While flipping through my record collection lately I found the compilation “Sun City” which was released in 1985 as an artist effort to raise awareness for the apartheid rule in South Africa. The album title related to a lavish South African resort named Sun City in which various UK and US artists performed (i.e. Queen, Elton John, etc), thus supporting the Apartheid regime. The Artur Baker and Little Steven produced “Sun City” album became a international success with stars such as Miles Davis (!), Bruce Springsteen, Run DMC, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Cliff, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone, Hall+Oates, U2, Peter Gabriel amongst others joining for the cause – raising awareness about an intolerable political issue .

While listening to the “Sun City” album I wondered: Why isnt such a thing set up today – for the climate cause? The World Climate Summit in Copenhagen will take place from Dec 7th to 19th, and so far I dont know of any relevant music alliance put together, demanding some serious change in policies . Wouldnt it be about time to start an initiative called “Artists Against Climate Change”, feat. all our favourite global beat heros like M.I.A., Diplo, Buraka, The Very Best, Sany Pitbull, DJ Mujawa, to just name a few – teaming up for a musical artist project to raise awareness and start serious discussions for the world´s most important issue of the coming decades? This shouldnt be handled by Sting or Bono and their friends but by us all who follow global music.

Please leave a comment and let´s start to discuss what can be done.

Tim Turbo, who just celebrated the 50th volume of his acclaimed “Tim Turbo Thursday´s” podcast has terminated his podcast and now moved media – from podcast to club – with a new monthly club night in Munich. Come down to the debut tonight of “Tim Turbo Thursday” at the “Neue Münchner Hypestadl” Crux Club, with the man Tim Turbo and myself on the decks. TTT y´all – Bavaria is getting hotter!

Brazil’s Os Gemeos– Portuguese for “The Twins”– are at it again. After getting some press earlier this year for a Deitch-sponsored mural in New York’s Lower East Side and “Vertigem” exhibition in Sao Paolo (catch it through December 13th), the brothers recently put on an amazing show for a street fair in the latter city. Thanks to the French duo Plasticiens Volants, who specialize in inflatable puppets, Os Gemeos got to see some of their characters in giant inflatable balloon form. Along with the 10-story-high blow-up puppets, Os Gemeos also got to paint enormous murals on the buildings lining the streets of the parade route, a nod to their roots in graffiti.

See the video here:

“Babarabatiri”, originally a 1950s tune by Mambo don Perez Prado, just won´t die. Picked up by Todd Terry in the early 00s and remixed by Masters At Work and other house bigsters, the tune recently returned. Since big horns became the latest craze, a couple of new “Babarabatiri” remixes surfaced, one of my favourite versions is by DJ Critikal from Talinn – our “Kid Conga” remix contest winner, and new signing to Man Recordings. His debut EP is on Man Recordings as Bert On Beats is scheduled for a spring 2010 release. In the meantime, grab his baile funk version here:

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DJ Critikal – Babarabatiri Funk

Here’s a very interesting image piece done outside Parisian musician Serge Gainsbourg’s home. The short film shows graffiti that was painted continuously between a five year span on one wall in the street of Verneuil, Paris. The footage took thousands of photographs to create and was transformed into 3D effect seen in this video

My homie and all round man of good taste Tayo has been keeping his head down in the studio working on his new project, Lion 75. If you like your bass low and heavy this is definitely something for you .

Here a couple of tunes exclusively available on the Man Recordings blog.

Lion 75 -Vampires

Lion 75 -Fashion Steppa

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One of my favourite producers of 2009 is undoubtedly Hugo Douster. His remixes for Busy Signal, Yolanda B Cool, The Very Best or Riva Starr´s “I Was Drunk” have brought insane club mayhem wherever played. Now the Frenchman has remixed “Lions” by Malente + Dex, which was just released on Berlin´s Exploited Records, label of spinmeister Shirkhan. Grab it below an bogle it nice:

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Download it from here: Lions (Douster Remix)

The weekend´s slowly fading away, so in order to keep you in the party mood for the next days, we´ll give you the Shab Ruffcut remix of Daniel Haaksman´s “Jesus” feat. Tati Quebra Barraco in an Oliver $ Edit for free. Ever heard of Bmore-Baile-Fidget? Well, listen to it and download it (320kps) from here:

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Download Daniel Haaksman “Jesus” feat. Tati Quebra Barraco (Shab Ruffcut Remix (Oliver $ Edit))

My enthusiasm for the film Brega s/a is by now well documented in this blog, and I had the chance to correspond with Vladimir Cunha, one of the directors, and ask him some questions.

Man : What’s your Background?

Vladimir : I graduated in Journalism, and worked 6 years as a professional journalist, and in 2002 I was invited to work on scripts and as assistant director for national television and then started working in the audiovisual field more frequently, from documentaries to TV programmes for Globo (major Brazilian TV channel) and MTV, which basically was my education in direction, scripting and editing.

M : How did you get involved in the Tecnobrega scene?

V : I grew up in the Jurunas neighborhood, which has a tradition for brega, tecnobrega and aparelhagem (sound systems). My first contact with this type of party was as a child, my parents travelled into the interior a lot and that’s where I saw my first aparelhagem parties.

Professionally, my first contact was in 1999, when I did an article on brega for Bizz magazine (influential Brazilian music mag) then some further articles on the aparelhagem parties in 2001 and 2002, I also directed my first reports for “Brasil Total” about the tecnobrega scene in Belem, 3 years later I met Gustavo (Godinho – co-director) and Priscilla (Brasil – producer) who had the idea to make a documentary about the scene and they called me to work with them, and from there came the first ideas that became Brega s/a.

M : It’s interesting that you use the music of experimental bands like Hurtmold in the documentary rather than Tecnobrega itself. Why is this?

V : We didn’t want to use Brega as we believed it would come over as a bit simple, it would seem like a normal TV programme. This bothered us, we wanted something that would be more film-like, something that would be more cinematographic than descriptive, and would reflect the urban chaos the film shows. We decided to only use brega when it was being listened to by the artists or public featured, or from the videos produced by bregueiros themselves.

M : you mention elsewhere that like brega, the film has the “Do it yourself” philosophy of punk. How is this?

V : We paid entirely for the film ourselves, which cost about two thousand dollars, we wanted to do it like that so we could prove that it was possible to make a film using the same methods of production and distribution that tecnobrega uses. At the end of the day we had to do virtually everything ourselves anyway, as you can see from the film’s credits, because due to the nature of the film’s themes ( brega, piracy, social problems etc.) no one wanted to sponsor us.

M : Do you think that a more underground (and less pop) version of brega will appear in the future?

V : I’m betting that “Maderito”will do this, these tracks are faster and more aggressive and are related more to garage or ragga jungle. Maybe if someone worked a bit more on the musical possibilities of Maderito I think we will have a Brazilian electronic genre ripe for exportation. If you listen to the rhythms of of eletromelody, the most recent version of Tecnobrega, you can make immediate comparisons with various styles of music coming from slums and ghettos worldwide.

M : Where has the film been shown?

V : It was premiered on MTV about a month ago, and we have put it up for download, torrent and streaming on the net. We’ve received some invites for festivals, cinema clubs and cultural events and even events based on the discussion of where the culture industry is heading nowadays.

M : Will you subtitle the film?

V : I am subtitling the film at the moment and I reckon in January in the forthcoming year, we should have a version in English.

M : Any plans to show the film in Europe?

V : Yes, we will start working on this next year.

many thanks Vladimir, and good luck!

Man Recordings and Fairtilizer bring you the 3rd Man Recordings remix contest. This edition
features Ku Bo , the new project by Vienna bass-meister Stereotyp.

“Tsu Bo” features Ghanian-Austrian singer Anbuley on the microphone and presents the sexy and dubbed out tropical-tec for which Ku Bo has become famous for. “Tsu Bo” feat. Anbuley was recently featured on the upcoming  “Fabric Live 49″ Mix-CD by Buraka Som Sistema and is considered one of the hottest Afro tunes of the moment.  Early December we´ll release the Ku Bo Remix EP (Man 043) featuring remixes by DJ Manaia, Batida, Bert On Beats, Lazy Ants, Flore, Robot Koch and Daniel Haaksman. Until the remix EP will be released, you have the chance to remix the original version of “Tsu Bo”.

THE RULES

1. Listen to the orginal here:

2. Download the parts here (the track is 140 BPM) : Ku Bo Remix Contest Folder

3. Remix the song the way you like.

4. Upload your remix on Fairtilzer and name it “Tsu Bo” and your remix name and add “Man Recordings Remix Contest” in the tags. Note: You have to register to Fairtilizer to be able to upload a track (it takes 30 seconds and it’s free).

5. The winner will be selected by Man Recordings.

Prize: The best remix will be released in digital format on Man Recordings + gets bonus goodies package by Man Recordings and Fairtilizer. Bert On Beats, the last winner in the Man Recordings Remix contest for Daniel Haaksman´s “Kid Conga” even scored a record deal with Man Recordings and will release his debut EP on Man in spring 2010!

Submission deadline: Dec 1st, 2009.

Our man João Brasil played a set for the Diesel U Music show, if you missed it, check out his mix here (we´re awaiting tracklist):

Joao Brasil at Diesel Radio by lontramusic

Above is the trailer for “Sonic Outlaws” ( go to UBUWEB to see it in its full one and a half hours glory!) by Craig Baldwin, an excellent mish mash of found footage and different film medias used to discuss sampling and copyright infringement.  This was released back in 1995 and features a great scene with Negativland talking to U2’s The Edge on a radio show about having their ass sued by U2’s own lawyers for their infamous U2 track, a track that before the times of Youtube was nigh on impossible to hear. The Edge’s proclamations of innocence are pretty funny.

In fact in the 90s, this film could only been seen in festivals and I remember that in 1997  I was programming the cinema programme for Sonar Festival in Barcelona and I booked this film so I could actually see it as I had heard so much about it.

If we move on to 10 years later and we still have the same discussion in “Good Copy Bad Copy” another fine documentary from 2007 with lots of people saying sensible things about the future of copyright and some people saying some not so sensible things – guess which ones will have jobs in the near future. Not so sure about using Girl Talk as the best example of cut and paste, but he seems harmless enough as he taps away at his laptop.

The whole film can be viewed here, and in my opinion both films are well worth watching and prove that this discussion needs to be resolved soon.

We just got out Man Recordings Button Bag in – limited edition of 50 pieces, featuring all your favourite Man Recordings artists and releases. Buy it via the Man Rec shop (pull bar above).

Peter Fox is one of the lead singers of Berlin´s dancehall popsters Seed,
who became known with their German dancehall anthem “Dickes B” (”Fat B”) a while ago. When going solo in 20087, Fox became one of the most succesful German pop stars. His song “Haus Am See” (”House At The Lake”) which became Germany´s 2008 summer anthem, even got air play in neighbouring countries such as Netherlands or Belgium with its catchy melody and dope orchestral sounds. Now Munich based Brasilian MC, singer and percussionist Bani Silva sent us his take on Peter Fox´s “Haus Am See” and we absolutely love it – “Casa Do Rio”, e nois!

Peter Fox – Casa Do Rio feat. Bani Silva