The fight for diverse and conscious voices

http://mashupbreakdown.com/nhh
A neat tool for those of us who want to know how remix tracks are made - Mashup Breakdown(http://mashupbreakdown.com) - has been filled with the second-by-second illustration of the component pieces of The Kleptones' "Night at the Hiphopera." This 23-track reworking of the Queen album is laid out in gorgeous detail. You can just listen, you can watch the components light up as they play, or you can mouse over bits to see what they are without waiting for the music.

So far this is just one of four albums laid out in the tool. It's obviously a ton of work so it's not surprising more artists haven't done it yet, but I can hope it will catch on.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/12/diane-birch-a-strange-kind-of-love-peter-murphy-cover-2.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeUbj_xpv7c
Diane Birch, whose Sisters of Mercy cover I extolled earlier, returns with a passionate and soulful cover of Peter Murphy's "A Strange Kind of Love". Researching the original led me to find the second video, which is... wow. Murphy live acoustic, backed by (among others) Trent Reznor. If I was very very rich, I would pay to have Birch and Murphy do this as a duet. By the way, Birch's EP is out and costs all of $5 on iTunes now so you really have no excuse.

http://www.frankmusik.com/
If you remember Peter Murphy then you may also remember the Vocoder and how one day Kraftwerk made it work and then suddenly it was everywhere. Now comes Frankmusik (Vincent Frank) with a very modern dance track built around a simple yet catchy vocoded hook. This is something of a departure from his earlier stuff, which is pretty standard electro-dance tunes. He's also sporting a very retro pseudo-James Dean look in the video. The song is a little repetitive but I prefer the new look/sound so here's hoping he does more in this vein.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Uz9C3m4QXc
Also related - another eerily beautiful cover. This by Niyaz (http://www.niyazmusic.com/ - warning, starts playing on load) is my absolute favorite Cure track, "Love Song". Niyaz comes out of a world music tradition and while she's faithful to Robert Smith's vocal style, it's layered over choral backgrounds and gentle beats from a wholly non-Cure style. Still, she does it excellent justice. If you'd like to hear more of her stuff I would recommend starting with this YouTube playlist (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91pMQfuZf04&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=MLGxdCwVVULXcNrTRTIwEi7iIz8JVfVGzs) (h/t to MizA for that pointer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjVNlG5cZyQ
I'm still not a big fan of P!nk (despite prop'ing her Grammy performance back in February) so I had missed this video and the song. It's once again a fairly standard pop tune, but listen to the lyrics. P!nk drops herself squarely in the punk with one very large "f you" to the mainstream. The video also contains some brilliant moments, including nods to Rosie the Riveter, ICP, and hair metal. Do not miss the kiss at 0:28, and I confess the reveal at 2:06 made me laugh out loud.
(h/t to intuition_ist this time)

Another set of things I can't really categorize. Some of these are light listening, but a couple really want your attention when you can spare it. I'll put the easier stuff first.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/James_Curd/track/Live_Forever
James Curd (http://myspace.com/jamescurd), a Chicago DJ, turns in a dance/rap tune I think of as 'walking' music. It's got a good rhythm but it's not too fast and it makes me think of moving along. Then again, I walk pretty fast :)

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Crystal_Castles/track/Not_In_Love_feat_Robert_Smith_
If you're going to venture into the down-tempo emo side of club you cannot possibly do any better than backing up Robert Smith. The legendary Cure front-man pioneered much of what we think of as "goth" in music and also brought his personal brand of smooth and gentle vocals to bear in surprising ways. Here he is fronting for Crystal Castles (http://crystalcastles.com/) who - on their own - seem to be more atonal, electro, and much less interesting.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/11/illegal-sunday-colatron-someones-missing.html
APC flagged this one as "do not listen if your heart is broken" and I can see why, though I really like the mix. Colatron (http://www.colatron.com/) has mixed up three tracks, Trentemøller's "Miss You" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DUCKGyojpE) itself a very melancholy bit of electronica, Imogen Heap's "Headlock" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKZsZkH_MJc) but fortunately leaving out the annoying bloops and bleeps of the original, and Vangelis's "Rachael’s Song" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5wJyLFnxNk). Now I'm an unashamed Vangelis fan though I don't think this is one of his best it's still nice to see it being reused. The original Vangelis soaring vocals are missing, sadly.

http://djsteveboy.com/groovelectric.html
DJ Steveboy's latest, "Drumatic", is tribal percussive and a major uplift if you're feeling down from the past two selections. It has also sent me searching through some of my older drum/dance/tribal favorites and I might link some of those next time. I love good rhythms and things from east Europe/Asia/South Asia/Middle East/Africa that get appropriated into club music under the 'tribal' banner are a welcome change from the standard house and disco beats.

http://www.yousayparty.com/
You Say Party's latest video is a must-watch. I like the tune "Lonely Lunch" but I adore the video, which is a little 5:30 mini-science fiction story. It's set in a modern or just past modern-day Indian city and like the best such videos it manages to tell its story entirely through action and expression, with no dialog. It certainly doesn't hurt that the main characters are Bollywood-esque pretty but being pretty isn't really the point. It's an engaging visual story, and a fine soundtrack.

http://www.kleptones.com/blog/2010/11/08/hectic-city-11-moombahtronica/
You have two choices here. Turn on your brains and read the interesting text Erik Kleptone has posted, or just scroll down and hit "play" to enjoy the mix. I did the former, so excuse me if I riff for a moment. This is a great example of a working DJ sharing his craft in plain language. He talks about how he got some ideas from other music blogs and decided to experiment on his own. The style itself is a great example of how sound evolves - take Afro rhythms, filter them through Euro-dance tracks, then take those tracks and re-shuffle them back into a style that owes its roots to another set of African traditions. Then use that tradition and tunes to create a mix that samples heavily from things you already know in other contexts and see if you can play 'spot the sample.'

Lots of tabs have hung about open for a while. Herewith an attempt to close the first half dozen of them. I'll save the real brain-twister for last, I promise.

http://soundcloud.com/groups/glitch-mob-remix-it-like-you-stole-it-competion/tracks?page=1
A while back the Glitch Mob announced a competition in which people would remix their "Drive It Like You Stole It" track, the remixes would be posted on Soundcloud, and people would vote for their favorite. The winner is now up, a high-hard fast scratch mix by mirkokosmos. It's not my favorite personally, but it's quite good.

I've only listened to three pages of entries so far. The Soundcloud set-up is nice in that you can just push play on the first track and it'll stream all the entries on that page. I don't recommend doing more than a few a day, or you'll get seriously earwormed, but the variety of styles and influences brought to bear shows there's some awesome talent out there just waiting to break through.

http://www.kleptones.com/blog/2010/10/08/much-better-you-than-i
Speaking of talent, The Kleptones have another beauty of a mash-up posted on their blog. "Vicarious Devil" puts together Tool's disturbing "Vicarious" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hii17sjSwfA) with Laura Marling's "Devil's Spoke". I confess I'd never heard Marling before and I must now immediately remedy this. Both tracks have a dark energy that makes them work extremely well together.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/09/duck-sauce-barbara-streisand.html
http://audioporncentral.com/2010/09/duck-sauce-barbra-streisand-the-video.html
I admit I wasn't that taken with the Duck Sauce (http://www.myspace.com/ducksaucenyc) "Barbara Streisand" track when I first heard it. It's a bit of a dance-pop confection but it didn't seem worth calling out. The video made me change my mind - it makes so much more sense when it's not taken on its own but rather as the soundtrack to a video. And what a great vid - featuring Streisand herself - for anyone who loves or even likes New York a bit. The video shows the wild variety that makes the city so interesting, and features lots of fun short snips remixing the original, including a guest scratch from Armand Van Helden.

http://www.youtube.com/user/GravitonasLABORATORY#p/a/u/1/5d1FejZJ6cs
Sometimes things get blogged because I can't stop playing them until I do. About a month ago I posted about Gravitonas' (http://www.gravitonas.net/) "Religious". That track is remixed a bunch of times on their YouTube channel, and more and more of them are being blocked by copyright claims, which is just a damned shame. The song, both the original and the remixes they've got up, remains beautiful and haunting and something I play over and over because I like the way the sounds wash over me, and move me.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/09/jamie-woon-night-air-ramadanman-refix.html
This extended remix by Ramadanman (http://www.myspace.com/ramadanman) is another one I'm loving for the lush soundscape. It's an extended remix of Jamie Woon's beautiful "Night Air" (http://www.youtube.com/user/jamiewoon). Unfortunately there are only short bits from the original online, but you can still get a sense for it. There are blues, jazz, and definite soul influences permeating this track, and yeah, it's perfect to stream out the open window after dark when you're stargazing.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/10/wax-audio-stayin-alive-in-the-wall.html
OK, I promised a brain-twister to close this out and here it is. Wax Audio (http://www.waxaudio.com.au/) have done A Bad Thing. They've taken The Bee Gees' "Stayin’ Alive" and mashed it with Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall Pt. II". Yes, really. Go listen. What's even more frightening is the video - both of these songs are not just aurally famous, but have appeared prominently in iconic movies (Saturday Night Fever and The Wall).

It's even more personally disturbing for me, as those movies both have drwex stories associated with them and both are reminders of a long-ago time when I was a very different person, who is also me today.

Finally closing out the last set of music tabs so I can open new ones for next week.

http://www.kleptones.com/blog/
Let's start with the good and ugly. The Kleptones' latest, "Shits and Giggles" is out and it's amazing. Densely packed with all kinds of throwback goodness and modern fun. They've mixed it as a CD-length track with some obvious transition points between tracks so you can lift items and put them into mixes without having to chop things up too horribly.

And then there's the image they picked for the cover. Ugh. I just... sorry, that's fail. Awful doesn't begin to describe it.

http://belgabootlegs.be/audio.php
I confess I'm still working my way through this HUGE collection of mixes. There's so much here it's nearly impossible to pick out individual winners and losers. And I'll say up front that Ben Double M both has too much ego (OK, stop putting your name into every mix, we got it already) and an oddly quirky talent. He produces "enh" mixes from some great source and then he goes wandering off into Britney Spears of all things and produces really good mashes. I'm also liking his Bob Marley mixes, but when you start with source material that good you'd expect something good on the other side. But Britney? Impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDxTriWlYiY
Speaking of Britney, one of my guilty pleasures is Eminem. I realize that he's problematic in all sorts of ways, from mere annoying egotism to grossly misogynist and offensive lyrics. But man can he sling a line and he's worked with some of the best producers in the business. Here we have DJs from Mars putting Eminem up against not one but two Britney tunes. And gods help me, it moves. So excuse me while I shut off the critic-brain and just dance.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Matthew_Dear/track/Soil_To_Seed_
http://ghostly.com/releases/pom-pom
Usually when RCRD LBL is pimping an artist they give you links and downloads for each individual track in the stream. Sadly that's not the case here. Matthew Dear (http://www.matthewdear.com/) has a large body of work over a wide range of styles. I was just listening along, being entertained but not hugely impressed, when the stream hit "Pom Pom (The Juan Maclean Mix)." It's a very smooth disco-house mix that lifts one small vocal sample and builds around it. The result is haunting and not at all what I expected. A little Web searching led me to the Pom-Pom release page and samples from five mixes Juan Maclean... excuse me The Juan Maclean (http://www.myspace.com/thejuanmaclean) has done. These mixes are bloody brilliant, and well worth the time to hunt down. The fact that he's stealing riffs from P Funk did not influence me at all :)

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/08/bynar-broken-by-angels.html
Rob Dougan burst into my consciousness with his "Clubbed to Death" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt-NvcuDVBc) track that featured so prominently in the climactic scenes of The Matrix. About 3 years later he released his "Furious Angels" CD and then promptly vanished. While Clubbed has been remixed dozens of times there are far fewer remixes of Angels. Now Bynar (http://www.djbynar.com/) gives us this luscious mix that includes two versions of Angels, two Leftfield (another under-appreciated band in my opinion), and some other samples. You can read the details on Bynar's page. Or you can just close your eyes and let this gorgeous, lush, and very slightly creepy mix wash over you.

It's been a while since I posted any music so I've got a bucket of open tabs. What follows is a sampling of the most awesome stuff in a while.

http://soundcloud.com/kleptones/a-night-at-the-hip-hopera
This is an hour and eighteen minutes of concentrated AWESOME. It's a huge flashback to things that were popular - and being remixed - in 2004 when the set was put together. There's a heavy helping of 90s and 80s favorites and some of the best hip-hop from the first part of the decade. The Kleptones have been brilliant for longer than I realized.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/07/divide-kreate-tarzan-gurls.html
There's this notion of a "summer song" that's hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. Generally it's up-tempo, not too fast, and just bouncy enough you won't get in trouble blaring it out speakers next to your beach towel. Here Divide and Kreate (http://divideandkreate.com/) give us one such tune by mashing up Katy Perry's "California Gurls" with Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy". Katy Perry's tune was already listed on Billboard's "Songs of the Summer" chart (http://www.mtv.com/videos/katy-perry/527631/california-gurls.jhtml) and what Divide & Kreate has done is keep the essential female vocal from Perry and laid it over the electronica and boy-band backing sounds of Baltimora's one-hit wonder (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r0n9Dv6XnY).

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/07/dj-fresh-gold-dust.html
Also in the summer-sound category, but in a very different way, is DJ Fresh's "Gold Dust." Where the first one was very white and beach, this one is black and inner-city playground. You absolutely MUST watch the video for this - it features some of the most amazing double-dutch I've seen in a long time. How Fresh (http://www.myspace.com/freshbadcompany) who is himself a white boy from the UK, managed to put this together is beyond me.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/07/superiddol-superman-simon-iddol.html
At last something new from Simon Iddol himself. Well, it's not precisely new - all the tracks in this mix are ones I've heard before. Iddol and a friend who DJs as Superman put this five-track sampler together as a promo for their July shows. It's a blast!

http://www.rhythmscholar.com/
Once upon a time the legendary Fatboy Slim teamed up with Christopher Walken to make a video for "Weapon of Choice." The video showed off Walken's dancing skills - he's no Fred Astaire but he was pretty damned good. Recently someone pointed me to a remix not just of the song, but of the accompanying video. The video was done by someone calling himself gfxdave99 (http://www.youtube.com/user/gfxdave99) to match a mix of the song done by Rhythm Scholar - a Chicago-area DJ. Well, if you're looking at the Scholar's page in another tab (as you should be) you can see he's got six different mixes of just this one tune. All the mixes are good, provided you don't object strenuously to scratch-dub.

And below that, my kind of music heaven. A dozen funky mixes of old favorites. Everything from Tom Tom Club to (gods help us) Billy Squier, with side trips into The Fixx, Red Hot Chili Peppers and, of course, Queen. The mix style tends to be somewhat similar from mix to mix - scratch/stutter, some beat-shifting, lots of sampling, and some very clever layering. Plus phat horns and funky extra bonus bits.

I particularly fell in love with his Art of Noise remix. I'm a long-time AoN fan(*) to begin with, and nobody remixes AoN. They've remixed themselves several times, but their sound is generally too odd and experimental for most folk. Rhythm Scholar does an amazing job blending together at least 8 different AoN tunes that I could identify, sampling stuff from their very early days to more recent pieces.

(*) Back in the days when music came on things called "records" that were made of "vinyl" I used to be an impoverished college student. Which meant I couldn't afford new records. I used to ride my bike down to Philly two or three times a month and pick over the really cheap offerings in the used record stores down there. The place was on South Street, near Zipperhead, back when that part of town was punk and slightly edgy, which it most certainly is not these days. I once saw Siouxsie and the Banshees doing promo songs from the back of a stripped down flatbed trailer truck down there. But I digress...

Anyway, one of those days I'm pawing through the bins and I realize that there's something different playing from the store's speakers. It's nohow like the usual 80s pop. It's kind of oddly clashing... and it appears to feature chainsaws. But it's got a beat. Ah yes, that beat. I abandon any of my usual youthful pretense of being hip and hurry up to the counter. What the heck is that? It's The Art of Noise, "Beatbox" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCyGdk23KNU). The clerk, who doesn't have to pretend to be hip, motions me to be quiet and just listen. Which I do. And then I buy out every AoN record he has in the store, undergrad student budget be damned.

Once upon a time, record stores had clerks who Knew Things. Their jobs let them listen to music all day long and pass judgment on the good, the bad, and the things that were so good everyone ought to know about them but nobody did. When I blog about music I feel like I'm paying back a little of what I got from people like that unnamed clerk in that South Street record store.

This is a little story built around some very good music. Click the links if you just want to listen; read on for amusement value.

http://www.kleptones.com/blog/

The story starts with the Kleptones posting three new tracks to their blog. It's apparently a sneak preview of their upcoming album, tentatively titled "Shits and Giggles". By the way, if you're visually inclined, they're asking for fan submissions of ideas for the album cover, on the theme of the title.

http://www.kleptones.com/music/sag/kleptones_lazydancer.mp3
The first track is fun, with a kind of odd spacey electro feel. It's mixing up a few tracks, none of which leap out at me and there's a big jump in feel halfway through. Nice, but let's move along.

http://www.kleptones.com/music/sag/kleptones_flikflok.mp3
Flik Flok is a more fun tune building underneath the rapid-fire lyrics of Dizzee Rascal's "Flex" and the name is an obvious play off Ke$ha's Tick Tock, which you can hear in the tune. Just goes to prove that if you're as good as these guys you can even make something good with Ke$ha sounds.

http://www.kleptones.com/music/sag/kleptones_heydrum.mp3
Then there's this. Clearly the best of the three tracks. It's got a strong electro-drum sound and a familiar vocal. I like it enough to shoot the link over to MizA who comes back with " !!!! What is that backbeat??" No idea, babe, but it's fun. It's dancey, with both jazz and hip-hop influences. After a couple of false starts at guessing the source I give up and post a comment on the Kleptones' blog, hoping they'll respond. Usually the Kleptones are good about listing their source tracks.

At this point I've clearly tagged the vocal as Florence and the Machine but we're still at a loss to identify what they're mixing her over. Ten minutes later, MizA comes back at me with "AH! I got it! Gwen Steffani "Hey Baby". One quick trip to YouTube later (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2agja_gwen-stefani-no-doubt-hey-baby_music) and that's confirmed. In retrospect it's now obvious that's the "Hey" in "Heydrum" and given that it's Florence the "drum" part can only be "Drumming Song" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3BqLDdhMhw).

Two great tastes that taste great together and props to MizA for the identify!

But I've got a ton of open tabs and want to close some of them out, so here goes:

http://www.mashuptown.com/2010/04/audio-lynch-heartache-joy-dont-go-freemasons-feat-sylvia-masonjames-vs-yazoo-vs-livin-joy-vs-double-.html
This is a really brilliant mix from Marc Johnce & CjR working under the name Audio Lynch (http://audiolynch.wordpress.com/). It's got five major tunes, phat horn sounds, and a pleasant but not overdone dance beat. What's not to like?

http://bootiemashup.com/top10/mp3s/I%20was%20made%20for%20a%20heavy%20cross%20%28A%20Copycat%20Mash%29.mp3
It's pretty rare that I link to anything from Bootie that I haven't seen elsewhere - see next link for example - but this one is ridiculously catchy, assuming you have some old fondness for late 70s metal and aren't utterly revolted by disco. It's merging The Gossip's (http://www.myspace.com/gossipband) "Heavy Cross" with old Kiss guitar licks. And it doth not suck.

http://bootiemashup.com/top10/mp3s/kleptones_welcomeback_dj.mp3
I've already sung the praises of The Kleptones' latest effort, but you should grab this single remix of their "Welcome Back DJ" track. Again, it helps if you like old metal, as this track absolutely rises and falls with classic GnR.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/04/moonrunners.html
Daft Punk are very much old hat by now, so nobody should be mixing against them, right? Well, it's good so screw that. Moonrunners (http://myspace.com/moonrunners.universe) put their "Feels Like Magic" up against a Daft Punk staple and if it is, as APC says, a guilty pleasure it's a damned danceable pleasure. This is very much a pick-you-up-when-the-world-sucks track.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/04/the-glitch-mob-drive-it-like-you-stole-it.html
Speaking of things you want to dance to, this Glitch Mob track - the first off their upcoming album - has a really sweet set of beats going. Some definite house thump going on here, plus fuzz-muted electro and near-ambient vocals that I really like. "Drive It Like You Stole It" - drive with it cranked WAY up.

It's been a while since I had this big a WTF reaction so let me just hit you with it right off...

http://www.last.fm/music/ZE:A/_/Mazeltov
Korean boy-band electro-pop Mazel Tov. No, really. In case you want the lyrics: http://artists.letssingit.com/ze-a-lyrics-mazeltov-rccrvz2

I have no idea what spawned this. So far as I can discern, ZE:A have never done anything like this before and there's no antecedent that the Web can tell me about. It's a bizarre combination of Korean, English (which mostly doesn't make sense either) and then there's "mazel tov" which is pronounced with a unique twist on the zed sound that I don't think any actual Hebrew speaker would make. I can't stop listening to this, and not just because it's catchy pop. It's like the national anthem of WTFistan or something.
(h/t to rednikki for finding this in the first place)

http://www.kleptones.com/blog/
Also in the awesome fun category the Kleptones have posted two more entries in their "video violence" series, with fan vids for mashups off the Uptime/Downtime compilation. Good tracks, nice vids.

http://djsteveboy.com/groovelectric.html
DJ Steveboy's latest, "Swimming in the Ruins" is beautiful and engaging electro-house. Steve claims it's dark and moody but I don't think of it that way. It's less funky, true, but he's got some really nice selections in here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaxyQF0jegQ
I lost track of who pointed me at this upload of an old electro-funky classic from Fern Kinney. She's someone who never really broke through on her own, mostly doing backing vocals - you can hear a fair bit of her on various blacksploitation flick soundtracks and she's mostly known for trying to be disco after the disco fad had passed. Which is really a shame, I think, since she's got a really classic Motown voice.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/02/dj-moule-good-love-good-rock.html
This is another one of those mixes I think people will love or hate based on whether they like the underlying tracks. For me, Joan Jett was a breath of fresh air, a punk in-your-face counter to the sappy Pat Benatar and her ilk whose popularity irked me. Jett never got that level of acclaim but she was sure more fun to listen to/dance to. At least, if you were me.

Here we have DJ Moule (http://www.djmoule.com/) assembling a brilliant scratch-dance mix with Jett mixed against Led Zeppelin, Peaches (who, amusingly, has collaborated with Jett), and the electronic "Does it Offend You Yeah? - Battle Royale."

Last time I said I would review the Bootie Blog Top 10 for February. Here's my review: it sucks. Skip it. Too much Gaga and Ke$ha who, as I said to MizA, bears approximately the same resemblance to good music as a K-Mart plastic tube with a lightbulb in it bears a resemblance to a real light saber. Even when they're nodding to The Kleptones they picked one of the worst bits of Uptime to link.

In replacement of which, I give you
http://www.kleptones.com/blog/2010/02/10/video-violence/
The first entry in The Kleptone's "Videotones project", an invitation to video mash-up artists to produce visual materials that go along with Uptime/Downtime. This piece by Instamatic renders out the "Welcome Back" mash that they built around Def Leppard's "Welcome To the Jungle".

http://djsteveboy.com/groovelectric.html
Also back in excellent form (finally) is DJ Steveboy with his latest stream titled "New Ground." He's moved up north to the SF Bay area and clearly the name is a tip of the hat to the new studio he has set up. The start is a bit slow, but it's got plenty of good funky stuff and the ending of the mix is some of his best work in a long time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3stsDXki__U&feature=fvw
OK, I'm probably the only one here who doesn't watch the Grammys. So you've probably all seen and heard this performance already. But I hadn't. If I ever said anything bad about P!nk I take it all back. This piece combines great vocals with excellent costuming and fabulous staging. Yes, it's true she's not doing all that difficult a silks bit. But who the hell cares - she's doing it herself, and singing at the same time. Smokin'. Also, I could point a finger about half a hundred performers who should study that costume for pointers. H/T to heinleinfan for the link.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/02/simon-iddol-we-are-in-the-go-go-club.html
APC's Simon Iddol hasn't posted anything of his own in a while and I've missed his particular style. Here he's got Empire of the Sun's "We are the People" going up against Vybz Kartel's "Go-Go Club" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1YjnfU8xcc). Iddol has stripped out the reggae vocals of the latter but kept the dub clicks and bumps. It's a neat combination.

http://www.mashup-industries.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=36
Mashup Industries changed its site organization and along the way linked to a video for this track, which Clivester did back in 2007. The vid is OK, but the track is... haunting. You'd think it was a Beatles mash, and it sort of is, but some of the real chills come from Erik B and Rakim's contributions, and strategically chosen samples from Duran Duran's "Come Undone" (http://www.tsrocks.com/d/duran_duran_texts/come_undone.html)

It's been a while since I had several tracks I could group together under a "theme"; we start with three soul-derived tracks and then go off into a different kind of fun.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/01/bullion-say-goodbye-to-what.html
If you want to attract my attention to a piece of music there are few better phrases than "hook-laden psychedelic funk". P-Funk is the proper heir to soul and this odd warbly vocal mix done over classic funk beats is a great piece from Bullion (http://www.myspace.com/bullionness)

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/01/soul-ii-soul-back-to-life-the-rules-remix.html
Soul II Soul (http://www.soul2soul.co.uk/startpage/) are a funky English soul/jazz/RnB outfit that was popular in the 80s. Here we get their "Back to Life" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvC1ijiyv1c) redone by someone calling himself "The Rules" - no idea who that is, but it's a really good mix.

http://hypem.com/#/track/1021122/Marlena+Shaw+-+California+Soul+Diplo+Mad+Decent+Remix+
Marlena Shaw is a name you probably haven't heard (I hadn't). She mostly recorded in the 60s and her stuff showed up in various blacksploitation films in the 70s then was heavily sampled by early rappers in the 80s. Diplo's remix does a good job of keeping her soulful voice clear against both a decent horn background and some dancier beats.

http://www.mashuptown.com/2010/01/boo.html
This promo page for Bootie's recent concert has some really amazing tracks, of which I really want you to hear The Kleptones' "Welcome Back." Like their Uptime set mix this one builds off a number of 80s/90s favorites and is a lot of fun. The other mixes on that page are good but this one is the best.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Groove_Armada/track/Pull_Up_Crank_It_Up_Mad_Decent_Remix
Groove Armada are probably best known in America for their "This is the house that funk built" from the track "I See You Baby" which was popularized by Fatboy Slim. Their natural sound, though, is much more funky and features some smooth electro-house vocals. For example, listen to their live performance of "Easy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kF1ZaRs-iY) which starts off with orchestral violins and segues into some serious funk beats.

What then, to make of this remix? It's taking some of the pure essence and infusing it into a reggeaton rhythic get-up-and-dance driving track. I would not have known it was Groove Armada if not for the labeling, but that's OK. It's fully excellent on its own.