He’ll spin discs and make tracks

PEANUT BUTTER WOLF is about to shame Angelenos who are too lazy to drive across town for a concert. The L.A.-based DJ and founder of Stones Throw Records is doing something most local nightlife vampires, let alone globe-hopping musicians, never get around to -- hitting the streets for seven straight DJ gigs in a week, playing seven genres, at seven L.A. nightclubs.

Wolf (real name: Chris Manak), conceived of this pan-Los Angeles tour when a recent move across Mount Washington forced him to reorganize his thousands-deep vinyl collection. Stones Throw made its reputation in leftfield hip-hop, but Manak’s obscure dub, Afro-pop and house records begged for a chance to be heard in sweaty rooms of their own.

The balkanized nature of L.A. nightlife made the logistics of genre and freeway-hopping easy.

“L.A. is so huge, it allows for micro-communities,” said Manak. “I’m trying to think of other cities I could do this in and I don’t know if I could.”

From June 10 through 16, Manak’s tour will drop him in Hollywood, Echo Park, Chinatown and Culver City, where he will proceed to humiliate the brand of Klaxons-remix iPod-pusher that passes for a DJ at most nightclubs. Theme nights are the rule, from ‘70s Afro-Latin, ‘60s deep funk singles and ironic cover tunes, as is his medium of choice -- Wolf will touch only vinyl. But it’s not for show -- Manak wants to break out of the glut of ephemeral MP3 singles that, ironically, force DJs to play catch-up with near-identical playlists.

“I don’t listen to the radio, and I’m proud to say that,” said Manak. “All the file sharing, even the underground stuff, has DJs playing the same things.”

Anyone already sick to death of Justice’s “D.A.N.C.E.” will appreciate that.

Voxonic peddles its dub style

AVRIL LAVIGNE famously re-recorded the hook to her hit single “Girlfriend” in Mandarin. Chinese pop fans ate it up, and presumably her record label didn’t mind a few million new potential customers for the cost of an afternoon of Putonghua classes. Could her language coach have sidestepped the presumably excruciating process of teaching her a four-tone pitch alphabet just so she could taunt some poor love interest halfway around the world?

Arie Deutsch thinks he can help. His company Voxonic is pushing new software that records an artist singing phrases in various languages, then compiles those phrases into a phonetic library that can imitate practically any language. Does this spell doom for hack dubs of “My Humps” into Catalan?

“The mission here is to give the message the artist is portraying,” said Deutsch. “If I put a song in the artist’s actual voice, it keeps the fundamentals of the song the same.”

Though the software apparently works in any musical style for any language, some are easier than others. Japanese uses many of the same phonetic tones as English, Deutsch said, and hip-hop hits come out more convincing than, say, a Puccini aria.

The point isn’t to trick a Mexican audience into thinking that Pretty Ricky can hit their fricatives like a local. It’s about opening up new markets to the prospect of being as precisely annoyed by “Don’t Matter” as English speakers are today.

“People in foreign markets watch Michael Jackson on TV, and they don’t speak the language but they know the lyrics,” Deutsch said. “We’re hoping that a song can change the way people communicate.”

Shop Boyz sure know how to ‘Party’

One of our favorite things this week is the Shop Boyz’s video for their single “Party Like a Rockstar.” A deliciously lo-fi montage of the trio destroying hotel rooms, doing doughnuts with their car in an open field and playing air guitar while dressing like E-40, it’s less rap-rock than rap about rocking.

It’s hard to tell what the line about tanning on Marilyn Manson’s yacht is making more fun of: rock’s sanctimoniousness or rap’s avarice. Either way, it’s looking like the summer song of 2007.

august.brown@latimes.com