“From the creative vaults of Bilal Salaam” comes this groovy tune and simple but effective black and white video. His latest collaboration OP Swamp 81 is calling itself electronic funk. I love their retro samples and outfits…

Listen to more of Bilal Salaam’s music on Reverb Nation.

[via The Assimilated Negro]

Fresh Cut profiles the nonprofit educational organization Minds Matter of Chicago. They’re working hard to make the dream of college a reality for low-income high school students.

“And if nature is happy, people and the way they live and work and the panda are all happy.”

Via World Wildlife Foundation

The latest short film from London Squared Productions is a beautiful meditation on the people of New York. These glimpses of life in the city are told with the sensibility of an audio slideshow but made unique with subtle animation. Enjoy:

For most musicians, touring with bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage and the iconic former-Smiths vocalist, Morrissey might be cause to sit back and rest on your laurels. Not for drummer Matt Walker, who despite a busy touring and recording schedule, has been steadily working on his own music: a mixture of rock and electronic music that has found a home with his band the Most Dangerous Race (the MDR).

He recently released a video of the band rehearsing their song “open window” in Chicago:

Having adopted a virtual working style while Matt was on tour, theMDR has evolved quickly in the few short years since it’s inception in 2005. The band now includes: JT McCluskey (vocals), Matt Walker (guitar, keyboards, programming, drums), Dmitri Rakhuba (bass), and Brendan Byrnes (guitar).

I caught up with Matt via email from New York (this man is seriously always on the go) to talk about what it’s like to create and rehearse music with band members on different continents:

You wrote most of your songs while on tour, at one point even in a ferry on your way to Helsinki. How did moving around so much effect your songwriting process?

I have always found that being in different environments stimulates my creativity. Usually the stranger the locale, the more the inspiration. The biggest hurdle usually is finding the will power to set up the recording gear, especially in the midst of a long tour where stamina is already in short supply. However, in the end, I am always glad to have made the effort. In the case of the ferry to Helsinki, it was mid- November, and the ferry was trudging through icy waters. I was in a cell- sized cabin, which for someone with any bit of claustrophobia would have been a nightmare, but I found it rather cozy…it was located in the lower decks and I could hear and feel the ice scraping against the side of the boat. The journey was about 8 hours, and I spent almost the entire time writing and recording except for a couple of breaks where i would bundle up and head out on deck to watch the frozen landscape steadily moving by. When I get home and review what I have written, the songs really become a journal of my travels. Each idea has been forever stamped with the feel, smell and taste of a different city or country.

I noticed some of the lyrics in songs like “Home” evoke a sort of liminal state of both movement and longing. Did writing these songs ever serve as a way to get grounded amid the whirlwind of gigs around the world?

That song happens to be extremely personal, and a bit more literal than many we write as theMDR. Yes, the song is a plea to hang on when things begin to feel desperate and impossible to bear. It’s no secret that the domestic quality of a musician’s life is far from what is typically considered ‘normal’. The two will forever be at odds with each other. Sometimes when I travel for such extended lengths I begin to feel like an astroid hurdling through space, without any control of my destination or passage. Sometimes, it can actually be somewhat soothing, but at other times, it is simply terrifying. And asteroids don’t often make good husbands or parents.

What kind of gadgets did you bring on tour that allowed you to write and record your new songs while on the go?

I really wish there was a more interesting answer for this one but modern technology has made this all too easy!! I’d like to imagine that I pull out all these rare and fascinating futuristic gadgets that enable me to record in the farthest corners of the world…but wait….I just use my Mac. Boring. However, I do have a pretty handy suitcase sized electric guitar which has been invaluable for writing, as well as a mini keyboard controller, about an octave and a half in size. I also carry around a bag full of mics, miscellaneous cables and transformers. I have, on numerous occasions, knocked out the electricity in various hotels in countries before i understood the difference between an adapter and a transformer. Ahh… Americans!

You were also on tour while theMDR was doing most of its rehearsing. How did that work?

This is one of our favorite tricks born out of our shared MDR mania. One reason JT and I are so perfectly suited for each other is that no idea seems too far- fetched or ridiculous if it will benefit the band. So what we did was film and record me playing the set , top to bottom, we then projected my performance against the wall and pumped the audio through our rehearsal p.a. The band just plays along and can start and stop me at will. Must be nice for them. Crude, but effective.

What was it like to get back home and practice and then perform with the band in person?

I usually find they completely have their shit together and I am playing catch up! Seriously though, whenever we can get in a room and actually play the songs together, it is always a breath of fresh air, and the hope is that soon we will leave the projected-drummer-on-the-wall rehearsals behind us. It works, but there just simply is no substitute for the interaction of musicians playing together.

What’s next for theMDR?

Big question. Big answer. We have finally become a full band. It took us a while to fill all the positions, but with Brendan and Dmitri on board we are finally able to do what we originally intended to do, which was to write and record as a band, and flesh the sound out of theMDR via more rehearsing and frequent live shows. We are working on our 4th ep, Future God, to be released this fall, but have also begun working up material for what will be our first official full- length release. Ideally, sometime soon we will get ourselves on on the road, and tour the coasts. Beyond that, we would like to set up residencies in a handful of cities, here in the States, as well as Europe, and spend enough time in each to not only build a following based on our live show, but to integrate with the local arts community. Not just musicians, but people of all the arts, students and professionals, because theMDR has always been about looking anywhere and everywhere for inspiration. And with any luck, we can provide them a bit of inspiration in return.

Check out theMDR on YouTube for more videos and theMDR MySpace page for news and show dates.