Mashed-Up Music

An unnamed reader submits: "The New York Times is running this article (also available here) about "mash-ups:" songs created by digitally synchronizing instrumental tracks with vocal tracks from two (or more) existing songs. Often the source songs are wildly disparate, and the result is frequently better sounding than you might first expect. Who knew that Christina Aguilera mixes well with The Strokes or that Nirvana and Destiny's Child make a good combo?" This is an interesting answer to arguments that online music sharing is nothing but theft.

DJ Z-trip

[Voivod]

Anyone interested in this kind of music should check this guy out. He puts out albums of this stuff, and they rock. I saw him live recently and he was mixing Star Wars books-on-tape, then Rush, then Nirvana, then Public Enemy, then Madonna, even some country music, and somehow it all just works, and the croud was jumping the whole time.

If you can find it, get "Uneasy Listening, Vol 1" although I think they only put out 1000 because he didn't license any of the songs he mixed on it. :-)

A good review of the album [sfweekly.com]

Moulin Rouge

[tshak]

Moulin Rouge featured a lot of very interesting repurposes and so called "mish mashes" of music. My favourite was the "Nirvana/Can-Can Techno Remix".

herb alpert + public enemy

[caffeineboy]

search on a p2p for evolution control committee. They put herb alpert and public enemy a few years ago with great results. The "rebel without a pause" still cracks me up.

Welcome to 2001!

[plone]

This has been going on for quite a while now, especially in London. The boomselection [n3.net] blog probably has the latest bootlegs available, although some of the more recent ones have been rather dodgy

Re:Artistic and Theft are not mutually exclusive

[Jonathan]

Performance allows one to play (using the traditional term here) any song at any time without owing anyone.

No. Even local bands playing in bars have to pay royalties if they perform covers of other bands' songs.

Been done before..

[LogicBroker]

Evolution Control Committee [evolution-control.com] has been doing this for nearly a decade now.

Besides mixing Public Enemy songs with Herb Alpert songs they've also been on the wrong side of some lawsuits from CBS regarding 5 minutes of remixing of Dan Rather's broadcast [evolution-control.com].

*Yawn*

[Galvatron]

You mean like Scarborough Fair crossed with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme? Or for that matter, 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night? Now, admittedly, Simon and Garfunkel were excellent musicians, but this stuff is from the 60's! Just because people are doing it now with computers, and illegally, doesn't make it all of a sudden new and cool. I haven't heard any of these new ones, but I'm guessing aside from the novelty, they probably sound like ass.

Re:Copyright violation

[GemFire]

Illegal under the current copyright law - yes, it is. However, it was not illegal until 1909 when protection of derivitive works was added to the collection of copyright protections. From 1790 to 1909 - 139 years. The nation has been here only 227 years and for over half that time making derivitive works has been legal.

The 1909 copyright revision was done in response to such technological changes as movie making and early recorded music. It was the same revision that first allowed for corporate owners of copyright. I think maybe the 1909 Congress was being influenced by something other than the public good. Allowing innovative uses of someone else's ideas IS for the public good. It may hurt some individuals, but it gives a wider range of creativity to the public.

In 1790, George Washington set for a new law "For the encouragement of learning" not "for the protection of authors." The public is supposed to be the beneficiary of copyright law - whatever benefits the author might see are coincidental.

2 Many DJs album

[Frogg]

The article states:-

the album, released as "2 Many D.J.s: As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2" [...] only able to clear the music on the CD for release in Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland.

..but a quick google search showed me that this album has reached #4 in BBC Radio 1's Top 40 Dance Albums [bbc.co.uk].

So, is the article wrong, is this CD available here in the UK? or has it climbed to #4 solely as an import CD? Does anyone know?

If it's available off-the-shelf here in the UK, I might very well go and get myself a copy!

One ot the theories..

[hackwrench]

behind copyright is that if the makers of originals aren't allowed to control derivitives, the originals wont be around to create derivitives in the first place. Thus , under that theory, allowing unautthorized derivitives impedes progress.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dexy's vs Public Enemy

[ShootThemLater]

My favourite bootleg (for amusement value mainly) is Dexy's Midnight Runners vs Public Enemy, which I heard on London's best radio station [xfm.co.uk] - they've been playing this stuff on their Remix show for a while.

The track is a mix of Come On Eileen and Bring Tha Noize - there's a crap mp3 of it hanging around on Audiogalaxy.

There's some interesting stuff here [base58.com] too.

Lots o' Links

[Civil_Disobedient]

Please pardon the karma whoring.

A compilation of bootlegs was released, naturally a-la bootleg, on a collection called "The Best Bootlegs in the World, Ever." Here's a tracklist [greenspun.com].

Radio 1 recently did a special on the whole bootleg scene (also called "mash-ups", "cut-ups" and "remixes"). You can listen to it in MP3 format here. [phink.net]

The best sites I've seen are:
Dsico [4trak.net]
Boom Selection [base58.com]
Evolution Control Commitee [evolution-control.com]

Due to a recent New York Times article, and because of these site's recent popularity among other online media sources [slashdot.org], you may have to wait a couple of days to get to the MP3's on these sites.

A incompletely informal introduction to good mash-ups:

• Dsico - Love Will Freak Us [mac.com] (Missy E - Get ur Freak On/Joy Division - Love will Tear Us Apart)
• Dsico - Two Turntables are Ice [djpsycho.de] (Ice T - Check Your Game/Beck - Where It's At)
• Grange Hill Grammar [phink.net] (Nelly - Country Grammar/Theme From Grange Hill)
• We Dont Give A Damn About Our Friends [phink.net] (Adina Howard - Freak Like Me/Gary Numan & Tubeway Army - Are Friends Electric?)
• I Wanna Dance With Numbers [phink.net] (Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance with Somebody/Kraftwerk - Numbers/Computer World)

Hope this helps...

Hasn't been /.'d yet...

[pycnanthemum]

Go here [soulwax.co.uk]

You can see their cheesy video for "Smells Like Teen Booty" while you listen to the cool song.