The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Meeting cancelled, can I sneak in a music post? With the business of work lately I haven't had time to listen to a lot of things, but still there are some tabs. Several of these tracks are

https://soundcloud.com/londongrammar/london-grammar-devil-inside-1
I'm hoping to see London Grammar this Friday and I'm stoked for the show, so let me share with you a cover they posted a few weeks ago of my favorite INXS tune, "Devil Inside". This is so different from the original it's startling. But beautiful. What made INXS work for me was Michael Hutchence's voice, and here Hannah Reid takes it on beautifully. The music is mostly transposed to piano, as you'd expect from London Grammar and if I have any quibble it's that they wait too late (3:30 or so) to bring in the full orchestration.

https://soundcloud.com/mashupgermany/mashup-germany-i-am-who-i-am
Another brilliant track from Mashup Germany. Seven tracks, largely built around Mark Morrison's "I am what I am". It's smooth and gentle, as befits the component tracks. He even manages to throw in some Ke$ha without it spoiling things.

https://soundcloud.com/djschmolli/upgrade-the-casbah
DJ Schmolli starts off with a fairly basic "Rock the Casbah" mix and then starts pulling in other things. Around 2:00 he grabs some Ofra Haza to float over the bongos, which works surprisingly well. Unfortunately it then swaps back to Beyonce, which doesn't do her much credit in the comparison.

https://soundcloud.com/scottscottscott/do-it-again
Scottscottscott pulls together five tracks in a mix that I kept thinking was going to go off the rails as a trainwreck but he manages it brilliantly. It's got good energy but never goes off into frenetic.

https://soundcloud.com/sebwax/indochinevsgossip
Sebwax - a French DJ I had not heard before - does something awesome here. He's taken Beth Ditto's vocals from "Perfect World" - which I really like - and laid them over a the instrumental track from French rockers Indochine's "College Boy" (I was going to link to the video, but it's pretty disturbing; find it if you must).

https://soundcloud.com/djmightymauz/dj-mighty-mauz-your-blessed
DJ Mighty Mauz turns in a fully respectable house dance mash-up, using one of the few Christina Aguilera tracks I like and the Avicii standard "Blessed". As with most of these mash-ups the question is "has the mix improved things?" and in this case I think the mix is an improvement on both the originals. This is my kind of "dance around the room when I need to get stuff done" music.

https://soundcloud.com/neash-sddbmusic/slynk-vs-soundboy-tom-vs
You call something "The Funk Mash-up" and you know I'm there. This is labeled "ghetto funk" which as far as I can tell involves mixing up classing funk tracks with some of the more contemporary rap/hip-hop tracks that were inspired by the original funk masters. This mix ends up being a little more disjointed than some of the smooth mixes I've linked to here, but it's a good effort using some of my favorite music.

https://soundcloud.com/thomasjackmusic/israel-kamakawiwoole-1
I mentioned Thomas Jack a few months ago - back then for a beautiful symphonic house track. Here he's got a huge winner of a remix. The original is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's famous ukelele rendition of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World". This track has been used in at least half a dozen movies and it's hard to see how it could be improved on. What Jack does is something he calls "Tropical House" and that's just the right fit. It keeps Iz's gentle vocals and uke work but gives it an up-tempo feel and house touches. Gorgeous.