Post-mashup?

by K.M.Krebs

Mashup is the music of non-linear edit­ing.  Maybe the ADHD of music?

If you keep your ears open to ‘mashup’ music, you’ll have noticed the ever increas­ing com­plex­ity and den­sity of mashups.  Com­pared to the early mashups which were mainly the accapella of one song and the instru­men­tal of another, the last year or so has seen the emer­gence of mashups that com­bine four, five or even more songs, some­times entirely re-contextualized.  Lis­ten to Apollo Zero’s blog for some bril­liant exam­ples of this emerg­ing devel­op­ment of the genre.

I have been ten­ta­tively been call­ing this ‘post-mashup’ music as it seems to me to reflect a sig­nif­i­cant change in the both the the­ory, tal­ent and tools involved.  Mashup artists are no longer con­tent to do some basic mix­ing and beat-matching to high­light the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences of two songs col­lid­ing into a strange jux­ta­po­si­tion.  Mash­ing is now trans­form­ing into a cul­tural explo­ration bring­ing together decades of music into new rela­tions, curi­ously reviv­ing the mul­ti­ple mem­o­ries and enliven­ing our musi­cal imag­i­na­tion as we hear these admix­tures of music per­me­ate our nor­mally solid con­cepts of genre in pop music.

I just bought the new Girl Talk album ‘Feed the Ani­mals’ from Ille­gal Art (an enthralling exper­i­ment of a music label… read some­thing here).  Tak­ing the cue from Radio­head, this is a ‘pay what you want’ album, and­for a mere $5, you get access to the FLAC com­pressed version.

‘Feed the Ani­mals’ is the most coher­ent, intri­cate and devel­oped expres­sion of the post-mashup aes­thetic I’ve yet to hear.  I’ll be blunt — get this album.  Pay what­ever money you can and take a look at other excep­tional artists on Ille­gal Art as well.