Mali: Khaira Arby – Gossip (2012)

"... Khaira Arby is known as the Nightingale of the North in her home country of Mali. In a career spanning four decades, she has faced everything from family objections to her chosen path to death threats from the Wahabist hard-liners who surged into her home town of Timbuktu in 2012, destroying her studio and attempting to outlaw all recorded music. Now she’s back with her fifth studio album, Gossip, which reflects the turbulent recent history of her country and mirrors the complex mix of ethnicities and cultures that make up Mali today. ..."
Guardian - John Doran (SoundCloud)
Guardian - Women of Timbuktu find their voice again after nightmare of jihadi rule
Forced Exposure
RootsWorld
Spotify
allmusic (Video)
YouTube: Khaira, Khaira Arby: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Bitter Rice - Dino De Laurentiis (1949)

Wikipedia - "Bitter Rice ... is a 1949 Italian film made by Lux Film, written and directed by Giuseppe De Santis. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone, Doris Dowling and Vittorio Gassman, Bitter Rice was a commercial success in Europe and the United States. It was a product of the Italian neorealism style. The Italian title of the film is based on a pun; since the Italian word riso can mean either 'rice' or 'laughter', riso amaro can be taken to mean either 'bitter laughter' or 'bitter rice'. Although Bitter Rice did not win any awards, it was nominated for the 1950 Academy Award for Best Story and entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival. ..."
Wikipedia
Film Noir of the Week
NY Times
Trailers From Hell
Criterion (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Bitter Rice - Trailer

Peter Gizzi - Jack Spicer, Bruce Conner and the Art of the Assemblage

"Emotion and innovation is something I’ve thought a lot about relative to my own writing but it’s also something I’ve confronted in very concrete ways in the writing of Jack Spicer, and I thought I would focus here on Spicer’s work, specifically the affinity between his poetry and West-Coast assemblage art, and in particular the film work of Bruce Conner. I am interested in the ways both Spicer and Conner use history as a material texture while leaving gaps within their work to draw the reader into an intimate and emotional engagement with these materials. In 1965 when Jack Spicer wrote, 'get those words out of your mouth and into your heart,' he voiced an imperative to both poet and reader, addressing the perilous honesty that the lived life of the poem demands. ..."
The Sienese Shredder

The Real Christopher Columbus

“A New and Complete System of Geography” by Charles Theodore Middleton.
"Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island’s beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log. ..."
Jacobin
8 Myths and Atrocities About Christopher Columbus and Columbus Day
YouTube: The REAL History Of Christopher Columbus

J.B. Lenoir - Down In Mississippi (1966)

"... In 1965-66 Lenoir recorded a number of political songs for European release, including 'Shot on James Meredith,' 'Alabama March,' 'Born Dead,' 'Vietnam Blues,' and the biting 'Down in Mississippi,' for producer Willie Dixon at the behest of German promoters Horst Lippman and Fritz Rau. Lenoir and his Afro-American Blues Band performed some of these songs during a 1965 tour of Europe. The material was reportedly deemed too controversial for release in the United States at the time and only appeared on American labels years later. ..."
Mississippi Blues Commission
YouTube: Down In Mississippi (Full Album)

2011 May: J.B. Lenoir, 2014 October: Natural Man

Sarah Glidden On the Campaign Trail with Jill Stein: Illustration at The Nib.com

"If you haven't yet, be sure to head over to The Nib.com to check out Sarah Glidden's latest comic contribution. Glidden joins this politically controversial figure on the road as she moves along in her Green Party campaign. It makes for a deeply compelling read and profile on this contentious figure. Glidden, a renowned champion of objective comics journalism offers an inside perspective on Stein's idealistic agenda, seemingly clashing a refreshing dose of ambition with its potential absence of pragmmatism. ..."
Drawn and Quarterly
TheNib - Spoiler: On The Campaign Trail With Jill Stein

2016 August: Jill Stein, 2016 September: “The Spoiler” Speaks, 2016 September: Jill Stein’s Ideas Are Terrible. She Is Not the Savior the Left Is Looking For.

Afrika 70 / Fela Kuti - Stalemate/Fear Not for Man (2000)

"Although the original liner notes report that Stalemate was 'recorded during the Kalakuta crisis,' the album is surprisingly non-confrontational. Modern day notes explain that the singer was distracted by a number of outside issues, such as his sudden homelessness and legal battles with Decca West Africa, but the album's decidedly lighthearted tone is perhaps an attempt to demonstrate to his oppressors that Kuti had escaped the Kalakuta conflict with his health and determination intact. ..."
allmusib
Discogs
W - Stalemate
amazon
YouTube: Stalemate/Fear Not for Man

Maureen Gallace

Blue Beach Shack, 2013
"Gallace is an artist who works within the self-imposed confines of a rigorously limited scale and subject matter. She is a painter of small, unpeopled landscapes in which a modest number of elements – a house, a barn, a boat; bushes, grass, sky – recur with a quietly mesmerising insistence. In focusing on a particularly favoured motif, the idealised form of a windowless white New England cottage, Gallace succeeds in isolating something universally familiar yet utterly mysterious. Though instantly recognisable as a work by Gallace each individual painting is a unique rumination on stillness and structure. ..."
Kerlin Gallery: Bio
Kerlin Gallery

2015 September: Maureen Gallace - 1

Cruel intentions

"The Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) was firmly convinced that his first philosophical book was also to be his last. His family’s grim medical history led him to assume that he would die young, and he felt that his short time would be more agreeably spent as a rural pastor. But 'things did not go as I expected and intended', he later wrote. 'Oh, no.' Because that book, Either/Or (1843), quickly propelled Kierkegaard to literary celebrity and signalled the beginning of one of history’s most frantic writing careers. ..."
The Times Literary Supplement

2011 July: Søren Kierkegaard, 2013 April: Repetition (1843), 2013 December: The Quotable Kierkegaard, 2014 October: Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard (1843), 2014 December: The Dark Knight of Faith - Existential Comics, 2015 July: I still love Kierkegaard, 2015 October: The Concept of Anxiety (1844).

Languages Inhabited: Teju Cole's Favourite Albums

"My early memories are of loving visual art – drawing and painting – and of learning to read quite young. Music was sort of peripheral. There was plenty of it around, and in good variety, everything from '70s soul to classical in my parents' LPs, but there was also Michael Jackson and all the Nigerian music that poured out of the cars and shops of the city. I was into 'Thriller', but not more or less than my schoolmates. And then there was the R&B of the late '80s and early '90s. I think the big musical moment happened for me in my second year of college, after I went to the US. That was when I really got into both jazz and classical, at the same time. I was amazed at how well certain things held up to repeated listenings: Coltrane, Mahler, Beethoven. Not long after came 'world music', and I had a similarly stunned reaction to my first encounters with the likes of Ali Farka Touré and Oumou Sangaré. ..."
The Quietus

William Faulkner The Snopes Trilogy (1940, 1957, 1959)

"The Snopeses have always been there. No sooner did Faulkner come upon his central subject—how the corruption of the homeland, staining its best sons, left them without standards or defense—than Snopesism followed inexorably. Almost anyone can detect the Snopeses, but describing them is very hard. The usual reference to 'amorality,' while accurate, is not sufficiently distinctive and by itself does not allow us to place them, as they should be placed, in a historical moment. Perhaps the most important thing to be said is that they are what comes afterwards: the creatures that emerge from the devastation, with the slime still upon their lips. ..."
New Republic - Faulkner: End of a Road
W - Snopes trilogy
Top 100 Novels #71: Snopes
The Nation -  Ragged, Unkempt, Strange: On William Faulkner
amazon

2011 September: Southern Gothic, 2014 February: William Faulkner, 2015 October: William Faulkner Draws Maps of Yoknapatawpha County, the Fictional Home of His Great Novels, 2015 November: Interviews William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12, 2016 April: Absalom, Absalom!! (1936), 2016 May: The Sound and the Fury (1929).

Hip Hop Raised Me: DJ Semtex

"So, describe the book Semtex? 'Epic, historic and rich' – three powerful words, because ‘Hip Hop Raised Me’ isn’t just a book. It’s a comprehensive, detailed and almost certainly an essential addition to any hip hop observer, fan and stan alike – a literary collection. Today marks the official release of Hip Hop Raised Me, The Book and we think it’s time to dig a little deeper into the book, talking to none other than the man behind the words, and find out exactly how Hip Hop raised DJ Semtex. ..."
Nation of Billions
amazon
YouTube:Hip Hop Raised Me, The Book by DJ Semtex

101 small ways you can improve your city

Mural for Philadelphia activist Tim Spencer, a key supporter of local mural programs
" Sometimes the smallest things we can do for our neighborhoods can have the biggest impact. At Curbed, we know the power of a vegetable garden planted in a vacant lot or a library installed on a sidewalk. For Micro Week, we want to share 101 urban interventions and ideas that show how even the tiniest changes can make our cities better places. We've scoured cities all around the world for small ideas with huge potential, and asked some of our favorite urban thinkers for tiny ways to make outsized transformations. And we divided them all up into six sections to help focus your efforts. We hope this serves as a resource for urban inspiration—and that you'll contribute your own thoughts in the comments. ..."
CURBED (Video)

Trump in Deep Trouble on Eve of Second Debate

"If the Presidential election continues on its current course, historians may well look back on the third weekend in September as the moment when Donald Trump came closest to the White House, while millions of Americans reached for the Xanax. That Saturday, Hillary Clinton’s lead over Trump narrowed to one percentage point in the widely watched Real Clear Politics poll average, which combines the results from a number of surveys. ... These polls were taken before Friday afternoon, when the Washington Post published extracts from a 2005 taped conversation in which Trump boasted about kissing and groping women, saying at one point, 'When you’re a star they let you do it,' and adding, 'Grab them by the pussy.' ..."
New Yorker

A Brief History of Who Ruined Burning Man

"In 1986, at the very first Burn, a crowd of complete strangers gathered around the Man once it was lit it on fire. Nobody had invited them. They didn’t know anything about the 10 Principles, or understand what The Man was about. They just saw something cool and wanted to participate. They had no gifts. Strangers ruined Burning Man. In 1989, the Cacophony Society first publicized Burning Man. Now people who weren’t Larry and Jerry’s friends (or random strangers on the beach) could hear about it and show up, which was a betrayal of everything that an open event held in a public place stood for. The Cacophony Society ruined Burning Man. ..."
burning man project

2007 November: Burning Man, 2009 August: Burning Man - 1, 2013 January: Timelapse-icus Maximus 2012 "A Burning Man for Ants"

Archaeological Victims of ISIS Rise Again, as Replicas in Rome

Two defaced busts from the second and third century are displayed inside the Colosseum in Rome as part of an exhibition, “Rising From Destruction: Ebla, Nimrud, Palmyra.” ...
"A statue of a human-headed winged bull from the Northwest Palace in Nimrud, Iraq, that was bulldozed by the Islamic State last year to great outcry has been faithfully recreated using modern technology and put on exhibit at the Colosseum in Rome to spur discussion of the possible reconstruction of war-torn archaeological sites. Full-scale reconstructions were also made of two damaged Syrian sites: the archive room of Ebla and a portion of a ceiling from the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, as examples of how conflict can devastate a nation’s fragile heritage. ..."
NT Times

2014 August: The Islamic State, 2014 September: How ISIS Works, 2015 February: The Political Scene: The Evolution of Islamic Extremism, 2015 May: Zakaria: How ISIS shook the world, 2015 August: ISIS Blows Up Ancient Temple at Syria’s Palmyra Ruins, 2015 November: Times Insider: Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis, 2015 November: Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS, 2015 November: The French Emergency, 2015 December: A Brief History of ISIS, 2015 December: U.S. Seeks to Avoid Ground War Welcomed by Islamic State, 2016 January: Ramadi, Reclaimed by Iraq, Is in Ruins After ISIS Fight, 2016 February: Syrian Officer Gave a View of War. ISIS Came, and Silence Followed., 2016 March: Brussels Survivors Say Blasts Instantly Evoked Paris Attacks, 2016 April: America Can’t Do Much About ISIS, 2016 June: What the Islamic State Has Won and Lost, 2016 July: ISIS: The Cornened Beast.

That time a Dodgers fan beat an umpire in 1940

"It happened on September 16, 1940. The Brooklyn Dodgers, stuck 10 games behind first-place Cincinnati, were playing the Reds at Ebbets Field in front of 6,782 fans. Among those fans was a 21-year-old petty criminal named Frank Germano, who lived at 128 33rd Street, opposite Green-Wood Cemetery, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Brutalism Is Back

"IN THE RANK OF UNFLATTERING monikers for an artistic style, 'Brutalism' has got to score near the top. Like the much kinder-sounding 'Fauvism' or 'Impressionism,' it was a term of abuse for the work of architects whose buildings confronted their users — brutalized them — with hulking, piled-up slabs of raw, unfinished concrete. These same architects, centered on the British couple Alison and Peter Smithson, enthusiastically took up Brutalism as the name for their movement with a kind of pride, as if to say: That’s right, we are brutal. We do want to shove your face in cement. For a world still climbing gingerly out of the ruins of World War II, in need of plain dealing and powerful messages, this brand of architectural honesty was refreshing. ..."
T-Magazine

Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age, 1900–1918

“Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II.”
"This exhibition examines the Klimt's sensual portraits of women as the embodiment of fin-de-siècle Vienna. The show is organized by Klimt scholar Dr. Tobias G. Natter, author of numerous publications about Gustav Klimt and the art of Vienna 1900, including the indispensable catalogue raisonnée of Klimt’s paintings, published in 2012. The Neue Galerie is the sole venue for the exhibition, which will be on view through January 16, 2017. ..."
neuegalerie
Surrendering to the Women of Vienna
The Women In Gustav Klimt’s Life Come Together For One Juicy Exhibition
amazon

Jerome Myers, "Their Life (aka End Of The Walk), 1907

"... In 1895, Myers found work in the art department of the New York Tribune. With savings of two hundred and fifty dollars from this job, he traveled to Paris in 1896. Upon his return to New York City, with only twenty dollars left, he rented, for seven dollars a month, a studio at 232 West 14th Street in a former five-story mansion, 'equipped with a skylight and converted to the use of artists.' There, his next door neighbor was Edward Adam Kramer, a painter just one year older than Myers himself. While Myers' art training had been limited to short stints at New York's Cooper Union and the Art Students League, Kramer had acquired his education in the European art centers of Munich, Berlin, and Paris. ..."
Alchetron (Video)

Rupie Dan - My Black Race (& Dub) (1982)

"Top 80s jah shaka selection. Heavy heavy tune. For those that overstand. Riddim similar or same as Al Campbell - Down The Drain. B side is a killer dub version. Produced by Rupie Dan and Tony Addis at Addis Ababa studios, Shakas regular studio at them times for years. Shaka used to tear down the dance with this tune!! Original press blank label pre-release Flag 12". This one is seriously rare and sought after by all serious collectors and soundman. ..."
popsike
YouTube: My Black Race (& Dub)

Creative Africa

"From contemporary photography, fashion, and architecture to centuries-old sculpture, Creative Africa presents the visionary work of artists throughout Africa. At the heart of the season is Look Again: Contemporary Perspectives on African Art, a major exhibition drawn from the Penn Museum’s distinguished African collection. Creative Africa also boasts a dynamic schedule of programs, artist talks, family festivals, and community conversations."
Philadelphia Museum of Art
NY Times: Philadelphia Offers a Full-Fledged Summer of African Art
New Exhibit: Creative Africa Opens at Philadelphia Museum of Art
YouTube: Creative Africa at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Fame Game - 20 Years of Skewville, Escape from New York

"Rough edged humorists and twin brothers Droo and Ad Deville are closing down the bong factory in Queens and the former Factory Fresh gallery space in Bushwick, Brooklyn and heading out of town.
No one is saying it is for good. Beginning on the streets as art hoodlums named Skewville in 1996, the brothers embraced a netherworld of art-making that adroitly courted fame among peers, echoing the graffiti credo of claiming territory, commanding space, and earning respect from a fan base of informed New York urban art watchers. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

New Archive Presents The Chicagoan, Chicago’s Jazz-Age Answer to The New Yorker (1926 to 1935)

"Chicago’s famed 'second city complex' didn’t spring from organic feelings of inferiority, but rather from the poisonous pen of visiting New Yorker writer, A.J. Liebling: Seen from the taxi, on the long ride in from the airport, the place looked slower, shabbier, and, in defiance of all chronology, older than New York… the low buildings, the industrial plants, and the railroad crossings at grade produced less the feeling of being in a great city than of riding through an endless succession of factory-town main streets.  – A.J. Liebling, Chicago: The Second City, 1952 ..."
Open Culture
History of The Chicagoan
U Chicago: The Chicagoan; A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age
W - The Chicagoan

# 1 – A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive

"... Do not bore me with the facts, as fascinating as they are and as much as I enjoy immersing myself in them. Sometimes the myths mean and say more. Yes, truth is stranger than fiction, but on occasion you just want to curl up with a good story. With Burroughs, his biography and his bibliography, nothing is true; everything is permitted. Case in point, years ago, I made a pilgrimage up to Columbia University for a bibliographic rock festival of sorts. Brian Schottlaender, Oliver Harris, Issac Gewirtz, Barry Miles, Regina Weinreich, Ann Douglas, Bradford Morrow and Barney Rosset performed. ..."
Reality Studio
Reality Studio: The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2012 August: The Nova Trilogy, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971), 2015 August: Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014, 2015 December: Destroy All Rational Thought, 2016 January: Commissioner of Sewers: A 1991 Profile of Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, 2016 June: Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981).

Twin Peaks Tarot Cards For The Magician Who Longs To See Through The Darkness Of Future Past

"Earlier this year, illustrator and comic maker Benjamin Mackey told Welcome to Twin Peaks he was toying with the idea of designing a Twin Peaks tarot deck inspired by the influential Rider-Waite-Smith deck (Amazon) originally published in 1910. ... Ben’s favorite card to draw? The Death card. 'What’s not to love about Ray Wise riding a white horse?' Which one is your favorite card of this Twin Peaks tarot adaptation? ..."
Welcome To Twin Peaks
The occult meets cult TV with these damn fine ‘Twin Peaks’ tarot cards!
Society6

2008 September: Twin Peaks, 2010 March: Twin Peaks: How Laura Palmer's death marked the rebirth of TV drama, 2011 October: Twin Peaks: The Last Days, 2014 October: Welcome to Twin Peaks, 2015 June: David Lynch: ‘I’ve always loved Laura Palmer’, 2015 July: Twin Peaks Maps, 2016 May: Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played....

Vicki Anderson: Mother Popcorn - The Anthology

"James Brown said in his autobiography that Vicki Anderson was the best singer he ever had in his revue, which should give you a hint as to her ability when you consider that JB's revue also employed the likes of Lyn Collins and Marva Whitney, who were amazing singers. This collection is the only release of Vicki Anderson's material that is currently available. The majority of the material contained here is from her work with the James Brown band, from the mid ‘60s to the early ‘70s, starting with a live version of ‘Message from the Soul Sisters', with its extremely catchy piano riff and a vampin' groove by the JB's. ..."
Classic and Rare Soul Sisters 50s - 70s
W - Vicki Anderson
Discogs
YouTube: Mother Popcorn (2004)

Mother Earth - Bring Me Home (1971)

"Song for song, BRING IT HOME is just about my favorite Mother Earth album--at least among those records featuring the great Tracy Nelson as their sole vocalist. The very first two albums LIVING WITH THE ANIMALS and MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE have a very special place in my heart, precisely because they, like the Big Brother and Jefferson Airplane albums of the late '60s, are collective efforts DESPITE the presence of a major female vocal talent who could be (and often was) the focus. ... There may be a certain irony that the very earliest Mother Earth albums, with one or two other vocalists, actually feature enough vocal highlights on Tracy's part to satisfy Tracy devotees as well. ..."
TC's Old & New Music Review
W - Mother Earth (American band)
Discogs
YouTube: Mother Earth - Bring Me Home

2016 March: Make a Joyful Noise - Mother Earth (1969), 2016 April: Living with the Animals (1968)

Hieronymus Bosch’s Lost Masterpiece

"Hello! My name is T. P. Finnerty. The 'T' stands for Thornton and the 'P' stands for Placido and I am the person who found that painting by Hieronymus Bosch that you may have heard about in the news. I’m not an expert on paintings, but it is a pretty wild one—about sixty feet wide and two feet high, sort of like a comic strip, but just one panel. I have no clue what it’s about. ... The painting is of hundreds of characters and they’re all in a mountain or maybe on the moon or something like that. Everything is on fire and there are some parts where the fire is on fire, if that’s a thing. The art is really amazing, I will say that much. Hieronymus Bosch was a heck of a painter. ..."
New Yorker: Hieronymus Bosch’s Lost Masterpiece
Open Culture: Take a Virtual Tour of Hieronymus Bosch’s Bewildering Masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights (Video)

2016 February: The Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymus Bosch (1490 - 1510)

Saturnia Perfume - Sun Ra

"... Saturnia Pefume is created from the highest quality Neroli distillate of bitter orange blossoms. Native to the Far East and cultivated in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, this heavenly scent stimulates the brain waves and works well as an Afrodisiac. Note that Neroli was the seductive essence of Narcisse Noir, created in 1911, immortalized in Sunset Boulevard, and was, more importantly, singing brakeman Jimmie Rodgers' favorite fragrance. Neroli blossoms would transport Jimmie far from tuberculine huff and smokestack lightning. Now let the scent transport you out of the doom, and into orbit, as you ponder THIS PLANET IS DOOMED. Saturnia arrives in limited presentation box with a dice keychain keepsake and was bottled by Gigi of Midwood during the Capricornus July full hay moon. This is the constellation that provides passage for the soul at death. Saturnia is truly...out of this world!"
Norton Records - Saturnia Perfume
Norton Records

Prince Buster

"Lester Sterling, the celebrated saxophonist trained at Kingston's famous Alpha Boys School and member of the legendary Skatalites, didn't realize Jamaican music pioneer Prince Buster was so multitalented when he first met him. None of the big producers in the 1950s and Sixties, after all, were also musicians, singers or performers. ... From biking around Kingston delivering records by hand to becoming one of the foundational giants in Jamaican music, Cecil 'Prince Buster' Campbell, who died on Thursday, left an enormous legacy as the King of Ska. The musician's telltale bounce and clap of Jamaican ska is unmistakably as unique as its creator. ..."
Rolling Stone - Prince Buster: Jamaica's True Voice of the People (Video)
allmuic
Wikipedia
Guardian (Video)
Discogs
YouTube: Madness, Enjoy Yourself, One Step Beyond, Rough Rider, Al Capone, Ten Commandments, Lion Of Judah, 30 Pieces Of Silver, Wings Of A Dove, They Got To Come, They Got To Go, Hard Man Fe Dead, Black Head Chiniman, Whine And Grine (Behind Bars), Why Am I Treated So Bad (Dub), Sata A Miss Gana (Dub), Swing Low (Dub), Etc.
YouTube: She Was A Rough Rider (Full Album), National Ska - Pain In My Belly - 1964, Tutti Frutti Completo, What A Hard Man Fe Dead, The outlaw, Ska lip Soul, Etc.

Underground Tehran: Techno & Experimental Electronic Music In Iran

"Nurture may not be one of the first things that come to mind when listening to something like Sote's Hardcore Sounds From Tehran. It's something perhaps more often associated with warmth and patience, rather than crushing, noisy techno. Yet it's Ata Ebtekar who first talks about nurture to me, as it plays a large part of the release, and his practice to boot. The whoppingly heavy record is comprised of recordings from six of Sote's performances in Tehran in the past two years - a country whose strict cultural regulations have been a major obstacle for artists for over the past four decades. ..."
The Quietus (Video)
Facebook: Experimental Electronic Music Scene of Iran (Video)
Watch a trailer for Raving Iran, a documentary on Tehran’s underground techno scene (Video)

Jill Stein’s Ideas Are Terrible. She Is Not the Savior the Left Is Looking For.

"Now that Hillary Clinton has officially won the Democratic presidential nomination, chances are we're going to hear a lot more about Jill Stein. The Green Party candidate, currently polling in the low single digits nationally, has been gunning for the support of disaffected Bernie Sanders fans, urging them to 'keep the revolution going' by getting behind her own long-shot White House bid. ...  Thanks to progressive grassroots rage, she may well peel off a few percentage points of the vote come the fall, when she's expected to be on the ballot in about 47 states. ..."
Slate - July 27 2016
Democracy Now!
Think You’ve Got It Locked, Hillary? Meet Jill Stein. (June 2016)
The Nation:  There Is an Arrest Warrant Out for Jill Stein (Sep. 9)

2016 August: Jill Stein, 2016 September: “The Spoiler” Speaks

Black Classical History Of Spiritual Jazz 1955-2012

"There’s been a slow but steady resurgence in the interest of the deep spiritual jazz sound of the 1960s and 1970s, as more and more record labels strive to find and reissue obscure private press and long out of print works to meet the insatiable tastes of record collectors and modern-day music historians. Labels like London’s Jazzman Records and Universal Sound imprints, the Parisian Heavenly Sweetness, and Porter Records based out of Wisconsin, USA have all recently put out compilations or completely remastered releases of long-lost (or highly sought after) records that remain relevant in a genre that often is deemed to have lost its way. ..."
the jazz meet
NTS: Black Classical charts the history of spiritual jazz through a 12 hour mega-mix. (Video)
Archive: Spiritual Jazz 1955 - 2012 (Video)
YouTube: Spiritual Jazz 1955 - 2012 5:14:02

Disquaires de Paris

"As a collector of 78rpm records, I often come across visual evidences of the activity of now disappeared record stores: illustrated sleeves, stickers, stamps, advertisements, postcards. That’s how I discovered that there used to be a lot of record stores all around Paris and had the idea of Disquaires de Paris. I wanted to provide data and visual documents to researchers and people interested in the history of records industry. I also wanted to pay a tribute to these disappeared stores. Disquaires de Paris aims at listing, on an interactive map, every records and phonographic cylinders sellers that existed in Paris since the late 19^th century. ..."
Disquaires de Paris
Untapped Cities