MUTAMASSIK + MORGAN CRAFT: Press

"Rough Americana could be said to initiate a new, trans-Atlantic musical discourse of cotton...This insight is made possible by Mutamassik's and Craft's research, which shows that black (reconstruction) music is a music of ruins."

From the jungles of Brooklyn to a cave in the mountains of Italy via Cairo; Mutamassik keeps relocating headquarters for immigrant punkjaw revolution. She collides South Egyptian sa’aidi hardcore with jungle with baladi breakbeats with hip hop from the Bronx. The sounds have gotten deeper and darker with the years, but the rhythms remain as aggressive as ever. As a DJ and producer, Mutamassik always attacks full on —rough and rugged. But then again, Mutamassik means stronghold in Arabic, with a touch of fanaticism. She defies the tendency to clean up and gloss over "savage" music for the museums. Rough Americana, her project with bassist Morgan Craft, is a reaction to US politics post 9/11. They simply relocated their studio from Brooklyn to the Italian mountains, living their politics and dealing with issues of colonialism, migration and cynicism. Here, Mutamassik and Craft are exploring experiences growing up in the depressive Mid-Western Rustbelt of America, with North African, Italian and Native American mixed backgrounds. The darkness of apocalyptic post-industrial wasteland seeping out and sinking in. Teenage punk rocker experiments in heavy metal bands. Living their politics, the Mutamassik and Craft mission is to "wake people the fuck up" and make them feel something. Protests and marches are not enough. As Mutamassik says, "for those with simple means, may your resourcefulness shine. Lest we ever forget, where one is the oppressed, in another land he is the oppressor."

About 'RA'- "Craft and Mutamassik bruise you out of easy-listening mode...gnarly and polyvalent like the mandrill!"

About 'ROUGH AMERICANA'- "This duo are members of that great local sensation Burnt Sugar featuring Ms. (DJ) Mutamassik on turntables, tapes and effects and Mr. Morgan Craft on guitar with devices. This cd was recorded live and is completely improvised. There are 17 short tracks and it is just over a half hour, yet it all flows together creating a series of somewhat disturbing moods or images. Samples are taken from ethnic recordings, the news and other unspecified sources. Ominous fluctuations, helicopters landing, mutant electronics, bent beats, telephone tones, disembodied voices, violent samples dumped in the blender and mixed together in strange ways. The cover art is a blown up copy of a dollar bill with some appropriate political images added. Relatively bizarre and fascinating throughout."

Rough Americana is a collaboration between Brooklyn's DJ Mutamassik (known for her sets that combine traditional Egyptian and African musics with hardcore and hip hop beats) and experimental guitarist Morgan Craft. Their debut is a 30-minute live set with Mutamassik handling the turntables, CDs, cassettes, and effects, and Morgan playing the Stunt Guitar. Both artists exhibit smart touch as improvisers: they know when to lay it on and when to hold back. But if you want easy listening, go elsewhere. As the artists describe it: "Egyptian folk beats nestle nicely up against radio transmissions and television remote controls pushed through guitar pickups." Indeed they do. Rough Americana takes sounds that are typically passively received and makes them violently active--a good reminder that noisemaking is political and necessary. This is guaranteed to open your mind and ear to new musical possibilities and forward-thinking juxtapositions of culture and space.

About 'RA'- "DJ Mutamassik and guitarist Craft collaborate on this intense, freethinking improvised set that veers from noise to wrenched-apart anthems to soft ambient tones. Not for the faint of heart but a spirited and occasionally rewarding deconstruction of music as we know it."

About 'RA'- "Mutamassik and Morgan Craft combine advanced turntablism and guitar work respectively to bring you a devastatingly broad spectrum of sound. No mood or source is eschewed on this live recording, including Egyptian folk beats, hardcore punk, militarism, and stochastic radio pick-ups. Rough Americana brings the term "musical journey" back into vogue with both hands."

"Rough Americana is a live-sampled burlap weave of coarse, scratchy strands of sound as disparate as soapbox Jello Biafra, ghostly Missy Elliott and sinewy Egyptian beats from the looms of two Brooklynites, DJ Mutamassik and Morgan Craft. It's got the irregular patternless texture that marks the handmade, every improvised moment of high abstraction as utterly different as the one before. "Amid Debris" is the rare track with a filtered, staticky beat topped with guitar noodlings and thin, plucky samples; otherwise, Rough Americana eludes most melody and rhythm. Check the two "Memphis" tracks- "USA" and "Africa"- that wriggle just beyond grasp."

About MORGAN CRAFT'S 'Adagio'- "Mournful anthemic lone-wolf stunt guitar from an Afro-Viking Minnesotan. "First World" electronic improvisation as resourceful as "Third World", using all parts of the animal(broken strings, cable tips, amp tubes, back springs, machine heads, pickup pole pieces, etc) to steer electricity to new spacious sound frontiers. Think long distance truckin' through an echoing wasteland. A beauty."

"Ike Turner and Bootsy Collins both answered Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, as did BS guitarist emeritus Morgan Craft.  Three of the funkiest brothers in the world need to hear they can go their own way, go figure."

About MUTAMASSIK's 'Masri Mokkassar: Definitive Works'- "This is inhuman, brutal, awesome breakcore."

"Mutamassik's 'High Alert' gets down and dirty into Sa'aidi(southern Egypt folk music) in a major way. 'Interlude for Grampa' displays her signature orchestral narrative, floor-shaking Pan-african hip hop sound. Don't stand too close to the speaker when you hear it in the club."

"The headiness of the treated strings and clattering percussion sets her mixes apart from anyone culling beats."

"Mutamassik's High Alert 12"(featuring 4th Pyramid from Definitive Jux Presents, Vol. 3) is a melange of Baladi breakbeats, Egyptian electro-hardcore, aural storytelling and hip-hop emceeing. -- it's the sound of urban warfare. This frightening soundscape is... combined with distinctly Mutamassikian bass-drum thumps. You get the feeling this is an aural tour of how the other side lives, those with war dominating their tank-laden streets. Harkening back to turntable innovator Christian Marclay, though conceptually "heavier" than he tends to be, Mutamassik drops subtle reminders of the mere existence of Third World struggle in these songs -- an unfamiliar, uncomfortable and frightening reality that most music-buying Americans would rather ignore."

"Mutamassik's pounding Egyptian hip-hop breaks...are serious, sacred, steadfast marching music for the new international breakbeat generation."

"Dans un melange d', d'electronique et de hip-hop, Mutamassik s'engage dans la reconstruction des . Arabesque, melopees de minarets se croisent dans un magma de sons urbains, structures par d'impressionants alliages rhythmiques."

"Highly regarded post-techno DJ..."

Before the sounds of the Middle East became de rigueur sampling materials for hip-hop, Mutamassik was exploring ways of fusing various sounds and styles into a compelling, challenging whole, shards a-flying all the while.”

Cover of the Village Voice- December, 1997(Mutamassik), Option, The Wire, Rolling Stone, Vibe, African Sun Times, New York Times, Straight No Chaser, Alternative Press, One World, Request, Rhythm Magazine, Bidoun, Pinknoises.com, Newsweek(Arabic Edition), American Society for Engineering Education...