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Friday, December 17, 2021

The Blackout Drivers - (2021) Life And Times Of The Blackout Drivers CDr

 

Small Mercies – SMALL MERCIES 021

The House Of Life (1989)

Îlé Aiyé

3.04GB .ISO file

ILÉ AIYÉ is David Byrne's breathtaking 1989 documentary on Candomblé, the African-influenced spirit cult of the Bahia region of Brazil. ILÉ AIYÉ explores the ways in which Candomblé has influenced the daily life and culture of the people of Brazil in music, art, religion, theater, food, dance, poetry and more.


Ilê Aiyê is a carnival block from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. It is located in the Curuzu/Liberdade neighborhood, the largest afro-descendent population area of Salvador. The name stems from the Yoruba language: Ilé - home; Ayé - life; which can be loosely translated as 'earth'. It was founded in 1974 by Antônio Carlos “Vovô” and Apolônio de Jesus, making it the oldest Afro-Brazilian block.

Ilê Aiyê works to raise the consciousness of the Bahian black community. Persecuted by the police and the media during its first years, and still controversial for only allowing blacks to parade with the group, Ilê Aiyê is a renowned element of Bahia’s carnival. The group pioneered the type of carnival group known as the bloco afro, featuring themes from global black cultures and history, and celebrating the aesthetic beauty of black people. All other Afro-Brazilian blocos borrow elements originally created by Ilê Aiyê, including such groups founded shortly afterwards, such as Olodum and Malê Debalê.[2][3]

During Bahian carnival, the group includes hundreds of musicians, dozens of dancers, and thousands of members. They traditionally begin their procession on the Saturday night of Carnaval at the home of the Dos Santos family, where for many years Mãe Hilda de Jitolu, the mother of co-founder Vovô, presided as spiritual mother to the group and formal leader of a candomblé. As Ilê Aiyê passes, carnival crowds sing along by the thousands to songs about the importance of African and Afro-Brazilian culture and religion.

Ilê Aiyê was responsible for a huge cultural revolution in Brazil. It is often mentioned that in Salvador, before the founding of Ilê Aiyê, black men and women would never wear colorful dresses, would often not enter through the front door, would not wear afro hairstyles, and black women would not use lipstick – all because of long-standing racist stigmatization. This situation has been thoroughly changed for many Afro-Brazilians thanks to the empowerment processes that Ilê Aiyê implemented through music and through the praise of African culture and history.

Arca - (2020) &&&&& LP

 


Pan – 100

Fully remastered & first-time release of individual tracks*


For anyone who can remember, Arca’s &&&&& was a moment. Its 25-minute stretch of coiling, contorted grime and glitch; dub and hip hop dropped with the buzz of an impending co-production credit on Kanye West’s Yeezus in 2013. It included cuts of sound and beats that were too weird for that pop project, while becoming a piece of experimental art that what would come to define what is by now broadly known as a ‘post-club’ sound. It’s music that is as visceral as it is experimental; made as much for the mind, as it is for the body.


Released with no warning seven years ago, &&&&& became a bridge between Alejandra Ghersi’s time partying and collaborating with her queer peers, while still living in New York to the next stage of her career releasing on Mute in London. She’d go from making beats for rapper Mykki Blanco and fashion label Hood By Air, posting lurching bass reworkings of pop hits on YouTube, and producing her first fluid mixtapes with DIS Magazine, to finishing off this seminal mixtape on the synths in Daniel Miller’s studio.


After dropping three impressive EPs the year before, &&&&& marked a transition. Continuations and extrapolations of material from Stretch 1 and Stretch 2 appeared in the mangled RnB sampling of “Century” and Arca’s signature vocal layering in the pitched flow of “Waste”. Along with the fluttering, muted heartbeat of “Obelisk”, and the lumbering piano chords of “Mother”, fourteen sonic sketches were elegantly woven together into a single, downloadable whole.


As Alejandra’s course turned toward moving to Europe from the United States, &&&&& became a remarkable challenge to the form of the mixtape, which was a relatively new trend taking hold of the online-oriented underground at the turn of the 2010s. But where many, if not most mixtapes where treated simply as a showcase of individual tracks presaging a more ‘official’ release to come, &&&&& was a complete piece in its own right. “I wanted to make something that was my best work,” Alejandra says about a record that has stood the test of time, “I listen to it very fondly today.”


Now, with the lifespan of the Arca project nearing a decade, Alejandra has entered a new era of ‘non-binary pop’ with her fourth album, KiCk i, out on XL Recordings. It’s more important than ever to look back while forging ahead, and &&&&&’s ground-breaking hybrid dance music is a good place to start:


“A sense of possibility, a sense of the unknown; punk attitude, respect for classical music and formality; cyberpunk, anime, sexual tension; trauma, innocence, fear of death; kink, lots of weed, and wanting to connect with people, but not on the terms of a status quo. That kind of sums up &&&&& for me.”


Labeled a "reissue" this release has nine additional cuts (apparently the five previously issued cuts were not released as separate tracks), and all the cuts have been remastered.