DJ BAHLER - One More Day
DJ BAHLER - A Wish In The Well
(via: sassafras-and-lemongrass)
DJ BAHLER - Let Go (Parisian Nightsuit)
(via:nope-not-gonna)
Bruneaux - Yellow Musik (DJ BAHLER Remash)
DJ BAHLER - Sun Waves
DJ BAHLER - You Said Forever
DJ BAHLER - I Don’t Want to Be Alone
DJ BAHLER - One More Day
(via: heylookgavin)
I’m writing this for multiple reasons:
1) To give some insight on what I think about the mashup scene and its history if anybody cares.
2) To address why I think that mashups are not some fleeting fad that everyone’s going to get tired of tomorrow.
3) Why I personally make mashups.
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It would be impossible to pinpoint the very day or even year that mashups were invented because the practices of sampling, blending, and remixing music has been going on as long as music has existed, whether it be the Musique Concrete movement in France during the 1940’s or the combinations of songs prehistoric drummers may have cooked up while Fred Flinstone dropped some rhymes on them. The point is, this process has been going on for a while. Girl Talk did not invent it. Glee didn’t pave the way. It didn’t just show up yesterday when your roommate went on Earmilk.com. I’d like to think the “modern” mashup was born out of the rising DJ scene in the late 1970s-1980s mostly in the U.S. and Europe when many DJ’s began using turntable to create live combinations of a single track’s acapella track with the instrumental backing of another. These tracks were initially termed many things ranging from “bastard pop,” “bootleg remixes,” “cut ups” and, now more commonly, “mash ups”. Just a few notable pioneers in the scene were DNA, Club House, DJ BC, and DJ Z-Trip (who I got to see live 2 years ago and was completely amazed with.) Shorty after this fascination with bootleg remixes in 2003 a club in San Francisco called “Bootie” opened and revolved around mashup music. Today Bootie has expanded to frequent mashup parties in clubs all over the world and hopefully one day I’ll finally make it out to one of them.
Now is the point where mashups came out of the club and onto Youtube. These creations were starting to get recorded and released as club DJ’s noticed their popularity. Considered somewhat of a breakout track for the viral mashup scene, Freelance Hellraiser’s “A Stroke of Genius” (which paired the Strokes’s “Hard to Explain” with the vocals of Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle”) was one of the first mashups to receive relatively large attention from the general public including hundreds of websites and brief articles in magazines and newspapers. Other albums began appearing on the internet and gaining mild underground popularity such as DJ Z-Trip’s Uneasy Listening and 2 Many Dj’s compilation As Heard on Soulwax Radio (which actually featured Hellraiser’s “A Stroke of Genius.”) In ‘04 the album widely considered to be the “apex of ‘the mashup revolution” came out - DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album. In an interview in one of my favorite documentaries “Good Copy Bad Copy” Danger Mouse states that over one million people have downloaded this album from the internet. A million, guys. That’s insane. This is a number from back before people were upvoting and reblogging things. In 2004 Entertainment Weekly named the Grey Album album of the year, something which seemed impossible for a genre that is rooted in illegality and is nearly never heard on the radio. The 2006 article from The New York Times includes an interview with Danger Mouse himself which discusses the Cease and Desist that was issued against him by Electric and Musical Industries group demanding he removes all content with the illegal Beatles samples that EMI owned or else he would be facing a lawsuit. Danger Mouse agreed to their demands but on February 24th 2004 a music activism group called Downhill Battle organized the “Grey Tuesday Protest”. Before I get too far on this tangent, I’m just pointing this out to let everyone know that people were even starting movements for this genre before most people even knew it was a genre.
Personally, I only really got into mashups around 2007 when the Legion of Doom released their mashup album Incorporated. It was the first time I was hearing mashups of the bands I loved at the time like Senses Fail, Armor For Sleep, Saves the Day, UnderOATH, Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, and a bunch of those other emo bands that were all the rage.It was actually that album that got me searching for more mashups as well as wanting to make my own. The thing is, it’s not like I didn’t know mashups existed yet or anything, it was just that finally the genres I enjoyed were being mixed. I started checking out other artists who were sampling alternative rock bands and not just rap and pop which was common at the time (and still is.) Of course during all this time I was like the many others enamored with the 2006 release of Night Ripper by Girl Talk who really did the big role in popularizing and pioneering the style of excess that many mashers like Bruneaux, the Super Mash Bros, and E-603 are famous for today. I even tried being a Girl Talk impersonator in one of my first releases, High Bias…which sounded a lot like an iPod throwing up.
So now we see a pretty big division between tracks that are commonly divided into “A versus B” or “Girl Talk-style” tracks. We can’t also forget the middle ground, which utilizes many samples to create a piece that is structured in a traditional form; this is my favorite type and is commonly done by artists like LeedM101 and Bynar. Each style seems to have its own producers and its own fans. But for me really it’s less important to me on how much effort or structure was put into the type of mashup but really it comes down to if I like the song. If someone released a poorly done tribute mix of 20 Bon Iver samples I’d be all over that before downloading a very well done LMFAO versus Rack City mashup. This leads me into why I think the mashup scene probably wont die: as long as people love music, people will love mashups.
Lately I’ve been noticing many bloggers acting like mashers are drug dealers and starting their posts on mashups with “I really told myself i wasn’t gonna post mashups anymore, but….” Many of them probably think the reward of publicity should belong to those who spent more time on their creations, some may see the genre as gimmicky, and others may just want to not admit that they enjoy the mixes. To the listener, it can be like any remix at times with the main difference being that it may not have required the same amount of effort as true production does. I could be sitting around one day listening to Rage Against the Machine and then realize that I would like to hear something more upbeat. My first choice would be Frail Limb Purity’s mashup of “Bulls on Parade” with the Glitch Mob. But wait, is it mashup? Is it a remix? He did some original mixing and editing of “Drive It Like You Stole It”? Hmmm. Should I like it more now? Who cares, it sounds freakin’ awesome.
I am willing to admit that this is a sad way of thinking. We are raised to believe that hard work should be rewarded. A mashup artist definitely did not take anywhere close to the amount of time to craft his or her piece as the sum of time it took to make all of the sources but that does not mean the mashup cannot be good. Even zooming in on the genre itself, sometimes I can spend days to a month on a mashup trying to make it work but it doesn’t come out at nicely as one that took hours. Art is not defined by the amount of skill or time put into it but the effect on its audience. To a modern day hipster the latest Banksy stenciling evokes more awe then the statue of David maybe. But David took an immense amount of work, while Banksy’s didn’t really right? That doesn’t matter. But the thing is, both of those are completed works that their artist’s wanted to share. Would it be okay to say Banksy is “better” than Michelangelo, well I guess that’s up to the audience. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel awful when even bands I’m sampling are asking me how to get on these music blogs that pick up my mixes because they keep getting rejected. It’s a very awkward and sad thing but it can be that way at times and the only advice I have for the person who did the lesser amount of work is to realize that and keep your ego in check. Nothing bothers me more than a mashup artist who acts like he’s the #basedgod and #winning all day because he’s going HAM in the paint or whatever. This should just go for anyone with a sense of modesty and half a brain.
A final comment on the amount-of-effort issue is that I, along with many of my peers, actually choose to make mashups for a reason. I genuinely enjoy pairing songs together for reasons ranging from just making something neato, taking on a personal challenge, or even as an attempt to apply new meaning or moods to the lyrics or instrumentals of songs I love. I play multiple instruments and while I do know how to put together notes in a way that is not pure cacophony, I’d rather mess with the work of Indie bands and Electro bands that I like, and luckily, there are people who enjoy listening to what I mix and I appreciate that. People are constantly telling me how eventually I can get into original production if I keep at what I’m doing and stuff. I’m sorry to say to everyone that as long as I’m doing this whole “DJ BAHLER” business, there will be mashups. My friend Justin (3lau) was recently quoted in USA Today in an article on the mashup scene saying ““If you’re serious about music, making mashups is a great way to get your name out there, but it’s certainly not the end of the stick. People should always be reaching to make their own music because that’s how you get respect from the broader community.” I can see how expanding your horizons can only help someone trying to garner respect from the public, but I do not think that mashups are just a stepping for all producers nor that mashers are not creating their own music to some degree. Many people view bootleg remixes and mashups as the tricycles of the music scene. Well, some people out there, myself included, may just want to stop at the tricycle-level and maybe soup it up some. May I’ll get some spinners for this trike, raise the handle bars up some, or get a flat-screen or two installed in it. I know that over the last 5 years of mashing I have definitely improved at what I do. While mashups may be “easier” than original production it’s clear that some of them out there are good and some just sound awful which at least indicates the fact that there is an actual learning curve to riding this trike. Knowledge of key, song structure, chord progressions, and simple music theory is definitely essential I feel for making a mashup. This is why when popular producers, whether it be Diplo, Boreta, Afrojack, or even 3lau make mashups, they tend to come out well.
So as a closer to what turned out to be a much longer rant than I had anticipated I just want to repeat that:
1) Mashups have existed longer than many think and I believe they will continue to be popular.
2) While mashers may not spend as much time on a piece as original producers do and receive an unfair amount of blog coverage due to the coat-tail effect of sampling, they still are putting out something that people want to listen to and should not be ignored. Additionally, some mashup artists out there need to realize this and maybe tone down their egos. This also prompts me mention the absolute need for citing sample sources, especially when borrowing from lesser-known bands and artists.
3) For me mashing is not a stepping stone to original production but rather it is its own craft that I plan on bettering myself in.
DJ BAHLER - Love Me
This is a really cool hooping performance video with one of my mashups in it. I can’t even make a hula hoop spin around myself once.
