Today, "harbanger"—a septet of turntablists—performed live online as an event with the Library of Congress. Check out this track from the show, "Where The Movement Is": It's truly mesmerizing to watch this sort of polyphony and artistry in action.
harbanger (pronounced "harbinger") was cofounded back in 2019 by Harry Allen, a legendary figure in hip-hop (the "media assassin" activist and journalist who worked with Public Enemy) who has written/taught/lectured/ broadcast on hip-hop culture and history for decades now.
I've been a fan of his work for years now. Harry was Internet visionary back in the early 90s; when my first book came out in 2013 I was a guest on his WBAI-NY radio show, and it was one of the best interviews I ever did—crazily broad-ranging, since he's up on just about any subject in any field.
Harry was doing a visiting-artist residency at MIT in 2019 when he created harbanger with DJ Rob Swift; the DJs in the group are Axis Pro, Bobby Bangers, The Don Santos, Emoh Betta, Pryvet Peepsho, Spictakular, and Treeman. There's some info about them at their MIT page here.
The other piece harbanger performed today was Pavor Nocturnus. It's got video content which they preface with the warning "CONTAINS SCENES OF STRONG VIOLENCE", fyi.
