The State of the Mash-Up, pt. 2
A couple weeks ago I began a short series looking at the current state of mash-up electronic music. Mash-up as a genre has probably existed since the beginning of the last decade. The earliest instance I’ve found was Soulwax, acting under their other name, 2 Many DJs. They released a ton of bootleg mixtapes that weren’t all that much different than what Girl Talk took so much credit for from 2006 on. In fact, some of the work Soulwax did was better, and they are commendable house producers aside from all that!
People used samples before Soulwax, but the mashing-up wasn’t the central focus before that. It was more to create a background track to rap over, or to add another layer of complexity to the instrumental portion of your music. And in 2010, four years after Girl Talk exploded, I’m wondering if it’s even a legitimate genre anymore. It all feels a bit cliché at this point. Even I tried it out in 2008, though I didn’t really have the training in the software department, nor did I have any necessary equipment like a sampling board. It was still fun, but I’ll get back to that later.
The original track “Paris” by Friendly Fires
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In this post I want to discuss what might be the most mashed-up song in recent history: “Paris” by the British indie/electronic band Friendly Fires. Their debut album was released in 2008, and they got to play an early set at Lollapalooza the same year. Sadly, they suffered on stage without the glossy post-production of the album. But that doesn’t matter to mash-up crews!
The Aeroplane remix featuring Au Revoir Simone
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The first tweak I found was just a remix, not really a mash-up. It’s by the Balearic disco/house group Aeroplane. I was a huge fan of this remix when I found it on the Paris single. It’s almost eight minutes long and way slowed-down compared to the original. Oh yeah — and the male vocals are replaced with the soft-spoken ladies from Au Revoir Simone. Nice!
The Eridanus mash-up “Fly To Paris For 10 Dollar”
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Moving along… I liked the Aeroplane remix so much that in December 2008 I used it in my own rudimentary mash-up. I don’t have the supreme skillz that some of these mash-up artists demonstrate. I was mostly looking for shared characteristics between seemingly unrelated songs, sounds, artists, and genres. I take the songs and pit them against each other without editing the actual track. Think of it like Battle Tops or something. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I felt that M.I.A.’s song “10 Dollar” from her breakthrough Arular matched pretty well with the Aeroplane remix.
The next point in the connect-the-dot picture was a mix album called Disco Balearica released by MixMag, which I found last fall. It was pretty much the same as the remix from the Paris single, except mixed with a bunch more sexy disco house. So this wasn’t a progression, just a deeper context for the song.
“Lump Sum of Paris” — The Hood Internet crosses Bon Iver’s “Lump Sum” and the Aeroplane remix of “Paris”
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A-Trak also used the remix on his Fabriclive.45 mix album released in 2009. He didn’t change much either, except for chopping up the female vocals during the first 15 seconds or so. And that brings me to the final stage. The Hood Internet, a mash-up duo from Chicago (who I mentioned in the last mash-up post) put the Aeroplane remix to use in their Mixtape Volume 4.
Their version, called “Lump Sum of Paris,” is intriguing for a few reasons. First, it’s sped up even faster than the Friendly Fires original — almost to the point that it’s not danceable! You gotta shuffle those feed, boy! The second oddity is the presence of Bon Iver’s vocals. Bon Iver’s debut For Emma, Forever Ago was maybe the farthest thing from electronic dance music released in the past few years. And yet it definitely works! On the mixtape it follows a Rapture mash-up, so you’re already pumped up and accepting of what will come next. Plus, there’s a certain serenity to this mash-up, almost in the same vein as the Field’s first album.
Next I’ll discuss the bigger concepts behind mash-ups, and try to figure out if the music actually fulfills its apparent meaning and purpose — or if it’s just a party soundtrack for people raised on Top 40 music and MTV’s Total Request Live.
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- Another Boundary Breaker Emerges (October 6, 2008)
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