The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Just closing out some tabs at the week's end...

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/02/round-table-knights-calypso-ep.html
I'm a sucker for steel drums. Good calypso rhythms are a backbone to lots of things, but not much of it has been heard on the dance floors lately. Round Table Knights (http://www.myspace.com/roundtableknights) a DJ duo from Switzerland have just put out a Calypso EP. To be honest, I'm not all that impressed with their playing around with the speed-up/slow-down dials but when they just let the beats run and mix over them it's pretty movin'.

http://www.mashuptown.com/2010/02/are-you-ready-for-the-sex-mashine-.html
Get out the neuron glue - you'll need it to put your brain back together. This one puts George Michael against Trent Reznor. This mix is uncensored, which it really needs to be because otherwise you'd end up with half the lyrics bleeped. It's two tunes about sex, in an unnatural coupling. Cats and dogs, I'm telling you!

http://www.mashuptown.com/2010/02/the-white-panda-party-music-for-the-dancefloor.html
Four tracks from "Versus" by The White Pandas, a new-ish dance DJ duo. The full version, linked from that page, has 33 tracks for your downloading pleasure. Almost all of them feature rap/hip-hop lyrics done over pop or indie-rock music, so it helps to like both of those genres, at least a little. MizA definitely didn't like it, but I was pleased that SOMEone could make some use of something Ke$ha was associated with.

http://www.mashuptown.com/2010/01/mashupgermany-can-you-hear-the-sirens-coming-papa-roach-vs-dizzee-rascal-vs-raga-against-the-machine.html
Very much in the same vein is this hardcore rap mash-up by Mashup Germany (http://www.mashup-germany.com/). There's something twitch-inducing about watching a white boy performing Cypress Hill to an all-white audience but it's still great music, and the list of other artists sampled for this gives you a sense for just how hard and hot this track is.