On Monday, December 17th, Charity: will hold their 2nd annual gala at New York’s Metropolitan Pavillion (125 W. 18th Street). Founded by former New York promoter Scott Harrison (who left his posh metropolitan lifestyle behind to spend eight months in West Africa), Charity: strives to improve the quality of life for the unfortunate 1.2 billion people living in the developing world without sanitary water, by raising both awareness and funds to combat preventable diseases, hunger, and the world water crisis. Offering good samaritans the chance to contribute at all levels (from $20 dollar bottles of water, to personally sponsoring the building of wells), the organization strives to make up for the lack of infrastructure and health services that plague so many around the world.

Focusing on the work of the organization’s Charity: Water campaign, Monday’s Charity: Ball will feature a live performance from indie rock starlet Cat Power and her newfound partners in crime, Dirty Delta Blues, as well as an auction that will feature items from Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Diesel and David Yurman, among others. There will be a multimedia exhibition outlining both the tragic details of the water crisis, as well as the steps necessary to stem the tide and improve the health and well-being of those in the developing world. The proceeds of both the auction and ticket sales will go directly towards funding the construction of freshwater wells in developing nations. And if you can’t make it to the Ball or the after party at Buddha Bar, don’t hesitate to donate.

All the info can be found here.

Anytime James Murphy and the DFA clan helm a Brooklyn barnburner, a certain electricity pervades the atmosphere. In the run up to such shows, hipsters, club kids and disco infiltrators of all stripes have a certain spring in their step that few acts can induce. And of course the crew’s Holiday Extravaganza at Greenpoint’s Studio B tonight is no exception. With DJ sets from Mr. Murphy himself, Pat Mahoney, Juan Mclean, Tim + Tim and Shit Robot, you can bet your Christmas bonus that there’ll be plenty of jingle bell rock to go around. And to keep those spirits high, there will be an open vodka bar from 11 to midnight. Oh Tannenbaum!

But surely the holidays aren’t strictly about rug-cutting debauchery. Fully vibing on the holiday spirit, Studio B will balance things out on Saturday night with a rather righteous holiday food drive for City Harvest. On the card for the concert-with-a-cause are the The Rub’s DJ Ayres, Miami’s DJ Craze, and Brooklyn firecrackers Lauren Flax and DJ Elle, just to name a few. And along with all the trax-on-wax and laptop lunacy, expect plenty of giveaways and a good old fashioned raffle (a 5$+ donation and 3 cans/boxes of food gets you one ticket; a $10+ donation and 3 can/boxes of food gets you three tickets). ‘Tis the season to shake what your mama gave ya.

For some four decades, the BBC’s Radio 1 has been throwing down an eclectic array of popular music for the masses, with exclusive live sessions, assorted documentaries and interviews thrown into the mix for good measure. Carrying the something-for-everyone vibe over for the holidays, Radio 1XTRA is bringing a bit of the Big Apple to the UK. Running from December 14th through December 22nd, the station’s home for Hip Hop, RnB, garage and dancehall will present “Xmas in New York”, a line-up of 10 shows featuring the drop on what’s next in Hip Hop, exclusive interviews with the past, present and future of the game, and the scoop on all the best the New York scene has to offer.

Things get started with Friday-night-freak Semtex cold chillin’ in the offices of the legendary Def Jam Records, chatting up the label’s staff and execs and picking the brains of Def Jam artists such as Beanie Sigel, Fabolous, Freeway and Ghostface. Now it could be argued that just that gem all by its lonesome would be well ample in the way of a holiday gift, but 1XTRA thinks you’ve been especially good this year. And though your dear old mum went to great lengths to remind you that it’s better to give than receive, lie back and enjoy this one. It’s on the house.

Aside from doing what is that they do (read: spinning the tracks that make ya head snap back; bringing chaos to blocks like the riots in Watts), other highlights from 1XTRA’s winter wonderland will include a “dollar vs. pound soundclash” that’ll feature grime heads JME and Skepta jumping into the cipher with up and coming Yank MCs. In addition 1XTRA DJ MistaJam will be scouting the urban music scene in the five boroughs of Glimmering Gotham, and a bonkers broadcast of superstar DJ Mark Ronson and “The God” himself, Rakim, doin’ the damn thing at YOYO NYC at LOVE wrapping things up on the 22nd.

So should you find the frenzy of the holiday hustle and bustle starting to get you down, fire up that radio, tv or computer, kick off your trainers, cozy up to some spiked eggnog and let the beat rock.

You can find all the info you’ll ever need right here.

As reported by NME, fate would have it that the Kate Moss-wooing, Britrock-saving, vintage Jaguar-wrecking Albion party monster that is Pete Doherty is wiling away his days and nights in the city of London, laying down tracks for a solo album, which, barring a label SNAFU, should be released sometime during the summer of ‘08. According to producer Jake Foir, Mr. “Dockerty” is about 25% percent through recording the album, which will feature guests spots from Pete’s Babyshambles cohorts, South London band The Thirst, and Brit rapper Klashnekoff.

With all the noise being made over Doherty’s self-imposed tour bus booze ban, one has to ponder the direction of this (potentially epic) solo effort (which producer Foir described so far as “slower and more intimate” than his Babyshambles forays). While the sober incarnation of Doherty means a similarly sober and polished album that will more than likely lack the rage-out-at-all costs, party-on-Garth! swagger of, say, The Libertines’ Up The Bracket, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Pete’s (relative sobriety) did lead to such wondrous things as a reunion with Libs frontman Carl Barat earlier this year, as well as the spectacular recent offering from Babyshambles, Shotter’s Nation. Something to think about, yeah?

But for those among you longing for the bad old days, the Johnny Headlock days, the days when men were men and supermodels loved them for it, then this Bud’s for you. The vid features Doherty discussing his lyrics with Sky’s Artsworld, but not before smashing his pint glass into the coffee table to emphasize the point that writing about smashing a glass is better than actually doing it, because no one has to stress the mess. Along with insight into just how maniacal the boy from Hexham can get at the peak of his guerilla warfare on the pleasure centers of his brain, one also is reminded of Doherty’s lyrical mastery and musical brilliance.

Check it out here.

Fighting games have been an integral part of the video gaming scene since the days of Bush Sr. Whether you were trying to perfect that ’sonic boom’, laying down Shang Tsung’s ‘Fatality’ or pleading with your older brother to finally let you play so you could kick some pixelated ass, one can’t deny that the genre has left an indelible mark on the sensibilities of a generation.

With that in mind, get your weight up, not your hate up, at this weekend’s New York Anime Festival, presented by New York-Tokyo at the Jacob Javits Center (655 W. 34th St.). Not only will dozens of the hottest games coming out of Japan be on display and available for play, but the event will also feature a massive fighting game tournament, pitting the best of the best against one another for dope prizes. And in addition to the GNG Tournament 2007, will be an undercard for the more casual player.

Among the titles separating the men from the boys (and of course, the women from the girls,) the main event will be Tekken 5, King of Fighters XI and Virtua Fighter 5, all sequels to classic franchises. Though the matter of whether Ryu was superior to Ken may remain forever unresolved, you can still expect a lot of shit-talking, dazzling visuals and 20-hit combos by the bowlful. Hadouken!

Wes Gully. Diplodocus. Wes Diplo. Call him what you damn well please. All you really need to know about Mad Decent Records/Hollertronix founder, producer and turntablist Diplo is that he’s coming to the borough of Brooklyn, and he’s bringing a well massive running crew to bolster his already stellar solo live set. Friday, November 30th, Cut NYC and Trouble & Bass bring their second Masters Of The Universe jam to Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s Studio B, with Philadelphia’s favorite son quarterbacking a boom-bap battalion of chief rockas to get you shakin’ that ass proper.

Spinning epic sets around the world and remixing everyone from Peter, Bjorn and John to Three 6 Mafia, Diplo can also pat himself on the back for laying down production that helped turn M.I.A.’s debut full-length Arular into one of the standout discs of ‘05, not to mention his part in making Baltimore Club and Brazilian baile funk internationally relevant genres. To shake shit up even further, Mad Decent signees South Rakkas Crew, who’ve produced bangers for such reggae monsters as Sizzla, Beenie Man and T.O.K., will bring the dubplate dynamic to the fray.

And if you take your Bmore club, baile funk and raggafied electro with a French touch, Cut NYC and T&B have got you covered on that too. As an early holiday gift, Institubes remix-phenom Surkin will accompany the Mad Decent hit squad and Trouble & Bass. Count on the NYC-friendly Parisian (who’ll be coming off a 33 Hz/Teki Latex/Devin The Dude single-release-party at Hiro Ballroom on Thursday) to work his ghettotronic magic and generally make the world a better place. Reach for the lasers. See you on the floor.

Image source: Village Voice

Running from November 30th through December 2nd, NYC art space The Tank and collective 8bitpeoples present Blip Fest 2007, a celebration and showcase of the burgeoning lo-tech movement in music and visual arts. For four days, over 30 musicians and video artists from 15 countries will exhibit works and perform at Eyebeam Atelier (540 W. 21st Street), using little more than old video game systems, computers and a shitload of ingenuity, imagination and nostalgia. On top of the Eyebeam event, an adjunct exhibition, BITMAP: As Good As New will jump off at Brooklyn’s vertexList.

In an age of plug-ins, supercomputer-grade synths and $600 dollar production software, there is definitely appeal in the back-to-zero approach, and the cool factor of manipulating hardware many of us grew up with and creating art with it is undeniable. As far as the “8-bit” genre goes, even the casual observer will have noticed the permeation of this style into artistic expression, particularly in the case of tracks and stage shows by indie and electronic artists.

Though the weapon of choice for many artists of this ilk is often a tweaked version of one of the old workhorses of yore (NES, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Game Boy, etc.), I’m hoping that someone will sneak the oft-slept-on CalecoVision console onstage at some point. That system practically raised me for a few months when I was a young buck. And I’ve always been one for sentimentality. In addition to the performances and exhibitions, workshops on everything from FM (frequency modulation) Synthesis to Becoming An Atari DJ will be available. It’s on like Donkey Kong!

Blip Festival 2007

Though Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth may have launched a quasi-movement to avert “a crisis the likes of which we have never known,” this past summer’s Live Earth raised the bar slightly higher, depoliticizing the matter of climate change and extending it beyond the realms of partisanship, lobbyist allegiances, and assertive yet bogus science. Since the massive global performance, awareness of the environmental challenges ahead has been on the rise, and it seems that every player, big or small, in every sector of business has striven to prove itself “greener” than its competitors.

In the way of protecting our future in innovative ways, Dutch non-profit Enviu is helming a number of projects that go above and beyond driving hybrids and switching to halogen light bulbs. Perhaps of greatest interest to Club Kids of all ages is the “Sustainable Dance Club” or, “Eco-Disco”. According to Popular Mechanics, the average club consumes about 150 times more energy than a four-person family every year. Tsk, Tsk, Tsk. Fabric, how do you sleep at night? Oh, that’s right, you don’t.

As far as rectifying the profligate ways of the world’s party palaces, the “Sustainable Dance Club” prototype strives to be a self-sufficient system in terms of energy and water, thus reducing environmental strain. Now, efficient LED-lighting, air-recirculating turbines, and on-site water purification (as in, desalinating clubgoer’s sweat and making it delicious again) are all well and good, but the SDC’s coup de gras is indelibly its revolutionary dancefloor. When the selector has hit his/her stride and 10,000 watts are all up in your chest, the SDC’s springloaded dancefloor dips slightly, spinning a flywheel which captures the kinetic energy of your drunken, maniacal dance moves, turning those tantric two-steps into supplemental power for the club.

With the company receiving orders for SDC technology from a number of European venues, Enviu’s site claims that “Clubbing will become a totally new experience with a high feel-good factor.” It’s a stab in the dark, but I’m guessing they’re referring to a different “high feel-good factor” than the one I’ve always associated with club nights. Hmmm. Come on everybody, let’s Get Green!

Photo courtesy of Popular Mechanics

In the world of digital music, “free and legal” typically means one of two things: either the artists featured are less-than-stellar and destined for the dollar store’s music section, or you’re the fly in some Fed’s web of justice. The November 15th launch of RCRD LBL (pronounced “record label”), however, marks a significant step forward, a sliver of hope for both the internet seeker and the industry itself.

The creation of journalist/entrepreneur/blog-prophet Peter Rojas (creator of Engadget and Gizmodo), the company is a joint venture whose site features the aforementioned free and legal downloads from labels such as Downtown, Warp, Modular and Dim Mak (Rojas plans to post tracks from additional labels in the near future), along with label-specific blog content. And though the future of the music biz (and, admittedly, the site itself) is an uncertain one, the notion of DRM-free, pro bono downloads represents the next step in the ever-growing line of bold moves taken by artists, advertisers and labels in recent years. Call it music-industry survivalism in the mp3 age. Call it an out-and-out coup. Just don’t call it a record label. And please believe that as the site evolves, TRACE Blog will keep you posted on all the developments. Stay sharp.http://rcrdlbl.com/

With climate change, ever-worsening geopolitical instability, and energy and water shortages looming on the horizon, numerous pundits of all stripes have written off planet Earth and its dominant species as goners. Not entirely thrilled with the cautionary yet nihilistic, doomsday rhetoric of the body politic (that means you Mr. Gore), the Long Now Foundation seeks to officially flip the script.

Started by a group of visionaries that include the likes of Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, Wired Magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson and art-rock demi-god Brian Eno, the group’s optimistic modus operandi represents a paradigm shift under which we think not in terms of decades, but rather, in terms of millenia when considering the all-too-uncertain future. Launched in 01996 (the group uses five-digit year notation “to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years”), the Foundation, and its members strive to provide a “counterpoint to today’s ‘faster/cheaper’ mind set and promote ’slower/better’ thinking”.

Evidence of the degree to which the members of the foundation practice what they preach can be found in their monumental projects, all of which serve the group’s stated goal of “making long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare”. Among these future-forward undertakings are the 10,000 Year Clock (the prototype of which chimed twice on New Year’s Eve of 2000), the World’s Slowest Computer, and the Rosetta Project, an open-source online archive of all the world’s languages, the results of which were encapsulated in the Rosetta Disk’s 15,000 microetched pages (each page is half a millimeter across). The Rosetta Project in particular serves an increasingly pertinent end, as according to the Foundation, an estimated 50 to 90% of the world’s languages will disappear over the next century. Could you imagine a world without Uralic Ter Sami? I know I can’t. Shine on Long Now. Shine on.