Music from Saharan cellphones is a compilation of music collected from memory cards of cellular phones in the Saharan desert.

In much of West Africa, cellphones are are used as all purpose multimedia devices. In lieu of personal computers and high speed internet, the knockoff cellphones house portable music collections, playback songs on tinny built in speakers, and swap files in a very literal peer to peer Bluetooth wireless transfer.

The songs chosen for the compilation were some of the highlights -- music that is immensely popular on the unofficial mp3/cellphone network from Abidjan to Bamako to Algiers, but have limited or no commercial release. They're also songs that tend towards this new world of self production -- Fruity Loops, home studios, synthesizers, and Autotune.

In 2010, various versions of saharan cellphone music were released on cassette. Many of the songs were unlabeled, giving no insight to their mysterious origins. In the past year, the artists have been tracked down to collaborate on a commercial release. As such, 60% of the proceeds go directly to the artists.

People are always asking how we make our music, how we use samples – we would talk about music concrète, stuff like that, and that's absolutely true – we often make music out of material that other people wouldn't think to use. Like for instance we might take a sample from YouTube and then build a whole song around it with these more hi-fi instruments, and then erase the sample from YouTube so it's not even in the track. There's a lot of recycling and destruction that happens in the making of our music.

Sacramento rap-punk outfit Death Grips originally reported that their second LP of 2012, NO LOVE DEEP WEB, would hit shelves “sometime this fall”. After announcing via Twitter yesterday that the “label (Epic Records) wouldn’t confirm a release date ’till next year sometime’”, the outfit responded in true anarchical fashion by making the album available on their own terms. “The label will be hearing the album for the first time with you”, they added.

My show starts tonight. P.O.S is ruining @thecurrent 11-12 #enjoy