Tigerbeat6 ‘sublabel’ Violent Turd releases the sixth in its unauthorised mixtape series Shotgun Wedding where two artists are given half a CD to work their magic with other people’s music. DJ /rupture started the series with Mutamassik and the sixth nuptial features his return this time paired with Soot Records labelmate Filastine.
Rupture and Filstine both explore similar territory – the interzone between jungle, breakcore, hip hop, dubstep, and music from the Middle East and North Africa. Both the two mixes on Shotgun Wedding Six are as much about globalsation as the result of globalisation – they draw on the global flows of sounds, the ‘Black Atlantic’ (see Paul Gilroy), and from East to West – tapping in via the internet, tapes, CDRs. However unlike others who might cherry pick the most ‘exotic’ just for their ‘sound’, both Rupture and Filastine bring together sounds to draw out common threads of discontent across geographies but never disconnects the listener from the sensual pleasures of these ‘popular’ musics.
DJ /rupture starts things off dropping a mix that is much more scattershot than his previous (released) outings. Opening with Various Productions ‘Hater’ the mix moves quickly into Rupture’s own ‘Watermelon City’ and then on to Skream’s ‘Lightning’ and in to a melange of dancehall. Clearly mixed live, possibly in a single take, on three decks the mix wobbles, the slight jerks and rough cuts adding to the energy – it isn’t as polished as Filastine’s but the sheer genre diversity is as remarkable as it was on Rupture’s seminal Gold Teeth Thief. Rupture’s mix is also where you are most likely to hear the dubstep ‘version’ of Joanna Newsom’s ‘The Book of Right On’ (Finnish crew Clouds’ track ‘Shallow’, sounding strangely in context) outside of MySpace if you aren’t a regular trawler of dubstep mix forums.
Filastine’s debut album last year was one of the more interesting solo albums released in the last few years and he toured Australia with his live show last year. Filstine’s mix is more ‘programmed’ than Rupture’s and thus crams a lot more in to 30 minutes, managing some stunning segues and cuts. Bringing in the rough jungle amens, staccato baile funk, Gypsy brass, radio announcers from Istanbul and plenty of his own rhythms, there is a lot to take in and it is a great ‘journey’ – the kind of mix you love to hear on radio. As the promo banter says – “a conceptual counter punch to ethnic purity and far right nationalism”.
Budget priced and recommended.
Sebastian Chan
