’n’B tunes that is exactly what I did. Maybe I betrayed the spirit of the night. Maybe I was repetitive and unorginal. Maybe the Panjabi sound is totally played-out as far as Seattleites are concerned. Whatever. I blasted hardcore Panjabi for my whole set. The dance floor came and went and probably at its height there were only 10-15 people on the floor. They definitely spazzed to the D’n’B at the end of my set and they were applauding and asking for “one more” at the end, so it could have been worse. Thank you to Infinite Connections for bringing us up. Thanks to the people who came out and danced. I still have to wait for my chance to play to a large South Asian crowd in Seattle but I hope I will get my chance eventually.

IK

PS I have to give it up to my sister who I only thought was going to last for a couple songs but who actually hung in there til the bitter end, even helping load up the car after the gig. What a trooper. She definitely appreciated Anjali’s more diverse set but she lasted through my Panjabi marathon. Major brownie points. Next time she’s in the audience I’ll have to throw her a bone and vary my set a bit. Thanks, Sis.

11/04/06

Anjali and I are playing Seattle tonight for the first time in quite a while. We’ve had all sorts of unpleasant experiences with the promoters and DJs up here but it seems like we actually found a group with some good energy. We’ll have to see how the night goes but it feels good right now. When we arrived late last night we were looking through the weekly papers and learned that Panjabi MC was playing that night. Panjabi MC?! How did we not know about this? We saw his show when he played Seattle a couple years ago. Strangely enough he started out that show with a “Puerto Rico” chanting track which was very odd coming from him. Even more odd that he was playing it in a place like Seattle and not New York. He had an excellent hype man, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately I can’t remember his name. Panjabi MC was far less capable of commanding the crowd. At one point a huge mass of Indians had mobbed the stage at the Showbox. Panjabi MC tried futilely for 15 minutes or so to try to get the group of dancers to clear the stage. “C’mon peepsh,” he kept saying. “C’mpn peepsh thish ish Panjabi Mshee.” He didn’t prove himself much of an MC aka mic controller, because the crowd took forever to leave the stage despite incessant pleas. His set is now almost entirely forgotten since the drunken escapades of a friend of ours were far more diverting. I do remember that he played several of his hits.

Last night we drove by Neumo’s to check on the show, see if it was sold-out, etc. It had been cancelled. Nothing was going on at all. Hmmm. Anjali had been texting DJ Rekha to see if she knew anything about this show. She texted that he had been in the UK the day before. I wonder when his new album is supposed to come out. Several years ago we introduced Rekha to a book called “Folk Instruments of the Punjab.” It comes with a CD of sound samples of all sorts of Panjabi folk instruments. When PMC say Rekha’s copy he wanted to get his own in order to finish up his new album. We shipped him a copy quite a while ago so I wonder how much longer we will have to wait until his new album finally becomes available.

Many non-Indians probably don’t know that he released an album called “Steel Bangle” strictly for the Indian community. However he has not yet followed up his mainstream “Beware” album. That album itself was a collection of old tracks that had none of the futurism or excitement of his last couple Indian releases. I’m really hoping he steps it up on his next one with some real next level shit.
IK

10/29/06

I’ve noticed a trend in reggaeton criticism lately that I totally disagree with. It seems like the only time a reggaeton artist is praised is if they do anything other than reggaeton, or attempt to stretch the genre as far from its origins as possible. If an artist incorporates other genres and rhythms and styles and flows, then they are deemed talented and worthy of interest. Anyone doing straight reggaeton is boring and repetitive and stultifying according to this line of thought. I call bullshit on that. Do critics say a heavy metal artist is good to the extent that they branch out and perform other styles of music? Is a punk rock band good to the extent that they play some slower numbers and don’t play everything fast and loud? Is a hip-hop artist good to the extent that they don’t rely on hip-hop rhythms and styles on their albums? I think it is a sign that these critics don’t like straight reggaeton.

I do.

That doesn’t mean I don’t draw any distinctions. Like any genre 99% is boring and uninteresting and unexceptional, but the stuff I like the most is most definitely reggaeton and not some fusion with salsa or bachata or hip-hop or whatever fusion some critic deems more interesting or progressive.

An artist can be amazing working strictly within one genre. What is wrong with being dedicated to making the best folk, rock, jazz or whatever album you want? Is a folk album only good to the extent that it is incorporating R&B? Is a jazz record only good to the extent that it is incorporating Norwegian Black Metal? These critics who only praise reggaeton artists who perform as many things as possible that aren’t straight reggaeton are simply people that don’t like reggaeton. That is like someone who hates metal reviewing Metallica and talking about how great their ballads or their southern boogies are and how they should stop doing boring repetitive metal.

The reggaeton that I am enjoying the most is striving for the most awesome platonic reggaeton form and not trying to disappear in fusion. I’m all for the blending of styles and mashups of influences but I don’t denigrate reggaeton by thinking it is only worthwhile when it is being something other than good ol’ reggaeton. Many critics complain about the digital, synthetic rhythms and applaud any sign of organic percussion or regional instrumentation. Reggaeton is an electronic genre!! Are there Drum’n’Bass critics who complain about the electronic nature of the music, insisting there should be more hand drums? It is racism that says that the Brown people of the world must stay true to their organic ethnic roots and not have their music be sullied by too much electronic influence. Bullshit essentialism. I love the synthetic sound of reggaeton and the heavy keyboard textures. Always have. Then there are the critics complaning about the repetitive nature of the reggaeton beat. Most genres use the same rhythm or rhythms over and over. People complain about reggaeton because the producers focused on one rhythm that hits much louder, more obviously, and more prominently than just about anything else. More power to ’em. Looking forward to hearing the new Wisin y Yandel.

Peace.

IK

10/29/06

Wow, what a night. Dancing until 3am AFTER the clocks had been set back an hour. People didn’t want to leave either. Sorry about not being able to get around to the “Kalion Ka Chaman” request. The workers need to rest! I am glad that someone suggested Nazia Hassan (and I even got in a twofer). Thanks to everybody who came out and danced. It was a long night for us. It was our third gig in a row after working a week of day shifts so I think I have only begun to recover. Thank you to everyone who dressed up. Thank you to Anjali for hosting the costume contest, as well as our “judges” and the lovely Miss Jeevan Singh. If you were missing the Bhangra hip-hop mashups, well, what can I say. The world of Indian dance music is huge (even just focusing on Hindi and Panjabi music) and you can’t get around to everything every time. That is how I always feel after Andaz. And there are so many new Bollywood songs I love that I overlook so many each time. Thank you to everyone for making it such a wonderful party. Please come back for our four year anniversary in November.

IK

10/19/06

I saw a preview screening of “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” yesterday. I went as Borat the last two Halloweens (not my idea, the first year was so popular with my close friends that a repeat was demanded) and no more than two or three people (other than my friends) would recognize me all night, even if they claimed to know who Ali G was. After hearing a million suburban teens imitating Borat on my way out of the screening you can be sure that the costume is retired for good this year. I would advise knowing as little as possible going into the movie so you can better appreciate all the surprises. Looking at the IMDB reviews I saw that far too much of the movie was revealed in the many reviews.

I couldn’t have had higher expectations going into it. When Borat would end up in the news while filming it I assumed it was for a third season of Ali G. When everyone was asking “Where is the third season of Dave Chapelle?” I was asking “Where is the third season of Ali G?” Once I learned a movie was coming out I finally understood why Borat kept popping up in the news but no new season was forthcoming. According to some of the reviews of early previews of the movie it was originally two hours long. Since the version I saw was only one and a half hours long I am now hungry for all the deleted scenes. I felt like I wanted the movie to be denser with many more set-up situations. I wonder how much of that material got cut.

The movie will no doubt foment many discussions in the U S and A. When audiences are laughing at Borat’s anti-semitism, racism, sexism, homophobia, how much are they laughing at him, and how much are they laughing with him? When there were some homophobic statements made in the film I certainly felt as if part of the audience was unironically cheering them on. I will say, without revealing anything, that Sacha Baron Cohen is smart enough to give any homophobes in the audience far more than they bargained for. It will be interesting to see how many people feel that the movie exposes anti-semitism and how many people just think it is anti-semitic.

On the back of the screening pass there was strict language about how no camera phones of any kind would be allowed in the screening since they are “recording devices.” Apparently anyone with a camera phone would be denied entrance. When I told that to a car-full of camera phone owners on the way to the screening everyone pooh-poohed my concerns and said there was no way they were going to search people or deny entrance to camera phone holders, or otherwise no one would be able to see the screening. Acquiescing to peer pressure I kept my phone on me even though I wanted to leave it in the car. The joke is that up until quite recently I’ve had an antique cell phone that wasn’t even capable of sending text messages, much less taking pictures. Sure enough as we come upon the line to enter the screening there is someone with a metal detector wanding everyone before they enter the theater and forcing people to hand over their cell phones or take them to their car. We had to round up all our phones and have a volunteer take them all to the car. Inside the screening a representative of Twentieth Century Fox told us that the movie was already available on the internet in an attempt to explain all the security. If it’s already on the internet what point does security serve at this point? He said three security personnel would be wandering the screening and would eject anyone who was using a cellphone for any purpose, texting, whatever.

The movie is certainly funny. The rhythm is much different than the punchily edited eight minutes he normally gets on an Ali G episode. There is a narrative, and an attempt, however ridiculous, to humanize Borat and have him win our sympathies. Having wished there was more to the movie when I saw it I am now quite interested in the deleted half hour. The same thing happened to me when I found out how chopped-up the released version of Jet Li’s “Fearless” was. I am going to see it again, so that should put my disappointment in context for you. Sacha is certainly responsible for a very unique (and challenging) form of ethnomethodological comedy. I have a feeling it will be more copied than Jackass-styled stunts before too long.

IK