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Back From Holiday

I didn't intend to take a two-week holiday from this blog but it was a nice break all the same. But now that all of the entries have fallen off of my main index page, I guess it's time for the holiday to end. I'll pick up pretty much where I left off, by briefly plugging the fact that I'm once again DJing at The Federal tomorrow night, and by continuing to hype the WXYC webcasting anniversary. Local NPR station WUNC gave a good bit of airtime to the WXYC webcasting breakthrough on Wednesday's episode of The State of Things, and if you missed the radio version, you can listen to the archived show online. The show featured 20+ minutes of webcasting/technology chat with David McConville, Mike Shoffner, and SunSITE/ibiblio head Paul Jones, who blogged about the live radio experience here.

The second half of Wednesday's The State of Things focused on local hip-hop MC Phonte Coleman (Little Brother) and The Foreign Exchange, Phonte's trans-Atlantic Internet-enabled collaboration with Dutch producer Nicolay. Oddly enough, just last month NPR's Renee Montagne did a Morning Edition story about The Foreign Exchange. I guess Connected is sufficiently smoothed-out and R&B enough to appeal to the typical NPR demographic? Hey, more power to local hip-hop artists for making things happen. I like the way the cover of Connected kinda looks like a still from a Michael Mann movie. It's a wonder that Trans Am never used such an image on one of their album covers.

To tie this all back to WXYC's free Bandwidth compilation CD, one of the guest MCs on The Foreign Exchange's Connected album is Median, who also guests with Spectac on "Life Ain't Easy". Up-and-coming local producer Khrysis did the hot horn-laden beat for "Life Ain't Easy", so download it here (5.07 MB) if you haven't already. Spectac and Khrysis are also some of the many artists featured on a relatively new Neblina Records compilation called Definition. And if you're looking for more to read, both Phonte and Spectac took part in a post-election "hip-hop conversation" that appeared in last week's issue of The Independent.