The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Four more selections from the Bootie lists, including the promised best-of-year smooth mix, and a vid/remix that blew me away.

http://bootiemashup.com/top10/mp3s/Blah_Blah_Blah__My_Name_La_La_Lazymash_.mp3
I've already eaten crow over stating that there would be no more Gaga mixes, so here you go. Lazyellow (http://lazyellow.com/) is a new UK DJ who's getting popular enough to overload most of the free download sites so finding his stuff is getting harder, but it's worthwhile. Here he takes not just Gaga but the truly atrocious "Blah Blah Blah" from Ke$ha and makes some house dance beat thing out of it that's really quite good.

http://bootiemashup.com/top10/mp3s/Rad%20Bad%20-%20Moving%20Da%20Royalty.mp3
Speaking of truly atrocious, remember back when Wil Smith thought he could make it as a rapper? Yeah, I kind of scrubbed that out of my brain, too. Fortunately, DJ Rad Bad (http://www.myspace.com/radbad4eva) hasn't, and he blends Wil with Daft Punk and a whole lot of samples to create a fun dancey mix.

http://bootiemashup.com/aplusd/AplusD_DancingSinceUBeenGone.mp3
A plus D - the driving force behind Bootie itself - have put forth their case for why Robyn ought to be heard more on the dance floor in the US (she's hugely popular in Europe already). They reached back a few years to Kelly Clarkson’s pop confection "Since U Been Gone" and put it under Robyn's vocals. A plus D don't have the skills of someone like Lazyellow in making something awesome from something awful, but they do a respectable job here.

http://bootiemashup.com/top10/mp3s/01%20GHP%20-%20How%20Soon%20Is%20Independence.mp3
OK, if you've been patient this far, it's payoff time. The Smith's "How Soon is Now" is, hands down, the thematic anthem for a style of male-vocal dominated music that started with the Smiths/The Cure/Love and Rockets and made its way through groups like Pet Shop Boys into Euro-pop and Euro New Wave. But few have equaled the original. Go Home Productions (http://www.gohomeproductions.co.uk/) does a brilliant job mashing up this classic with Destiny's Child's "Independent Women" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJKze_ukrXY). For the most part he strips out the the male vocals and lets the girls sing, but laid over the smooth electric guitars in a way that slides and soars.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/09/brat-one-of-these-nights.html
Finally, a treat for the eyes as well as the ears. BRAT Productions (http://www.bratproductions.com/) have taken a pair of unremarkable tracks - Lamb's "Gorecki" and the classic rock "One of These Nights" from The Eagles - and created a six-minute soundtrack to a chunk of Sam Mendes' brilliant American Beauty. If you're not a fan of the film, and I happen to think it's probably one of the top 10 American films ever, then you probably won't like this, but I do. By mashing these two songs together with video edits from the fantasy dreaming scenes in the movie, BRAT really drive home just how deeply fucked up Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham is. And, for that matter, how easily you can hear the Eagles song as a stalker tune...