photography hijinx

a very good photographer chase jarvis has a monthly 'internet tv talk-show/photography thing' that broadcasts out of his blog. apparently it's watched in over 100 countries but is out of seattle. they also feature guest artists: this episode ish is in the house first answering boring questions but then getting his photo taken by a camera the size of a truck using a type of photographic technique know only to modern day alchemist ian ruhter. we actually see the entire process from start to end product (it's about an hour long) as the do a portrait using some kind of process using silver. i do not pretend to understand the arcane black magick his technique draws its powers from, but as you can see from the end result (and ruhter's other work) it's wicked. when i have time i'm going to check out some of the other episodes, which look really useful and inspirational for 'creatives'. action begins at 1hour 32 minutes.




Video streaming by Ustream

tendai interview

thanx to okay africa. it's interesting to hear a less damning view of mugabe than what we usually hear in the western press. if you haven't already checked out tendai's mixtape you really need to do yourself a favour and press the play button below asap. tendai aka baba maraire aka fly guy dai breaks it down track by track here. at the moment, my favourite track is WhatUlukn@ (its at 18:00) and reading his description of it i love it even more cos i remember racism in school and know its rawness first-hand. interesting too is the inclusion of african music from afar as senegal, algeria, and of course zimbabwe.

Chimurenga Renaissance "Pungwe" Mix-Tape feat. Chief Boima

also for those of you in southafrica the man himself is playing with digable planet's old dj king britt (!) on saturday:

 

toyin odutola

"ishmael" by toyin odutola. 2011. pen. ink and marker. ish looks the alien he may well be: "the ship i came here on vanished."

MMJ x SP footage

wow this is BIG - finally, some very high quality footage of MMJ and Shabazz bringin down the greek theatre of berkeley california. after they sort out ish's mic he lets rip his verse from "home" by jake one, and shabazz blacks up the area. everyone was feeling this, and the crowd was immense. courtesy of frontline tv:

poland video interview

post show

new radio interview

yes i am sorry for being awol of late, ishmaelites... i've been sick, but on the way back now. still meaning to write up my evening with shabazz palaces when they came here to copenhagen a couple weeks ago, but for now here's an interview with liverpool student radio which is pretty cool

Winter 2012-13 Tour Dates

What?!!? Another batch of tour dates?! Yes, the palaceers are birds (royal falcons) who like to fly often and far. By the end of this tour they'll have played around 80 dates in the past year... that's a quarter of the year  on the road. Damn. By now SP has overtaken Digable Planets as the music that Ish has toured the most. 

The tour in the new year is with The Helio Sequence, their labelmates at Sub Pop Records. Ish has been a fan of this duo for ages. In 2003 when the first interview for his then-new Cherrywine project surfaced, one question was what he was listening to. The answer introduced me to 3 great musicians: Miles Davis (I went out and bought Live:Evil), Cody Chessnut (Ish was onto him before he blew up and introduced him to The Roots, resulting in their hit cover of his song The Seed), and The Helio Sequence, who'd recently been signed to Sub Pop. I embed their songs below. Their new LP Negotiations has just come out, and while I prefer their earlier stuff, it's impressive music, impeccably produced, that touches. Ish listens to a lot of this kind of stuff, ('guitar based, electronicish wall-of-sound rock') and plays the guitar so I wonder if he makes this kind of music himself. As he said recently, about 90% of the songs he makes are never released, so (sigh)... but imagine his 'hiphop' take on that sound... pfff forget it! As some wise men once said, Headz aint ready for the shit we got. Headz aint ready, I swear they're not.





11-01 Rejkavik, Iceland - Airwaves Festival *
11-02 Copenhagen, Denmark - Loppen *
11-04 Hamburg, Germany - Kampnagel K2 *
11-05 Kortrijk, Belgium - De Kreun *
11-06 Clermont-Ferrand, France - La Cooperative de Mai *
11-07 Lorient, France - Festival Les Indisciplines *
11-09 Nimes, France - Paloma *
11-10 Fribourg, Switzerland - Fri-Son *
11-11 Zurich, Switzerland - Rote Fabrik *
11-12 Munich, Germany - Hansa 39 *
11-13 Berlin, Germany - Festsaal Kreuzberg *
11-15 Liverpool, England - Kazimier *
11-16 Dublin, Ireland - Twisted Pepper *
12-28 Seattle, WA - Neptune Theatre *
01-18 Birmingham, AL - Bottle Tree ^
01-19 Atlanta, GA - Terminal West ^
01-20 Pensacola, FL - Vinyl Music Hall ^
01-22 St. Augustine, FL - Cafe Eleven ^
01-24 St. Petersburg, FL - State Theater ^
01-25 Orlando, FL - The Social ^
01-26 Tallahassee, FL - Club Downunder ^
01-27 Asheville, NC - Orange Peel ^
01-28 Nashville, TN - Mercy Lounge ^
01-29 Louisville, KY - Zanzabar ^
01-30 Saint Louis, MO - Firebird ^
01-31 Bloomington, IN - Bishop Bar ^

02-01 Chicago, IL - The Shrine

* with THEESatisfaction
^ with the Helio Sequence