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Viva La Jaydiohead – Jay-Z Meets Radiohead

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 23, 2009 by admin in Music

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

DJ Minty Fresh Beats’ Amazingly Listenable Mashup of Jay-Z & Radiohead

What’s black and white and comes in rainbows? A pair of brilliant mashups of Jay Z’s Black Album. If you missed Danger Mouse’s 2004 Mashup The Grey Album, try to get a copy (Illegal-Art.org has a torrent link). It’s a masterful mashup of The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album. The legal fuss that EMI created  at the time probably only served to promote the release, as did the clever Grey Video that repurposed original black-and-white footage from a 60′s Beatles concert. Since then there have been a few other attempts at mashing up Jay-Z, like OJAYZIS (Jay-Z vs Oasis)  or Viva la Hova, a mash with Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. But none have been quite as listenable as this year’s Jaydiohead produced by NYC DJ Minty Fresh Beats (who’s apparently since re-branded himself as Max Tannone). Hail to the Thief!

Kutiman Remixes YouTube

[ 6 Comments ]Posted on March 13, 2009 by admin in Music

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Israeli remix artist Kutiman takes worst of YouTube and creates the best of mashups

I secretly hold dear a belief that there’s an incredible harmony at the core of the chaos that is contemporary user-generated media. Well, an Israeli artist named Kutiman proves it with his project ThruYOU. You know all those misanthropic, socially awkward musician types you might find playing music in videos on YouTube, as if they were stars in some imaginary band? Well, even they didn’t realize it, but they WERE. Kutiman did something absolutely INCREDIBLE – and I can only imagine to be mind-numbingly tedious – by sorting through an amazingly diverse collection of YouTube tutorial and demo clips, and then assembling them into mashups and grooves that are in my opinion imminently listenable. I hope this guy gets some kind of distribution deal or financial reward for this stuff. One of my faves, I M New, is featured here. The easiest way to watch them in order is at ThruYOU, but he also of course has a YouTube page. He seems like a very cool and mellow guy; just check out his version of an “about” page. He also apparently does original work; see his MySpace page. Kind of cool dubby jazzy funky grooves, but I personally think his gift is with the mashup. Read the rest of this entry »

Wired’s “Rippy Awards”: Tired, Expired

[ 3 Comments ]Posted on January 28, 2009 by admin in Music

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

Wired.com has proven once again that having been very hip and cutting edge at one point doesn’t mean you’re very hip and cutting edge now. But I’ll give them an ‘A’ for conceptualization regarding their First Annual Rippy Music Awards. The piece suggests that someone should fill the gaping hole in music awards that programs [...]

Wired.com has proven once again that having been very hip and cutting edge at one point doesn’t mean you’re very hip and cutting edge now. But I’ll give them an ‘A’ for conceptualization regarding their First Annual Rippy Music Awards. The piece suggests that someone should fill the gaping hole in music awards that programs like the Grammy Awards fail to fill. Unfortunately, Wired also fails to do so in the piece linked to, but it’s nice to see that a major media outlet has at least mentioned the problem. This has been a disappointment for me for a while; the last time I actually watched the American Music Awards for instance, was when Jamiroquai was big. Few of the people I know who love music (except the wacked out audiophiles who have $100,000.00 turntables) actually pop in physical media, listen to it, and tune into MTV to see the video. And with the plethora of music sites out there, the option to preview material by torrenting, and a wealth of YouTube content, who would? Wired is definitely onto something here, but unfortunately their coverage is a little weak. They spread about a paragraph’s worth of content over twelve pages with weirdly incongruent images, they failed to embed any music or video files, and they didn’t even mention mashups as a key category. I really don’t like writing negative pieces like this, that’s what critics are for. But please, Wired. I used to love you. Anybody have a suggestion for a more up-to-date music award? I mean, besides Pitchfork Media’s Top 50 Lists?

Best of Bootie 2008

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 11, 2009 by admin in Music

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

You need no other mashup collection

With a title like Best of Bootie 2008, you might think I’m promoting some kind of rapper chick porn, but the fact is that after hours of (sometimes excruciating) listening, I can comfortably say that this is the absolute best selection of mashups (which we’ve previously discussed here) of 2008. There are a LOT of people doing mashups these days, and many of them, though conceptually clever, are almost unlistenable (like Eminelton, for instance), or in other cases they’ll be alright except for the fact that the “mashup artist” gets a little lazy with polishing up the final product to make sure that things are rhythmically tight and not harmonically incongruent. Not a problem with Best of Bootie’s selection – not only are all the tracks exceptionally well-remixed, they’ve even put them in a very listenable sequence. You could pretty much toss this on at any party and not have to think about it again. Some faves of mine include (all direct mp3 links): Overdub’s mix Come As The Starlight (Nirvana vs. The Supermen Lovers) manages to make Kurt Cobain sound like a motown classic; Totom’s track Every Kind Of Creep (Radiohead vs. Robert Palmer) turns “Creep” into the jazz song it always secretly was anyway, and DJ Y Alias JY’s Duffy Train Running (Duffy vs. Doobie Brothers) somehow actually makes both artists sound better. Here’s a little preview of “Come As The Starlight” for you:

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Generation X-Mas

[ 3 Comments ]Posted on December 24, 2008 by admin in Holidays

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

More Collections of Holiday Mashups & Remixes

There’s so much weird Christmas music out there that I wouldn’t begin to try to do a thorough roundup. Besides, they’re working pretty hard on doing that over at MistleTunes, where I ran across such classics-to-be as Pull My Finger by Jingle Smells. That Amazon link has plenty of audio previews to confirm that even though it’s only $3.98, you don’t need to buy it (though it’s tempting, if only to have a CD laying around that has the title “We Wish You A Smelly Xmas – Unplugged” printed on it). If Christmas mashups are more your thing, djBC and friends now have six years of mashups in their Santastic collections. A lot of it is a little less than well-conceived, but the price is right (free) and where else would you find things like Voicedude’s “It’s The Little Things” (YouTube clip) , which somehow manages to mash Blink 182′s “All the Small Things” with Pachelbel’s Canon, and end up with something listenable? And make sure you have a firm grip on reality before listening to Corporal Blossom’s “White Christmas” Mashup (lo-fi mp3 link), featuring Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Diana Ross, and others surreally dubbed over a downtempo triphop beat. One of my favorite holiday songs ever remains Lenlow’s “¿Dónde Está Santa Claus?” mashup from Santastic II (preview below). And proving that Nine Inch Nails’ lyrics benefit a lot from the production, we have Nine Inch Noëls, a mashup of NIN’s “Head Like Hole” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. And in honor of Santa coming (heh, I said “coming”) we have the hard-to-find Horny Christmas (lo-fi mp3) by Loo and Placido. Here’s the “¿Dónde Está Santa Claus?” preview mentioned above:

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