Ethiopian Music Selections Vol. 1

I just finished digitizing the Ethiopian Music Mixtape I mentioned in a previous post. It has now been uploaded and is available for download. this comes as a lot of people were really very curious about the mix itself but don't own tape players. Some technical notes: this mix was made from YouTube videos, recorded onto cassette and then digitized and encoded at 320 kbps MP3. So there are some general third-generation recording issues, but the overall sound quality is well on the side of listening quality. Anyone desiring to sample Ethiopian sounds might well look for a better master to work from, but for educational purposes it's more than sufficient. Bear in mind that a lot of the tracks were somewhat lo-fi due to the state of the Ethiopian recording industry during the past few decades.

Here is the cover for the mixtape, which includes the playlist. If you feel like dubbing your own tape, you can use the file and the cover provided.

African and Latin Remixes and Edits

Over the summer I had a lot of time on my hands to work on music projects. My plan was to follow my usual tradition of making up a batch of DJ-friendly edits and remixes of various stuff from my collection. I worked with a variety of sourcematerials, but where I really had a lot of fun was in working with African and Latin sources. the Latin sources were almost entirely vinyl. i got a big stack of salsa 45's  a few years back and eventually got around to chopping them up for samples. the African sources came from a mixture of vinyl and mp3. When assembling new music out of parts, i'm not particular about what format the source material comes from, I'm more concerned about using the best and most authentic source material I can find.

That being said, the summer was a fertile period for creating these remixes and edits, and now I'm going to share them with you by way of this blog.

Music of Africa Mixtape Series

 

Anyone who knows me well knows how much of a nut for African music I've become over the past year. A lot of this had to do with discovering a couple of African music blogs such as Awesome Tapes From Africa and Electric Jive. Ethiopian music especially piqued my interest, having earlier in the year picked up a Mulatu album and really liked it.

What really interested me about Ethiopian music was the relatively contemporary sound of Ethiopian music, with its characteristic round, skipping, slightly off-kilter rhythm and intriguing, complicated sounding vocal style. So I ran some YouTube searches for Ethiopian music, and what I found surprised and delighted me.

When I decided to do the first Ethiopian mixtape, I was just creating a compilation of stuff that most interested me, without much plan for doing any kind of 'series'. But after I finished the first tape (Ethiopian Music Selections vol.1, shown above), I found a lot of extra stuff in and around the Ethiopian music genre that made for a good full second volume, so I went for it and created the second one (Ethiopian Music Selections vol.2). It should be noted that some of the tracks are named based on what information there was on the video from which it came, so I'm certain there may be one or two inaccuracies in the track listing.

The response the the first two, at least as far as reaction to the announcement that I was doing it, was very positive. After designing covers for the tapes, I dubbed up a bunch of copies to have on hand as tradable or promotional items, especially among tape nerds. So far I've only given out a handful of them, mostly because not as many people have tape players.

There were two motivations in doing a series of mixtapes at all, on the cassette medium. One being that I'd been scoring lots of blank tapes and wanted to put them to use, and the other being the far easier process of making a tape live off of YouTube as opposed to the dodgy prospect of ripping the videos and making a CD. Making a tape is a different, more hands-on process, and it's worth the extra effort.

After the two volumes of the Ethiopian music compilations, I though it would be fun to continue traveling through Africa by way of YouTube videos, and I began looking for distinctive music from interesting areas, looking for enough quality material to fill up a tape.

The next mixtape titles came about from following leads from other videos. "Extended Play Afro Jams" was a result of these finds, and contains a handful of especially long and psych-jammy tracks. Then as a result of that, The Masters of Zam Rock" tape was born. The work of several psychedelic bands from the 70's in Zambia has been coming to light the past few years, and this tape is an enlightening tour through the genre.

Why YouTube as a source of music? Well I suppose the purist in me would love to be able to only DJ with vinyl (original or repress, doesn't matter to me) but when you start getting into parts of the world whose infrastructures have not reliably supported a vinyl industry, it becomes much more difficult to find. CD's and cassettes are much easier to find, and are generally closer to where the authentic music lies. What makes YouTube such an appealing source for music hunting is that it makes it much easier to stay up to speed of contemporary music in places from which you might never otherwise be able to find music in any format, short of being there yourself.

There has been demand for these tapes to be digitized and made available as downloads. I'll eventually get around to that. For now, the point of the project was to create a 'tapey' experience for those who like the potential the mixtape has. There are still a few copies of each title around, so if you want one, get in contact, make a comment, and we'll see about getting you one.

There's also a Senegalese mbalax mixtape in the works. It's actually finished, but the design needs to be done for it, and it needs to be duped, after I get my new dubbing deck. Stay tuned for more info on this series.

Black Friday DJ Session at CD World

We had a fun DJ bro-down at CD World on Black Friday. It was me, Avitar Virgonian, Josh Burrington (Rock and Roll Damnation) and Ian Lawless. Unfortunately these sessions don't tend to get recorded, but we're working on that. Here are some pics of the DJ crew in action.

Ian Lawless and Josh Burrington

Jon Seven

Josh Burrington and Avitar Virgonian

The view from the DJ booth

Media Sashimi Thanksgiving Mix

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I felt like celebrating with a mix today and it's a two-parter. I grabbed the stuff that looked most interesting from the stuff I don't get around to playing often. Tapes, CD's and vinyl all in this mix. Here's a photo, until I post an artist list.

Fuji Chrome Blank Tapes

I picked these up the other day. I pick up blanks when I find them no matter what kind they are, but in my mind I always seemed to remember not being very fond of the Fuji tapes. Maybe it was the slim cases. Anyway I was about the unwrap these here in the photo when I noticed they were hi-bias chrome! So I snapped this photo and stuck them back, unopened in my tape storage box (the box from my Stanton headphones).

Media Dig Mix 11/18/12

I did a quick mix of the stuff I found at the Goodwill today, one track from each item. the mix is about an hour long and it's free to download here below.

Artists in this mix include: Singin' Sam, Happy Guitars, Brassy, Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, The Willesden Dodgers, Dave Guard & The Shaw Brothers, England New Order, Gary Wright, Solomon Burke, Tin Machine, Ernie & Lefty, Congo Percussion, Jimmy Boyd, The 5th Dimension, Wendy Carlos, Rumpelstiltskin, Jim Olivier/Shakti Gawain, James Ingram, Harold Faltermeyer & Steve Stevens. Have fun!

Here's a printable poster utilizing scans of the tapes and records in this mix.

Media Dig 11/18/12

In between working on house-cleaning projects and homework projects, I felt like a ride on my bike and I had a couple bucks in my pocket so I biked on down to the Goodwill in West Eugene. Tapes and records there are 10 for a dollar, and I often find strange goodies there. In all honesty, it's pretty hit or miss there, but if you've got an open mind and a pretty good idea how to use strange finds, it can be a great place to dig. So here's my haul today, all this for 2 dollars. They're nothing that exciting, but several of the individual items have some unique charm about them that appeals to media nerds.

 

There are some promising things in this pile, the Top Gun soundtrack, "World in Motion" by England New Order, a good condition copy of Switched On Bach, which you can never have too many copies of, an Italian-issue cassette of the "Dirty Dancing" soundtrack, some new age spiritual lectures, a couple of interesting kids tapes, Including one with 28 Bert and Ernie songs including that famous 'are-they-teaching-kids-about-drugs-or-letters' classic "Would you like to buy an 'O'"

The plan here is to do up a live mix of stuff from this pile and upload it later. Nothing fancy, just a fun mix of the niftiest stuff I found. I'll also take photos of the more interesting pieces and post them here later.

A Little Side Job I Have as President

I have a side project in the experimental/noise genre under the moniker President Blair. Under this guise I'm active in the Eugene, Oregon noise scene, which though small is creative and fertile. Here posted are some videos of me as President Blair live in action.

I'll be posting more photos and info about the President Blair project in future posts. Having now explained that President Blair is me, we'll consider that offically disclosed and assumed to be understood when I make reference later on.

Friday Night Groove Show recording

For those or you who either were tuned in, or who weren't tuned in to the Friday Night Groove Show, here is the recording of the broadcast.

The Friday broadcasts I do are a function of Free Fridays, an open-ended freeform day on http://thereexistsradio.tumblr.com. Depending on whether I go out or not, I like to participate in some kind of program on Friday, sometimes during the afternoon, sometimes at night.

Tape Scans for Saturday Morning

For fun, and because it's Saturday morning-ish, Here are some various tape scans for your entertainment. These scans were made into a series of 2/3 scale stickers inside some of the mixtapes I've made recently (more info on said mixtapes to follow later).

 

 

 

An Introduction

Hello and welcome. I'm Jon Seven and I have started this blog to document my activities and adventures with recorded media. I'm an active and curious DJ and I produce a lot of my own edits, flips and remixes from the interesting media I come across. I'm also a real nerd about media in general, and I do a lot of experimentation with source material from the various media I find on my digs. The name "Media Sashimi" represents the kind of cut-and-paste approach I like to take with recorded media, with a 'slash-and-dash' playful sort of spirit.

Most of these activities have been documented in Facebook posts, but at best it's a patchy way to keep people who are interested informed. I decided to try a blog approach and see if I could organize the documentation of my work in a more accessible way.

What you're going to find on this blog are photos and scans of unusual tapes and LPs,  links to mp3's of my mixes, remixes and original compositions, and updates of my activities including trophy photos of media scores.

To make the first entry interesting, here's a scan of one tape from a 3-pack I found a couple of weeks ago.

You gotta love the disco typeface, and of course the brand name... "it's not just good it's..."
On this blog you can expect to see a number of scanned tapes. Part of my media scores include blank tapes of all different kinds, and I like to scan them, keeping the images for posterity, even if I use the tape. Some tapes I like to keep sealed, others, well, a tape's no good unused in the case. Best to let a tape live the life it was made for than to languish as a collector's item.

This blog is new, but my media adventures stretch way back. There's a lot to catch up on, so I'll gradually begin making posts documenting those activities, staggered with new posts.