by SCOTT C

Ah, back-to-school days. Besides all the hustle and bustle to get classes in order, student loans cashed, apartments secured and groceries in the fridge, many of Montreal's students will take time to simply get drunk and party.

Enter Concordia's annual orientation festivities on Mackay between Sherbrooke and de Maisonneuve. Today, Sept.15, Nappy Roots, Moka Only, Kobayashi, Miri Ben-Ari and more will entertain the newbies well into the evening for free. This is great timing for local hip hop outfit Atach Tatuq, who had postponed a formal release of their latest effort, Deluxxx, to make room for some new developments.

"We just signed to a new label called Anubis," explains DJ/producer Nabi. "It's something new from DKD, Indica and Outside that will provide us with more money to do what we do. They also have a team that works nine to five doing radio tracking and all the things that you don't want to be doing if you're making music."

This extended crew has been doing shows promoting the new record all summer, and have sold about 1,000 copies right off the stage on the strength of their performances. There's also talk of a remix LP in the works, which would feature some of the group's favourite productions, reworked by their favourite producers.

Tonight's AT lineup will showcase Egypto, Arnak, RU, DJ FX, DJ Nabi and Dee, whose song "Australie" will be the first single from the new LP, with a video to follow sometime in October. "We're not getting a lot of time to perform," adds Nabi, "but we're still glad to be a part of the show. It could be worse. We played a show in Trois-Rivières this summer with 20 groups and 700 people. It was a tight schedule, and they cut the power at 11 p.m. Ray Ray had to do his entire set with only the monitors on stage."

With Nappy Roots, Moka Only, Sikh Knowledge, Kobayashi, Nomadic Massive and Miri Ben-Ari on Mackay between Sherbrooke and De Maisonneuve today, Thursday, Sept. 15, 5 p.m., free

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