Slightly Surreal

What to do on a (rainy) Sunday after one of the best nights out you ever experienced in your life?? That was exactly my question the day after the Warehouse Project in Manchester...

Well, after a sturdy breakfast of scrambled eggs, coffee and freshly squeezed OJ my boyfriend and I decided to drag ourselves to the Manchester Art Gallery for the exhibition Angels of Anarchy - Women Artists and Surrealism. They had great works on display by a.o. Francesca Woodman, Frida Kahlo and Meret Oppenheim. But my heart truly skipped a beat when I saw some collaborative pieces. They were made along the same principle as our drawings for the Freikörperkult t-shirts! I had never seen these before.

Y. Tanguy, Joan Miro, Max Morix and Man Ray (1927).

Andre Breton, Jacqueline Lamba and Yves Tanguy (1938).

Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Nusch Eluard and Valentine Hugo (ca. 1930).

Andre Breton, Valentine Hugo, Greta Knutson and Tristan Tzara (ca. 1933).

I didn't know this 'game' had a name. It's called EXQUISITE CORPSE. The Surrealists used to play it with words as well, and exquisite corpse is taken from the first sentence that was produced this way: "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau.", which translates to "The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine."

The title of our t-shirts was sort of randomly picked after one of our favourite German words: Freikörperkultur, roughly translated as Free Body Movement, which advocates a naturistic/nudist way of life. We encountered the Freikörperkultur up close and personal at the swimming pool in Berlin this summer. The word suited our drawings perfectly, especially when we shortened it to -kult.

Anyways, I just thought it was so cool to see these drawings that I wanted to share them with you. I now know our drawings aren't just weird, no, they are Surreal!

Kuduro Riddims

Woohoooo, tomorrow morning I'll be off to Manchester for what might well be THE best party of the year. Annie Mac invited the creme de la creme of DJs and artists around to play at the Warehouse project, a temporary club under Piccadilly Station. It's going to be an exhausting night with live performances by Major Lazer and Buraka Som Sistema, and Toddla T, Fakeblood, Skream, Boy 8-Bit and DJ Zinc behind the decks!!!!! More exclamation marks: !!!!!!!!!

I think this is a very exciting time for dance music, with rhythms and musical elements from all over the world seeping into mainstream club music, entering the dance floor and making us shake our booties. Take tomorrow's artists for example. Diplo, the guy who played an important role in bringing baile funk out of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, has now turned to dancehall with his latest project Major Lazer, in collaboration with Switch. With great success. Also Toddla T has a taste for Jamaican riddims (as well as for club house and garage). Buraka Som Sistema brings us kuduro, a genre which originated in Angola and was later transported to Portugal (its colonizer). And apparently kuduro is now huge in France, thanks to the substantial Cape Verde community. I stumbled on a selection of some excellent kuduro tracks at the Masala blog (a great blog BTW, even though I can only read half of it - they're from Montreal, so most is written in French). I pass two of those tracks on over here, both by Angolian artists. It's raw. Very raw. But that's how I like it!

Dog Murras - Midexa. Get it here (YSI).

Noite E Dia - Tiramakossa. Get it here (YSI).

Taken off the compilation Akwaaba Sem Transporte.

Salford Ladettes Club

This year I really got spoiled with birthday presents... Ghetto gold AND my lovely boyfriend treated me to a weekend trip to Manchester. He knew how much I wanted to visit this city, home of my favorite band ever: The Smiths (and many other great bands). I've been a die hard fan since I was 16, so his gift was a dream come true! Highlight of my pilgrimage was traveling to this gritty neighborhood in Salford (next to Manchester) to have my picture taken in front of the Salford Lads Club. The place became an icon because of the famous picture by Stephen Wright, which was used for the inner sleeve of The Smiths' The Queen is Dead album. It also appears in the video I posted earlier here. I can die now and heaven will know I'm not miserable.

Saturday we spent the day strolling through the Northern Quarter, which is packed with 2nd hand stores, crafty markets, independent boutiques, cute eateries, great bars and clubs. And there are some excellent record shops as well. One, Beatin' Rhythm, stocks nothing but cds and 45s of girl groups, doo wop and northern soul. I probably could have completed my collections of songs about dances there instantly, but my budget forced me to stick to just a few cds.

It was also in this store that I saw a poster... The poster said Toddla T, the boy wonder from Sheffield, was DJ'ing that night in Manchester!! Another dream come true! His set didn't disappoint. He played some of my favorite tracks, like Too Many Men and The Migrain Skank (blogged about here and here)! My boy and I were the only ones who knew how to do the Migraine Skank, so we got props from the MC haha!

Manchester isn't the most beautiful city on earth, but I kind of like cities that are a little rough and in transition. It has an interesting (musical) history and nowadays it's a great city for shopping, drinking beer (go to The Knott for some real ales) and parteeeeee! MADCHESTER!!!