Guardian has a great article today about Freelance Hellraiser and his incredibly influential Stroke of Genius with namechecks to the dearly missed Boomselection blog, The Remix, and GHP amongst others (and Girl Talk and totally nails that he’s a ‘dead end’ of ADD hyper referentiality in the mashup phenomenon).
Much has been said about Stroke of Genius (interestingly Christina Aguilera loved it, but the Strokes absolutely hated it) but I think the most important thing, like the Sex Pistols and rave music before it is it was deceptively simple (in fact there is a lot of hidden subtle production) encouraging a lot of people to have a go themselves as the ‘genius’ lightbulb went off over their heads.
It was not the first but the first to sound like that, radio friendly, pop friendly, understood by pop fans and indie fans alike – yet at the time we tend to forget in these remix/mashup saturated times, incredibly subversive. Especially as music at that point (and still is to some extent) fairly bunkered around different demographics and genres that never talk to each other – but Stroke of Genius was the first of many warning shots of the MP3 revolution, the breaking down of genre walls and DIY remix culture to come.
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