world electronic and jewish jazz

(This is my first attempt to blog about music as a companion to the show. Bear with me and let me know what you think)

This week's show (audio available here with the complete playlist here) featured a lot of new music. We have a shelf in the on-air studio with all of the music the station has acquired in the past month or so--it's fun to check out new music and it's great to have stuff to play within arm's reach. On the online playlist you can tell which songs came from that shelf because they have a little asterisk next to the artist's name. The entire first half hour I played from a single CD, an album put out periodically by Fabric, a london nightclub that also has their own record label where they release live mixes by the guest DJs. The rest of the hour was taken up by other electronica ranging from Thievery Corporation to a compilation of South African house music. Some interesting stuff.

This week I also played a number of artists from the Tzadik record label, in particular the "Radical Jewish Culture" recordings. The label, started by experimental musician and jazz saxophonist John Zorn, seeks to advance experimental and avant garde music, and with "Radical Jewish Culture" to advance a kind of new Jewish music. You can read more about what he means by that on his website, but the results are definitely some interesting stuff.

Last week I played music by Balkan Beat Box, a group recommended to me by my brother's girlfriend during a long drive home from a renaissance festival (other, long story). I checked them out and found out that the group, formed by New Yorkers with pretty extensive ties to Israel, now has their own record label: JDub, where they put out records by Jewish artists spanning a whole range of genres, from reggae to indie-rock. In that same conversation I'd mentioned John Zorn so I decided I'd look more into all the new Jewish music he was putting out on Tzadik. I wasn't dissapointed.

If you're interested in hearing the show you can listen in live from 5 to 7am Wednesdays and can catch anything you've missed online here for one week after the show airs (or save the mp3 and listen whenever you want).