Here's something you might be interested in.
Back in January, my buddy Hugo Fierro and I curated a show at Visual in Normal Heights with a handful of artists and musicians who had caught our attention during weekend jaunts across the border to Mexicali and Tijuana.
Closing the night was Madame Ur y Sus Hombres, a cosmic jazz-cabaret quartet from Tijuana fronted by the captivating Madame Ur in cat mask and kimono.
The Madame - a tantalizing presence if ever there was one - sang about love longed-for and love lost.
Near the end of her performance, in a gesture that hinted at reconciliation with hombres past and, perhaps, the very essence of hombre-tude itself, Madame Ur descended from the stage into a dense alleyway crowd, embraced a dude in the audience, and held him with all the tenderness of a lover, a mother, and an ancient goddess, at once - swaying slightly to her hombres' hypnotic frenzy.
That dude was Steve ‘Sleeve↓’ Canfield, a dimethyltryptic beat producer and force behind local label, Liquid Geometry.
Three months later, Sleeve↓ dropped a remix of Madame Ur’s haunting track “Venada” via Soundcloud.
Not only is the remix an explosive sonic tryst between two super chingon borderland artists, but it also encapsulates exactly what Hugo and I were hoping to see from the event and its related documentary shorts (“Blue Balls in Mexicali” and “Tijuana: Caution, Wet Stripes”) – which is to say, newly-forged connections between culture creators on either side of the frontera.
Like Madame Ur, Sleeve↓'s sound tends to evade rightful attempts at explanation.
The words simply don't exist, or, if they do, they've only been muttered by mad men.
In this instance, Sleeve↓’s penchant for dark, resonant bass - garnished with gurgling blurgles, digital shimmerblips, and pungent wisps of stray smoke from the East - provides an almost sinister platform for Madame Ur’s provocative invocation.
As Madame Ur’s mouth-trumpet ooze-beckons over a climax of noises with no name, it feels as though a spell is being cast, and, try as you will, you can’t help but fall under its bewitching hex – consequences be damned.
Here’s the original take of “Venada”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13V60dSQ3pc
Mas Sleeve↓:
Photo by Gio Barela
Back in January, my buddy Hugo Fierro and I curated a show at Visual in Normal Heights with a handful of artists and musicians who had caught our attention during weekend jaunts across the border to Mexicali and Tijuana.
Closing the night was Madame Ur y Sus Hombres, a cosmic jazz-cabaret quartet from Tijuana fronted by the captivating Madame Ur in cat mask and kimono.
The Madame - a tantalizing presence if ever there was one - sang about love longed-for and love lost.
Near the end of her performance, in a gesture that hinted at reconciliation with hombres past and, perhaps, the very essence of hombre-tude itself, Madame Ur descended from the stage into a dense alleyway crowd, embraced a dude in the audience, and held him with all the tenderness of a lover, a mother, and an ancient goddess, at once - swaying slightly to her hombres' hypnotic frenzy.
That dude was Steve ‘Sleeve↓’ Canfield, a dimethyltryptic beat producer and force behind local label, Liquid Geometry.
Three months later, Sleeve↓ dropped a remix of Madame Ur’s haunting track “Venada” via Soundcloud.
Not only is the remix an explosive sonic tryst between two super chingon borderland artists, but it also encapsulates exactly what Hugo and I were hoping to see from the event and its related documentary shorts (“Blue Balls in Mexicali” and “Tijuana: Caution, Wet Stripes”) – which is to say, newly-forged connections between culture creators on either side of the frontera.
Like Madame Ur, Sleeve↓'s sound tends to evade rightful attempts at explanation.
The words simply don't exist, or, if they do, they've only been muttered by mad men.
In this instance, Sleeve↓’s penchant for dark, resonant bass - garnished with gurgling blurgles, digital shimmerblips, and pungent wisps of stray smoke from the East - provides an almost sinister platform for Madame Ur’s provocative invocation.
As Madame Ur’s mouth-trumpet ooze-beckons over a climax of noises with no name, it feels as though a spell is being cast, and, try as you will, you can’t help but fall under its bewitching hex – consequences be damned.
Here’s the original take of “Venada”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13V60dSQ3pc
Mas Sleeve↓:
Photo by Gio Barela