regular updates will return in february. until then i’ll probably be dropping teasers like this one. stevie wonder meets jay-z with a splash of Gregorian chant.

missed you guys. thanks for the comments. happy holidays and see you next year!

Indian superstars Aishwarya Rai and Ajay Devgan remixed to “She’s Dope” by BellBivDeVoe. First smashed together by Pierre Bennu in December 06. Click the photo or click here to get to the video.

this is a remix that didn’t make it to the last two ‘love’ mixtapes… it’s a single-song taste to hold you till the next full mix comes. nat king cole meets prince, meets the man we all know and love… (i think his name is) kwame.

enjoy!

remixed love songs for the weird of heart.  30min.

cast of characters (in no particular order): jolie fuego, king britt, skunk anansie, bran nu classix, big mama thornton, michael jackson, cousin pete, mrk drkfthr, eddie murphy, cyndi lauper.

This is dedicated to those who still believe any news they see followed by a commercial. This is also dedicated to the writers on strike. Pay those artists what they want. Finally, it’s dedicated to the addiction that many of us suffer from too much TV. Hopefully this mix will help get you through withdrawal.

cast of characters, in no particular order: latasha natsha diggs, imani uzuri, cousin pete , Malcolm x, martin luther King jr, henri ’scars’ struck, nitin shawney, the police, Sd2, pink floyd, Roberta flack, dntel, howard beale.

suggested exercise for this mixtape: pick a destination, close your eyes, and have someone you love and trust lead you there.
cast of characters, in no particular order: bleek gilliam/shadow henderson, queen, beastie boys, prince, outkast, count bass d, dwele, jemini, bootsy collins, cannibal ox, pharcyde, new edition, kermit the frog.
54MB. 47 minutes.

this video is a celebration & tribute to black dance, set to an amazing song by Imani Uzuri - visit her website (myspace.com/herholywater) to hear more of her music and purchase songs. the piece was edited by pierrre bennu (yours truly)

drum & bass-ey remixes meets southern hip hop, meets british ambient, meets a whole bunch of other stuff i have a hard time categorizing. load it up, put it in your ears, and go outside & play. 25 minutes.
cast of characters includes: we are the world, cee-lo, mr. scruff, andre 3000, erykah badu, king britt, bahamadia, esthero,  saul williams, nitin sawhney, o brother where art thou, outkast, sun ra.

parents are always asking me for mix tapes for their children - for years i have answered this call and spun mixtapes for very short friends of ours. - i really enjoy creating child-friendly mixes that parents can enjoy as well.

i figured it’s time to share these with the rest of the world. so call your young nephews nieces, god children, daughters and sons into the room and crank up the volume! this is the first of many.

43 minutes.
cast of characters: michael jackson, rita moreno, mos def, shel silverstein, cookie monster, 3 bean stew, school house rock, king britt, the pointer sisters, panoptikum, charlie brown, alice coltrane, and the sesame street kids.

cast of characters: prince, koop, gnarls barkley, obi wan kenobi, de la soul, erykah badu and damian marley, hard candy, michael jackson, prince po with ammon contact, outkast, karl bradney. assembled and mixed by cousin pete.

photo by shadi ghadirian.

The Color Purple is one of those films/books that I own but dont watch often. It is powerful and beautiful, but at times painful. This mix is an attempt to honor what i see as the message of that film - love conquering though adversity and the triumph of the good in the human spirit. It’s a mix tape for Miss Celie: healing through dance.
Cast of characters: quincy jones, nitin sawhney, elsa, tortured soul, ammon contact, bobby mcferrin, koop, fertile ground, whoopie goldberg, oprah winfrey.

If Paul Robeson became a rasta after he was forced to leave the US it would have probably sounded like this.

(the 6th sense meditation mix)

best listened to close to dusk after having taken 3 deep breaths, preferably with your eyes closed. light one nag champa incense, turn off all the lights in your house and open the biggest window facing the most light. mixed live with no rehersal for your sanity by

your cousin,
pete

cast…not necessarily in order of appearance: dr harlow shapley, rjd2, terrence trent darby, cee lo, lauren hill, james brown, lyn collins, de la soul, spiritual south, bill withers, diplo, war and james baldwin. painting by mati klarwein.

found this song digging in my crates. i played it at my last gig, before starting the set. people stood at attention while i finished setting up, like it was the pledge of allegience or something. then, proceeded to dance their butts off as i eased into a james brown set. happy birthday mr. brown.

lost moments in film history vol 1. beat provided by bran nu classix

remix of sade and shabba, with a twist of fat albert

Billie Jean Remix michael jackson meets exittheapple in this heavily layered remix

“Lets wait a while” - Lois Jackson REMIX 

four minutes of funk, celebrating the art of the remix. how many songs have been broken apart here, and reassembled for your listening pleasure? touch it baby m4a file (to open in itunes) or  click here for an MP3 file (play in browser)

After getting past some technical hurdles, working through all of life’s hustles and those things that work their way higher on the ‘to do’ list, there is finally something new on the notradio blog.

The process of me finally getting this music up deals entirely with the act of letting go. I know now that I will never have enough records. I will never know if it’s mixed right or if anyone digs this stuff as much as I do. But I can say finally that it’s done and that’s all I can do. That’s all anyone can ever do. So I’ll be letting these go. Sometimes it will just be a really rare song from someone obscure or undiscovered; sometimes it will be a whole mix tape; sometimes just a remixed song. My goal is to drop at least one a week if not more.

What I grew up listening to and doing is not the norm. And with technology being what it is, the art of DJing as I remember it has become a lost art. People have told me on many occasions that they haven’t really heard anything like that or that they haven’t heard anything like that in a while. They would often ask where they can get a mix tape or when I was spinning next.

I don’t tend to keep regular gigs, so I would usually point them to my site but under the guise of wanting to put out a perfect product, i kept pushing back the deadline for getting my mixes up. I never felt that what I did was quite ‘perfect’ enough to share. Was there an audience for it? And shouldn’t I wait until I got “X” “Y” or “Z” record to do that one mix I’d been thinking about?
Then I stopped doing it for feed back and found a reason to do it for self.

So here it is: perfect. With its occasional glitches, scratchy records, worn needles, slight mess ups, and other things that you totally don’t care about.

I hope you enjoy. See you next week with something new.

:o)

And right as I’m about to upload a ton of new stuff, my hard drive fails. ALL my digital music was wiped clean.

Losing the things I had on CD was just a minor inconvenience, but what hurts is that I lost unreleased tracks, very rare demos and my entire library of mixes. So as you can imagine I’ve just been getting my head together - trying to get to a place where I even felt safe recording again. So thanks for your feedback and patience. I got tons of fun stuff on the horizon keep an ear here, and thanks again.

I remember the responsibility of not damaging the records because that meant damaging the message. I remember the honor bestowed on the one deemed worthy - and old enough - to touch the equipment. To be the selector was an unspoken rite of passage… the requirement to both move and challenge the crowd.

I will not be the only DJ contributing to the sound, text and art on this site.

Consider me (Pierre Bennu) a curator of this sonic gallery of audio collages. I expect it will transform and mutate into something far less literal than this but until such time I leave you with some older pieces I had laying around to whet your virtual palate.

I’m not going to bore you with music theory or how well I can use my thesaurus. This is more for you to close your eyes to and imagine a smell or a place or a time, perhaps visit a place you’ve never been or doesn’t even exist. This is for artists, dreamers and folks who need a sound put to a moment that they cant hold onto with words. This is something to nod your head to and reminisce; or something that gets you up dancing and sends you on a journey saying “who sings that?” Some of its funny some of it’s obscure but all of its recorded live and done with love…

This is notradio.

Tears For Fears vs. The Clipse - a concept/test. 1.5 minutes, 1.6 MB