ITHAKA vs CARTELL 70
(ground zero / sweatlodge records)

A funky, pumping, uplifting, two-step, vocal house track is joint-effort created by the portuguese ragga; hip-hop drum n'bass project, cartell 70, and Californian hip-hop-spoken word lyricist/vocalist, Ithaka.
Not only the emergence of a new generation of luso electronic super-talents but also celebrates Ithaka's return, after a seven-year absence, to participation in the portuguese music scene ( a community that hel'p spawn his career in the mid-nineties).

Ithaka scribed his comedic, sometimes-meaningful, sometimes nonsensical lyrics for "Fuse with me" during a one-month surf mission to Cabo Verde September 2004.
My girlfriend and I were taking a nap one afternoon in our room at the friend's house who we were staying with in Mindelo.
It had rained in the morning and was so hot and humid after lunch we didn't even want to go outside. We fell asleep sweating to death with our limbs overlapping each other's. But during the two hours we napped, the weather completely changed and the dry saharan winds, typical of late summer, returned. This not only evaporated our sweat, it transformed it into na epoxy-like adhesiveness.
When we woke up, it took us a few minutes to actually separate our bodies, it was like we had been welded…bonded…"fused" together into siamese twins. But it was pleasant in a way, what could be better than temporarily occupying a common body or mind with someone you care about? Don't we all spend our whole lives in search of brief moments of pure unity, either sexual, intellectual or spiritual? It was what the dried sweat symbolized that in intrigued me more than anything. The phrase, "Fuse with me" had already revealed itself to me before I'd fully reached woken consciousness. And a few minutes later, I started putting the lyrics on paper. But the words didn't.
Come out of my head in long-sentence, rhyming-story format like they usually did.
The phrases were short repetitive and I knew from the beginning. That it wasn't exactly a hip hop song and probably wasn't a straight spoken-word song either but what?
I put it in my notebook and forgot about it…for six months.

Lyric Notes:
FUSE WITH ME = solda-te comigo/descongela-te comigo/ cola-te comigo/ faz amor comigo
CRUISE WITH ME= passeia comigo/dá uma volta comigo
BOOZE WITH ME = bebe comigo/embebeda-te comigo
SNOOZE WITH ME = dorme comigo
FUNKY-HULA = estilo de dança de cariz sexual derivada do folclore havaiano clássico
BONG = balao de água para fuma marijuana
FLU = gripe
WALK THE PLANK WITH ME = castigo em navio pirata, neste contexto significa "arrisca comigo"
TIE THE KNOT WITH ME = casa-te comigo

Soon after arriving in Lisbon in the Spring of 2005, Pablo and Castro, two old friends from São Julião - Oeiras (the last neighbourhood Ithaka lived in during his six years in Portugal) invited him to a recording session of their project Cartell 70, comprising of vocalists Pablo and Castro and producer, beat laden and it was soon agreed upon that I Ithaka would participate vocally and lyrically on the intro track for their debut album (tentatively entitled "Processo Clinica") to be released by toolateman records, the label owned by Blasted Mechanism.

The collaboration was so natural, that it was mutually decided the four would create other tracks together outside of the band's album project, resulting in a separate entity, "Ithaka vs. Cartell 70" says Ithaka.
"A few weeks later, beat laden supplied me with a CD-R of nine rough instrumentals to help facilitate the lyric writing. The first six tracks on the CD, fell firmly into the category of hip hop, while the last two were leaning deeply into the spirit of house music.
And there was this funny, quirky, electric-energetic thing in the middle. " Holy shit! I thought,"…that's "Fuse with me"!

The track was created using a virtual sampler and virtual synths and reflective of Beat Laden's embryonic influences of electronic, music from 1980's.

Later in the month, at the end of the late night vocal recording at ground zero studio in Chelas, the four collaborators still felt the track was missing an essential element something to illustrate literally the words, "Fuse with me"…electricity or Welding.
And after hours of fine-combing thru and extensive audio library of sound FXs and coming up short beat laden in a brief moment of clarity, suddenly remembered there was an actual electric arc welding machine in the studios storage room that the previous tenant had forgotten when they had vacated the premises and fortunately for everyone, Castro had already had some welding experience while doing service for the portuguese military. Pablo st up a microphone and it was on!"

At dawn, the comrades left the toxic, smoke-filled studio knowing something different had been created.

http://www.ithaka.cc