The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Sitting around waiting to see if I'm going to get a call back from New Not-Boss, so perhaps I can put together a music post while I wait...

http://leedm101audiolego.blogspot.com/
http://soundcloud.com/leedm101/leedm101-roxannes-tainted-fly-the-police-soft-cell-miley-cyrus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OjkiuCp0bU

I first picked up on LeeDM101 on one of the Bootie Top N posts and went to check out his page, the first link there. Like any massive compilation it's got high and low points. The Soundcloud set-up is very nice since it gives you a one-button play option or you can skip tracks you don't like. I thought I'd pick out two tracks that struck me as particularly different and interesting.

The first is "Roxanne's Tainted Fly" which you can see from the URL mixes up the classic rock Police track "Roxanne" with Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" and lays them over the beats of Miley Cyrus's 2008 hit "Fly on the Wall". Cyrus is one of those whose lyrics make me want to slap them, so it's great not to be subjected to that, and Lee manages to pull really the best parts out of the other two tracks.

The second one is a "Tubular Bells" remix, something I haven't heard in several years. Putting it up against the very mod "Girls on Film" from Duran Duran makes an great combination. The video by Instamatic is also a great accompaniment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaAhtWyZKFs&feature=related
East & Young (http://www.myspace.com/eastandyoung) turn in one really moving prog-house track. This is another genre that isn't to everyone's liking, I know, but a good progressive house tune is sweeping and lush and gives you the musical sense of being lifted up and carried along. I got this one off a DJ Steveboy mix, and am looking forward to investigating more of Ivo de Jong's and Marc Vano's work.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/09/gravitonas-religious.html
Swedish singer Andreas Öhrn (hot!) leads the duo Gravitonas (http://www.gravitonas.net/) in a track that APC calls pop, but I think is much closer to the prog-house sound, though with more vocals and more stripped down vocals. But when they bring in all the instrumentals and the backing vocals to fill around the solo piano... well, listen for yourself. I can't help thinking about Faithless "God is a DJ" - there's a mash-up waiting to happen.

http://www.myspace.com/music/10223893/songs/73310077/
Lest you think I'm going all soft, I'll leave you with this one. Rad Bad, another Bootie find turns in a wild thing 10-minute megamix that has hundreds of samples, all bangin'. They flow and mix in interesting ways, while keeping the thing moving. It doesn't have the tight precision of some mega-mixes but it's fun to listen to the stream go by and try to see how many samples you can identify.

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...