DylanGoing (FMA Admin)

AKA Craig Diamonds AKA "the king of booty" AKA "the hottest in Detroit dance music," DJ Assault is probably the most reoccurring name in the Booty Bass/GhettoTech pantheon. When people imagine the essence of the genre, many immediately recall the concise, infectious hook from "Ass-n-Titties." When people want to hear the accelerated tempo, gait, and raunchy lyrics associated with the genre, they want to hear Assault. Even if they may not know him by name and their only familiarity with his work stems from the features, snippets and samples laid throughout incalculable DJ mixes, compilations, as well as TV and movies over the past decade and a half, he's the one behind what they want to hear.

When the King of Booty came to WFMU's Marty McSorley show for a live session (and later ice cream), he surprised us with his congenial and fairly reserved demeanor but soon revealed an overpowering love of the production, history, traditions of dance music as he knew and grew up with it. He waxed on about his vintage 303s, and told us about all the Chicago house and Detroit techno DJs he would religiously tape off the radio while growing up in Michigan.

Assault's live set, comprised of all original productions, showed this kind of youthful home-taping enthusiasm still very much alive, as if he knew there was another young DJ Assault-to-be on the other side of the radio wetting his or her pants with the same kind of excitement. His joking "Friday night live, ain't no jive!" is actually a reference to the kind of banter pioneering house DJ Farley "Jackmaster" Funk would pepper throughout his late night radio appearances in the 80s.

This was all on the eve of a massive Santos Party House event featuring fellow Detroit Ghettotech pioneer DJ Godfather, Chicago juke innovator DJ Rashad, Dipset's Araabmuzik, locals Blissed Out and Laurel Halo, and many more.

DJ Assault recently founded his own record label Jefferson Ave, through which he shares a TON of free recordings (as well as rips of some of the original cassette from his favorite 80s radio mixes)-- dig in here: http://www.jeffersonave.com/

2010 was pretty great actually, not at all long nor hard. First of all, check out all the formats we got to work with:

Artists performing directly for radio listeners like Bill Orcutt and Justice Yeldham live in the WFMU studio or Vieux Farka Touré at KEXP on the West Coast.

Loud rock small-run presses of cassettes and 7 inches from the likes of White Suns and Nuit Noire.

Some of it was recorded exclusively for the purposes of internet distribution like Finnish freefrom friend Keijo on the We Have No Zen! imprint or UK hypercolor basshead Slugabed (who has a formidable, if oft overlooked remix history under his belt) on the Oscillations comp

Nas in even in the lineup with his contribution to the Open Remix compilation, a collection of remixes of Senegalese superstar Youssou N'Dour to benefit Intrahealth International.

There's even the hot off the presses new Big Blood cdr released less than a week ago, what service!

My favorite recording though has to be the T-Model Ford hallway jam sesssion in the Catskills during All Tomorrow's Parties this past summer. He just set up in the hallway unannounced and played because he figured people would enjoy it. Direct as hell.

Being a music festival, the experience at the ATP weekend isn't thoroughly grounded in any traditional sense of reality. Already seatbelting themselves into a commitment to a full work week's worth of entertainment, guests enjoy the supplemental bonus of attending the unsettlingly traditional Kutsher's Resort and Country Club, oasis of the Catskills 1970. Without any jursidiction from father time and mother space to keep anyone focused, a strong "No parents!" vibe rules the weekend and the fine line between "anything goes" and "WTF" disappears and reappears at random. Soon, Ron Jeremy's chumming it with your crew and you're being offered to smoke with DJ Kool Herc at 5 AM while Albini's poker tournament upstairs has yet to finish. It was easy to lose track of any sense about how the world works.

Much of ATP's and Jim Jarmusch's programming over the weekend dealt with performers in the psychedelic kingdom, audiences regularly careened into space on the extraplanetary saddles of guitar solo after guitar solo. At Fursaxa's turn at bat, backed up by cellist Helena Espvall and Mary Lattimore on full-size harp, they decided to forego the rocket ship method in favor of gently lofting the audience to the heavens on a hot air balloon stream of looped vocals and string accompaniments, finishing off the set with the stellar, seven minute "Sidhe," that seemed to mimic the sound of the 400 people all breathing together at a pace that deviated from any other point in the weekend. The effect took hold and left everyone in the ballroom completely inundated, many on their backs in "carpet angel" pose nowhere closer to reality.

Listen to the full 40 minute set below. Fursaxa's 2010 studio album on ATP Recordings, Mycorrizhae Realm, also features Epsvall and Lattimore.

A nugget of not-so-distant history from 2006:

My band politely opened the show and played a decent, three song set that didn't have anyone jumping out of their skin but generated some polite comments afterwards. Mordstrahlen, the eastern European chopped-and-screwed hip hop cdj alias of Shawn Greenlee played between all the sets as people perused the liquor table full of Old Grandad of an indeterminate age that my friend, the estate cleaner/tomb raider, had found in he attic of someone recently deceased. The attic conditions didn't prove to be too kind on Old Grandad's finer notes and nuances so a mildly distressed, kerosene-smelling crowd politely waited for the next action-adventure rock band to play...and play they did.

One particular person was so excited about the playing that it suggested to him that the plastic lawn nativity virgin mother that was hanging around was not being smashed with enough garden hoes. Person, who happened to be the propietor of the space, took his trusty garden hoe and in the upswing, knocked the head off of the sprinkler, letting a violent black cloud of warehouse water out on the crowd, band, and vintage equipment. He disappeared and water kept filling the space for about twenty minutes while I ran several blocks down to find a wet-dry vac from my studio.

This was the second out of five acts set to play, two being on tour from Europe: Jason Forrest (aka DJ Donna Summer) with his band, and About from the Netherlands. We certainly couldn't have brought these nice people all the way out to not play, so we strung some extension cords (on the ceiling, for there were already a couple inches of water on the floor) and some lights to a part to the warehouse where there was a spot of raised cement about four inches high where a band could conceivably fit, completely dry. They fit, and they performed for the remainder of the crowd who danced enthusiastically in several inches of water. Nobody was electrocuted.

Anyway, moral of the story: however cold, bleak and socially anesthetizing this winter might be, check out Jason's take from the Peppermill Records compilation "Winter" and remember that you're probably not ankle deep in water right now.

It's been quite an initial year for the FMA! There's way too much going on within these 15,000 tracks to get an all-encompassing favorite free music of 2009 but I thought I'd give a shout out to some of my favorite live recordings I saw come through within the comfortable confines of an embeddable FMA mix.

Along with nine other instant classics, I've included one of my favorite recorded live bits this year: Dan Deacon imploring the Spanish-speaking crowd at Primavera Sound 09 to follow his human tunnel instructions. Speak English or die...in a poorly buttressed tunnel made of Deacadets!

Also, I don't know if it ruins it for you or not, but I just found out the Master Musicians of Bukkake aren't actually from Bukkake. The track's still good though.

This week, the Free Music Archive received two live recordings from neo blues/jazz/improv/instrumentalist Cooper-Moore. One set from his recent outing at the Brecht Forum as part of a panel on new uses of the language of blues. The other set coming from Brian Turner's curated night at the WFMU/Issue Project Room collaborative concert series in September of 2008.

And speaking of Issue Project Room, they recently received the Marty Markowitz allocation treatment with $1.1 million set aside for Issue Project's promotion of the arts, culture, and avant-garde in Brooklyn. Terribly exciting news, right?

Try not to be regaled by this excerpt from Cooper-Moore's IPR performance and expect much more of that to come.

Bay Area DJ and producer Chief Boima stops by Jersey City today on Mudd Up to discuss his past, current and upcoming work under his own name, with collaborative production hounds Banana Clipz, Chief y Chango, as well as being the cellist for instrumental rock combo Beaten By Them.

He is also the producer of the Free Music Archive's 24th most listened-to track. Take an ear gander below to see why it's favorited so often. Tune in to Mudd Up with DJ/Rupture Monday, July 6 at 7 pm EST for more fiery details and exclusive previews.

because everybody's already firing up their grills for BASTILLE DAY!

Don't let your couxk-out be the least French on the block though. Show everyone how much you know about downloading French music by perusing the Archive.

In June, Pierre De Gaillande came down to Irene Trudel's show to feature his new English translations of revered French icon Georges Brassens, weaving hilarious tales of love, sex, and everyday life while condemning the hypocrisies of society.

Also you can find more French yesteryear music from France and all the nations that succumbed to the overwhelming fluidity of the French toungue from Excavated Shellac.

MMMM, pass the Creme Fraiche.

Not that you weren't getting a great deal anyway with this excellent cdr series (each one pushes the 80 minute mark) but now you can browse the annals of the Free Matter For The Blind spectrum at a more convenient rate!

Curated by Raphael Lyon, aka Mudboy, the compilations drift between strange communiques from weirdo musicians, Coast to Coast-caliber field recordings, and other bits of audio-detritus jumbled together into a misty apocalypse-podcast science-fiction collage.

Check out one of the weirder excerpts...

It's official now! June 5th marks the start of party season. Now we can all go party hunting without fear of our party licenses being revoked. There's no limit to what we can't accomplish now!

We wouldn't want to come in to the game too heavily, so I'd peruse the disco section for tracks like "Dancing on the Moon" from Bloc Sonic's Anaxagoras compliation. It bridges the gap between the vivacity of Xanadu and the "1980's vision of what 1994 will be like" of The Apple.

And rather than spend this year's party season watching The Apple over and over again, I'd suggest picking up the pace with the most recent comp, Monsters of Cock Rock from DJ Donna Summer's (aka Jason Forrest) Cock Rock Disco imprint. Every track works in a reverse party format, where it's assumed you are already hungover and by the time you get to the end of the song, you're ready take on the night again.

DJs, promoters, bartenders take note: If you're ever at a point where you need to put the party faculties of your audience through a less than courteous gauntlet, play the track below.