Since we’re all a tight-knit music-lovin’ community, we created this segment so that some of our good friends who are doing good things in the industry of human happiness could share the records that they’ve been diggin’ on lately.
Our first Grooves Shared comes from Awesome Tapes From Africa‘s Brian Shimkovitz, whose DJ performance at this year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in New Jersey was ranked in the top 10 overall performances by Spin Magazine. A little background on Shimkovitz’s Awesome Tapes:
Awesome Tapes From Africa began in 2006 as an mp3 blog shedding light on wonderful and obscure cassettes from the African continent. It has grown into an internationally recognized, crowd-sourced public archive and acclaimed DJ project.
Founder Brian Shimkovitz began by digitizing and blogging about cassettes he brought back from trips to West Africa and has since received tapes from fans and contributors, creating an extensive online repository for popular, traditional and folkloric musics from dozens of countries. the Guardian, the New York Times, Fader, the Wire, ArtForum, Rolling Stone, BBC Radio 6, Village Voice, and New York Magazine, among others, have hailed the project for its enthusiastic and open-armed approach to sharing otherwise hard-to-find music with listeners worldwide. In the process, numerous artists previously unheard outside their native regions have found fans via Awesome Tapes From Africa.
Awesome Tapes is celebrating its first release as a label with Nâ Hawa Doumbia’s La Grande Cantatrice Malienne Vol. 3, out now on LP, CD, digital download, and limited edition cassette. Take a listen to the magic.
Nâ Hawa Doumbia, “Kungo Sogoni”
And now for the album selections that Awesome Tapes’ Brian Shimkovitz is sharing with us today. Says Brian: “Here are the 5 favorite recent records I have purchased…”
Deuter—Celebration (Kuckuck)
Alice Coltrane Radha—Krsna Nama Sankirtana (Warner Bros.)
Kraftwerk—Elecktro Kinetic (Vertigo)
