And appropriately for the 4th of May, here’s the 4th volume of my best-of series ‘Kodiak Moment’ taking us up to the modern day – 2012-2020. Includes tracks from my last retirement which lasted a lot longer than this one, and even includes a Star Wars mashup as well (Star Wars Gurlz from 2015).
We even have three mashups from what I call ‘How To Mash In An Apocalypse’ series, about the lockdown and pandemic – and the first track that lead into the Black Block album.
For the first time we have the few of my viral hits in lossless quality and remastered – ‘Her Breath Is The Wind’ and the Captain Obvious swansong ‘Madonna Has A Kiki’ which still crops up in the oddest places still (a dance class video was my favourite). Most bar the newer tracks have been remastered, and there are three bonus tracks.
Not one but TWO Montero / Beatles Mashups? With MY reputation? And I’m supposed to be retired and all…yeah…seems to be a short retirement now I’ve gotten Black Block out of the way. That was indeed blocking me and getting me down along with other stuff…but no promises, we’ll see if it lasts. I also fixed the key issues with the first one as well.
Also I wouldn’t let this acapella beat me, because it was frustration with that which made me gently ragequit.
Just following the orders of ‘Tiger Mom of Mashups’ Adriana of Bootie about making more Montero genre clash mashups…done for the Montero Genre Clash challenge on the Crumplbangers Discord.
This was my original idea, to use the acapella with a heavier track until I came across ‘You Never Give Me My Money’ – but now I know the actual KEY (D Sharp Phrygian? Weird) I found a Beatles track in that actual key – Day Tripper AND it does a key change like the chorus. Woo!
Pun name doesn’t work as well, but you can’t have it all…I bet UMG will hate this too!
Thanks to vixoriadrift for the advice on some timing issues on v1 of this mashup and key help, and Leandro Moniz and many others for the original acapella advice.
I have decided to make my Black Album – and we all know what that mean don’t we kids? Yes I am out of the mashup making business (and sadly it is a business) for a while, it’s not really making me happy. It’s called Black Block and is 11 tracks in no real order, and named after the creative block I have been struggling with and the black unhappiness. And also a pun on feeling anarchic against the whole thing, the whole alienation and hamster-wheel feeling of a lot of this. I am not here to make bangers so people can make money.
“You don’t like it? So what, I don’t care” to quote Rob Base.
So in that vein the first mashup Spiralling (Every Circle In It’s Right Place) (Post Malone vs Radiohead) – played on podcast #346 when I release it – seems really appropriate with it’s lyrics which is reflected in the Black Block artwork. I did a lot of glitching and fiddling on this, vocal production is the only thing I have enjoyed of recent times. And given the themes of most of the album – loss, depression, lockdown, longing – the Radiohead track ‘Everything In it’s Right Place’ is perfect detailing Thom Yorke’s breakdown. I also use Melodyne to take a lot of his Larry the Lamb warbles out 😉
Yeah this isn’t a pop mashup album….but there are poppy/silly episodes, just like me.
“Maybe you don’t understand what I’m going through It’s only me, what you got to lose? Make up your mind, tell me, what are you gonna do? It’s only me, let it go”
Post Malone – Circles
Second track from Black Block is Surprise Daddy (Fleetwood Mac vs Radiohead) a personal one, and probably one of my better mashups of recent times…been holding onto this for a long while for a never to be finished Fleetwood Mac album/EP. Maybe like the Ballroom EP I’ll finish it in 10 years. Maybe.
This is Fleetwood Mac – Oh Daddy vs Radiohead – No Surprises – yes I really got into Radiohead in lockdown and did these two mashups of them. This is for a certain person – my best mashups are usually about him, and also weirdly quite often bird related…hold that thought.
Dolly’s Joint – Adonis vs Dolly Parton (live mashup demo) There are a few demos in here, this is from last year where I was experimenting with VirtualDJ in lockdown. It is Dolly Parton’s great attempt at disco – Baby I’m Burning with Adonis – Reck The Joint. Acieeed! Although it’s a small clip. I meant to work it up properly but I don’t think I will for a long while. It’s fun and it works. And it’s not all doom and gloom on this album. Well it mostly is, but not all.
This album has three – count ’em THREE Fleetwood Mac – Songbird mashups. Completely by accident, I was working on this Better Songbird (Fleetwood Mac vs Khalid) and then very recently a new downtempo idea came along which I had to try the reverse as well it’s all in the vocal. You’ll see later in this post, I think it’s a sequel to Her Breath Is The Wind.
I really like this Khalid track, Better, great video – and Songbird seems to reflect the bird sounds in it. Yes birds again. What is it with me and mashups about birds?
Wicked Games Everywhere aka Everywhere’s WIcked (Fleetwood Mac vs Chris Isaak) is a good one, another variant of my Daft Punk vs FM one, which I think works better, and after the months of struggling with the DP one, this one just slipped out. I like the interplay in the choruses with Chris Isaak – Wicked Games and the FM gang on Everywhere. Their harmonies are a nightmare, hence why the DP one took so long and is still not 100%. I had to futz around with a free trial of Melodyne, deleting harmonies like crazy to get it to work…whereas here Chris does the work for me. Thanks Chris!
The genesis of the proposed FM album – called Tempo in the Night or something – was to try and use the acapellas from Tango…which have hardly been used because there aren’t any acapellas, using RX8/AI extraction. I found the hard way that it leaves weird resonances and odd stuff in, hard to tune extracted parts, even harder when Christine McVie writes in weird jazz keys and sings around the key.
Is it an early Summer track? A late Xmas track? It’s both! Celebrate Xmas in Summer, or summer in Xmas…I did this just after Xmas and was keeping it for next Xmas, but I doubt I’ll work on it more.
I did go through a Don Henley – Boys of Summer phase, partly because I’ve always been obsessed with the coda here which resonated in lockdown – you can’t look back, you can never look back. And it cheered me up to think of summer and American Californian highways rather than dull grey Britain in total lockdown. And Wonderful Christmastime is a classic, despite annoying off-key pretend kid singing.
I wrestled to whether include this – that Don Henley extraction is a nightmare. Friends and I peered at it for weeks like some broken engine – it SHOULD work, it’s in the right key, etc. But something about either the exctraction or his vocal is off, and I don’t have the musical chops to make it work 100%.
Shame because I think the feel is there, even though like a few tracks on this sort-of-album, it has almost zero genre clash. The Cars – Drive has real depth and gravitas after Live Aid, so it brings a sort of ennui to Don’s vocal, stripping it of that AOR sheen.
The Michael Mayer track is a total steal/loving update of Chic’s I Want Your Love, even down to the bells. I don’t know why that album isn’t bigger, and amazing for 2016 how fresh it sounds.
This refrain ‘What Am I Gonna Do…’ which was used in an edit of that track seemed to sum up the first lockdown, as a clubber.
Reverse Angel / Upside Down Songbird (Fleetwood Mac vs Madonna / ABBA) Weirdly although I knew the other version worked best, I did this mashup of Madonna – Like An Angel Passing Through My Room (ABBA) vs Fleetwood Mac – Songbird in reverse order, i.e. first. Reflects the topsy turvy nature of this album and my life, really. But also because I had already done ‘Better Songbird’ I had the acapella warped already, so it made sense to do this first. As it turns out, the other worked best and I knew that….but I wanted to play with the Madonna vocal and instrumental.
Sadly although the acapella worked well, the RX8 extraction of the ABBA track didn’t – as I said, not many ABBA parts and no instrumentals bar the ones on the albums. And the poor music box synths got rather crunched by the AI, so that was a no-go.
But I suddenly remembered that Madonna has covered this song with William Orbit and never released it – the acapella and instrumental leaked online many years ago. So I did have a cover instrumental of Angel, and a Madonna acapella. Not sure what she did with the tuning, but the vocal doesn’t work over Songbird, but the Songbird vocal does work pretty well over the instrumental – with a few Mads interludes, courtesy of the acapella, remaking the original track that I couldn’t find in decent quality anyway.
I quite like the Orbit version – she released an orchestral version of this on an Xmas album, without the drums or synths. Shame, given the original’s electronic feel, I think that worked better, rather trip-hoppy.
Like A Songbird In My Room (ABBA vs Fleetwood Mac) – this is an unintentional sequel to 2012’s Her Breath Is The WInd – FM vs Sia. Birds? Check! Fleetwood Mac? Check! Dreamy sad vocal and instrumental? Check! And it’s not often I cry at my own mashup while making it, not sure that has ever happened…it happened with this one.
If you don’t know me personally – this mashup is me. Completely me, rarely has a mashup or piece of artwork summed up totally how I am feeling and who I am like this one. There has been three like this in my career – Golden Beard about a certain someone like Surprise Daddy above, Her Breath and this one.
In lockdown I have been doing a lot of what the ABBA song talks about – sitting in the gloom or dark thinking about better times. And although Frida’s vocal is quite stately and reserved, there is darkness and sadness within – at the end:
“So the present runs into the past Now and then become entwined, playing games within my mind Like the embers as they die Love was one prolonged good-bye”
ABBA – Like AN Angel Passing Through My Room
A very personal mashup, and a reminder why I make them. Not for commercial gain, not for fame (a little would be nice) and most definitely not for pop hits or happy times. I make music that reflects how I feel – and part of the struggle is my feelings haven’t been exactly pop or happy recently. And that pressure to be pop/perfect/pre-eternally happy has just depressed the fuck out of me and taken the joy out of it.
I’d be happy if this was played at my funeral, hopefully that won’t happen soon, but that’s how I feel about this track. It is completely and utterly me at this moment in time.
And like a late arrival as the party just ended, here’s the last mashup I have done – Never Arriving Back Again (Fleetwood Mac vs ABBA), I fixed some of the tempo and most of the tuning issues (Stevie was singing OOK on the demo, sorry!) and the rest will have to wait for another lifetime. IHNI what beat Arrival is on, maybe it’s in some odd time sig…*shrug*. This will have to do, ending on an incomplete mashup, how apt.
There aren’t many ABBA instrumentals, Arrival is one of the few, and seems a little, well, sparse with it’s synthy folky bagpipeness (is that a thing?). I noticed Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Never Going Back Again’ fit well and the lyrics seem to be the best to bow out on:
“Been down one time Been down two times I’m never going back again”
Fleetwood mac – Never Going Back AGain
I never say never – that was the joke with people ‘leaving’ making mashups, they’d be back a few weeks/months/years later usually. The people who stopped totally never announced it, they just did. So who knows…but this is how I feel at the moment.
The arrival is also a departure, it cycles around. I did my first return mashups in late March 2020 after a break of over two years, and it’s been over a year of struggle. I have other things to do, really. Still doing the Bootleg Archive and the podcast, but I feel making them is too time intensive and not good for my mental health.
P.S. I forgot to say thanks to ToTom and Ian Fondue for the help they’ve given over the last year with the more trickier mashups (and some of my others, like the Daft Punk vs Fleetwood Mac one which almost belongs on this album) – musically these mashups have stretched a lot of my limited music knowledge, especially Radiohead’s weirder timing and chords and FM’s harmonies.
Their help has been indispensable, and a lot of these mashups wouldn’t have been finished without their advice.
New mashup and everyone is making Lil Nas X – Montero mashups so I thought I’d get down with the kids and have a go, since I love it and he has raised the game as a queer artist. Also Adriana from Bootie challenged people to make more original Montero mashups with more genre clash sources, so thought I’d have a go.
EDIT: New version of my Beatles vs Lil Nas X – Montero mashup. Yes still retired but I have unfinished business with that fricking acappella.
It’s apparently D sharp Phrygian. Really?
This is one of my favourite Beatles tracks – You Never Give Me Your Money – vs Montero (Call Me By Your Name) and is about that controversy when they well removing Montero from streaming services – what was that about? And of course I had to add in the children’s song at the end, but it’s more good children go to hell, right? Well us queer ones do, apparently.
I gave it a psych spin – set phasers to stun! Actually the acapella is quite psychedelic llike the video if you listen closely, a lot of strange production – and that auto-chorus/Vocoder From Hell which caused me problems otherwise this would have been up many days ago. Still not perfect, but if I get it 100% on my usual schedule, it’d be released in 2022!
There are more mashups to come, I’ve just been in a funk about polishing them, it seems a lot of work to get the last 1% perfect…but I have some really nice ambient ones coming up using my favourite band (not Beatles, no)
I did this mashup of Daft Punk – Digital Love vs Fleetwood Mac – Everywhere back in November, and hung onto to it although it got debuted on the Radio Clash podcast. But now Daft Punk are no more it seemed the right time to release it in their honour. Salute!
P.S. this isn’t the only Everywhere mashup I am working on…or indeed the only FM mashup generally. Depends how many work but was thinking of working on an album or EP of them.
An Xmas Eve treat – a remastered lossless version of DJNoNo’s 2015 Ballroom EP, my silly concept ‘album’ mixing big band jazz, exotica, latin jazz, easy listening, bossa nova, cha cha, samba, swing, space age etc with hip-hop and rhythm and blues. It was supposed to be the first DJNoNo album but never really worked like that, too short anyway.
Planned as the first DJNoNo album in 2005, I finished Stripper Jackson and Cha Cha Like It’s Hot to a chorus of mass apathy so the project got shelved, although most of these tracks were planned back then.
Given that ten years later I was retiring – it didn’t last long – I revisited it and completed it with a few extra tracks – the Death Grips is definitely one of those as D.G. didnt exist in 2005! But the rest are pretty much as they were planned in 2005.
Listening back reminds me how I hated the humourless electro-swing toffs that came later and stole all of our ideas and then claimed they were there first! Big reason why it took ten years, didn’t want to touch electro-swing with a vintage antique barge pole!
I was surprised no-one had done this project in that period – given the rise of Strictly Come Dancing I thought it inevitable that someone would do it, saving me the bother. Nope.
DJNoNo’s First Album – Accordion Hero! (well if you don’t count Ballroom as an album, it is more like mini-album or long EP…that will be posted after this for the full DJNo ‘experience’). 16 years in the making it covers the best and a little of the rest of 2004-2020.
Silly mashups, bastard pop, soundclown, or crumplebangers – take your pick of label he spans the all! from the little red bootleg robot. Mixing accordions, hip hop, drum and bass, Julie Andrews, kid’s themes, rude songs, Muppets, cheesy golden oldies, dub reggae, rave and happy hardcore, balllroom big band ALL together! And making a totally dumb mess while doing it.
30 tracks including 3 bonuses and 5 unreleased or rare tracks that never made it past the podcast or a fleeting blog mention! Now all in HQ lossless – and only 3 of them are from MP3, the rest have been painstakingly sourced from lossless, remastered or tweaked/re-exported.
The Rise of The Aliases! I wasn’t exactly a stranger to aliases before but something about the second explosion of work around 2008-2010 meant I was wanting to branch out and not get bogged down with past failures while I was learning…many of which I had to fix on Volume 2!
instamatic, Captain Obvious, Dj cONTaMInAtioNs, Mashbusters, timbearland, Buyrite Soundsystem, they are all here, including never released originals for the first 72 which got hacked around in the final mix -and the receipts on what happened there – and various album projects I was part of like APC’s ‘We All Kissed A Girl’ or ones organised like the Joe Strummmer one This One’s For Joe and Fleetwood Mix.
DJ Hero and GYBO challenges get a look-in too, as does a lot of dubstep which ages this compilation. And like Missy and Em in the last one there are a few artists I mashed once and never again but were ever-present – Deadmau5’s Ghosts n’ Stuff, Flo-Rida’s Low, Eric Prydz’s Pjanoo, Ting Ting’s Shut Up And Let Me Go, The Gossip’s Standing In The Way of Control, White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army, that Duck Sauce track….
Surprised at how uptempo this is, very much aimed at Bootie at this point, and how difficult some of it was to master – I was learning Ableton which strangely made it harder to mix and tweak since although I still use that software, I moved platforms since so many plugins don’t work on my Mac – and I was struggling with using electro house – Daft Punk, Justice etc which has all these mid-range frequencies that clash with vocals.
Also I set T-Racks not only to stun but quite often it’s ‘Kill’ setting – this was the middle of the loudness wars! Hence why I remastered gentler versions here – I don’t like my work to be that bricked, even if it does ‘cut through’ dancefloors.
36 tracks, mostly remastered and for the first time in lossless high quality – 25 album tracks and 11 bonuses with demos, alternate versions and extra tracks that didn’t make the album cut.
Instamatic – I Kissed a Monster (Katy Perry vs L7 vs Lesbians on Ecstasy – 2008 – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – White Witch Dub (Dubmatic version – Fleetwood Mac vs Skream – 2008 – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – Ground Shelter (Fear) (Stereo MC’s vs Rolling Stones vs Benga vs Fun Boy 3 – 2008)
timbearland aka Instamatic – Justice Is Blind In This Land of Confusion (72 Pt 9 original entry – Lady Sovereign vs Justice vs is vs Hercules & Love Affair – 2009 – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – Florida Ghost Tour (Flo-Rida vs Deadmau5 – 2009 – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – Go Your Own Steinway (Eric Prydz vs Fleetwood Mac – 2009 – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – Shut Up And Ting (Ting Tings vs Shut Up And Dance – 2009 – 2020 remaster)
timbearland aka Instamatic – Last Night A DJ Tied Up Madonna (72 Pt 17 rejected entry – Madonna vs LFO vs Indeep – 2009, 2020 ter)
Instamatic – Standing in the Way of Jack White (The Gossip vs White Stripes – 2009 – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – Stalker Fever (Fever Ray vs Aphrodite – 2009 – 2020 remaster)
timbearland aka Instamatic – Wee Acid Space Woman (72 Pt 17 2nd entry (Charlie vs The Juan Maclean vs Wee Papa Girl Rappers – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – Dubble Blow Job (Bruce Haack vs RAH Band vs Disrupt – 2009 – 2020 remaster)
Captain Obvious – Right Gaga (Flo Rida ft Ke$ha vs Lady Gaga – 2010, 2020 tweak-remaster)
Captain Obvious – The Light of Pleasure (Dionysus vs Apollo full mix – Scissor Sisters vs Frankie Goes To Hollywood – 2010)
Captain Obvious – Self Couleur (Laura Branigan vs Crookers ft Yelle – 2010 – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – Nasty Chewing Girls (12″ Bubblicious Genius mix) (Vanity 6 vs Annie vs Tom Tom Club – 2010, 2020 remaster) – MP3 e
Instamatic – Fela Down the Chippy (Swears He’s Hot) (Fela Kuti vs Hot Chip – 2010 – 2020 remaster)
Captain Obvious – Ravril (What The SL2) (SL2 vs Avril Lavigne – 2011 – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – Electric Loop (Pendulum vs Judas Priest vs Ulysses 31 vs Willy Wonka – 2011 – 2020 ‘Turn It To 11’ remaster)
Mashbusters – I Was Made For Barbra Streisand But She Gave Love A Bad Name aka Duck Kiss (Duck Sauce vs Kiss vs Bon Jovi – 2011 – remaster)
Buyrite Soundsystem – Dem Girls Stealing My Rolex (Zig and Zag vs Wiley – 2008 – 2020 remaster)
Instamatic – Blue Robot Love demo (Candi Staton vs New Order vs Röyksopp featuring Robyn – 2009)
Dj cONTaMInAtioNs – BonkersJustice (Dizzee Rascal vs Justice – 2009)
Instamatic – S.W.A.T – Sugar Cube With Attitude (Compton Hit) (Sugarcubes vs N.W.A.- 2010)
Captain Obvious – The Light of Pleasure (Silenus in Shorts mix – 2010)
Instamatic – Ground Shelter (Hope) (Stereo MC’s ‘vs Rolling Stones ‘Gimme Shelter’ vs Benga – 2008)
Instamatic – Make My Pjanoo Feel That Way (demo – Eric Prydz vs Blackalicious – 2009 – 2020 master)
Instamatic – Nasty Chewing Girls (7″ Juicy Fruit mix – Vanity 6 vs Annie – 2010) – MP3 source
Instamatic – Blue Robot Love Dub (New Order vs Röyksopp featuring Robyn – 2009)
Instamatic – White Witch Dub (Fleetwood Mac vs Skream – 2008 – 2020 remaster)
“Master of the Orpheus Legend, The Death of Orpheus, fourth quarter 15th century, overall (diameter): 6.5 cm (2 9/16 in.) gross weight: 61 gr, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.235”
I don’t usually do tribute mashups but was wanting to do something for the podcast to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the death of John Lennon, something with ‘In My Life’ and this popped out with Mogwai’s New Paths To Helicon 1 live at the BBC. Also includes clips from John Lennon RKO Interview on December 8, 1980 and a recording of NY FM radio the next day when his death was announced.
Very ambient, reflective, deep and very much me. And I don’t really care if anyone likes it, it needed to be done. This is for me.
The cover image is the death of Orpheus, killed by the Thracian Maenads for refusing their advances. Apparently “the river Helicon sank underground when the women that killed Orpheus tried to wash off their blood-stained hands in its waters…so as not to lend it’s waters to cleanse manslaughter.” – seemed oddly appropriate, but Mount Helicon is also the famous home to the Muses.
