BARBEZ -
Mexico CIty Impressions b/w Someone Get Rid Of The King - 7"

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This is #8 in Important Records' ongoing Arts And Crafts series pairing music with packaging made by the musicians.

This 7" is limited to 400 copies and was designed, signed and numbered by Barbez's Dan Kaufman. 100 are on red vinyl and 100 are on white vinyl. These two intense numbers were inspired by both a pleasant trip through a small historic neighborhood in Mexico City and the detestable Iraq war. Cover art was inspired by the abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Look for the next Barbez record sometime soon on John Zorn's Tzadik label.

These two songs were recorded and mixed by the great Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, John Zorn, Swans) at B.C. studios near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY in 2006. They were mastered by Fred Kevorkian (White Stripes) at Avatar Studios. The first song, Mexico City Impressions, was conceived on a trip to Mexico City while strolling through a lovely neighborhood called Coyoacan where Frieda Kahlo, Leon Trotsky and Diego Rivera once lived some 60 years ago. There's a kind of Parisian feeling to the neighborhood and to a little park there with a carousel and people selling little bags of Mexican sweets. It's an extremely vibrant place, full of Meso-American sounds and colors floating about. This short pulsating song is my impression of that vibrancy, color and heartbeat of Mexico City, and an homage to the enchanting sound of the marimbas you hear everywhere in that city.

The second song, Somebody Get Rid of the King, is an angry lament that comes out of a great fury at the Iraq War and especially at the cruelty of the United States towards the detainees it holds in Guantanamo and in the tortures it perpetrated at the Abu Ghraib prison. The subject was close to my heart as I spent several years working as a researcher with famed journalist Seymour Hersh on his book, Chain of Command, which detailed these outrageous war crimes. The song begins in a slow and mournful vein only to transform into a punk-rock blowout full of rage.

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