ABBAstard compilation mashup iWillBattle and friends

ABBAstard & 4 new ABBA mashups

There aren’t enough ABBA mashups – despite the Bootie Mashup compilation from a few years ago and myself trying to plug that gap singlehandedly! Rectifying this, a bunch of us corralled by iWillBattle have got together and created the ABBAstard album – 25 tracks from the likes of myself, Will, TheRandomSapphire, oki, DJ J-Brew, fnogg, IamJstncrdble, Peggy_P, MixMstrStel, CastleR and DJ Firth.

There’s a bigger review of the album over at Radio Clash, I won’t repeat that here.

ABBAstard compilation mashup iWillBattle and friends

I created four new mashups for the album – one made it, the other three didn’t. Not because they aren’t good (two of them have been subsequently played by Adriana on the Bootie mashup stream and gotten praise), but one was disqualified cos it wasn’t original ABBA (I used a cover), another didn’t get finished it time, and another didn’t because, well, not sure actually. Given my love of ABBA and mashing ABBA, I really wanted a few entries on this album, but it was not to be.

(Who knows, maybe in future I’ll do like what I planned with Fleetwood Mac and compile them into one album? Partly why I finished these and put them out, I wanted to prove that they were a lot more than rejects, and I hope they all stand equally with the tracks on ABBAstard).

Here is my ABBAstard successful entry, Fernando vs Depeche Mode’s Ghosts Again. A revolutionary pop take for ghosts of wars past…It really was a quickie and works, but I’d be lying if I said it was my favourite of the four – but Fernando is undermashed in an already undermashed cano. It’s the World’s first and only Fernando mashup out there as far as I can tell.

EDIT: To celebrate the release of the new Depeche Mode album, Memento Mori, there’s a video! As always with new videos, I’ve uploaded it to the Internet Archive as well for posterity.

Instamatic – Ghosts of Fernando (ABBA vs Depeche Mode)

tbc - The Day Before The Weeknd (Scandi Noir) (ABBA vs Weeknd vs Supertramp vs Steely Dan) mashup cover

Talking of undermashed, a track that probably had zero mashups made of it before myself and oki tackled it is ABBA’s 1982 swansong, The Day Before You Came. I really really wanted this to be the album closer – but length and structure issues meant I couldn’t get it done in time. Ironically I fixed it when the pressure was off between the closing deadline and release.

This Scandi Noir epic was a real nightmare to create, taking many goes. It’s long…like any Scandi Noir series – but worth it.

There’s a fan theory about ABBA’s Day Before You Came – that although the track could be read as a role call of a humdrum existence that changed when a lover arrived, the operatic background vocals from Anna-Frid and doomy noir nature suggests otherwise – that something bad happened. That either the relationship ended and she’s back in her dull life – or that something even worse happened to her. That she’s looking back to when her life was dull but better, when she was alive.

Even Benny and Bjorn later admitted that something bad had happened to the protagonist, that the music was intentionally suggesting something bad, sad, noir.

This creepy mash posits that the man who came into her life was a serial killer – mixing in Steely Dan’s Don’t Take Me Alive, and flipping Supertramp’s Logical Song to make it about schizophrenia and losing reality. I watch a LOT of True Crime on YouTube (hey That Chapter!) and I think it’s bled into my mashup work….

This also the last ABBA track they recorded together before the split, and the sadness shows. There’s a lot of dark ‘Scandi Noir’ melancholy subtly in ABBA’s work, and I think it shows best here.

I mean how many people have heard Steely Dan mashed with The Weeknd, with Supertramp? Probably no-one. I need to use more Steely Dan in mashups….big fan, but jazzy chords and drumming….and Logical Song was a challenge tonally too, but mostly it’s the weird 3/6 bar structure of ABBA that gave me the most nightmares. Appropriate I guess for a mashup about a nightmare.

tbc – The Day Before The Weeknd (Scandi Noir) (ABBA vs Weeknd vs Supertramp vs Steely Dan)

Captain Obvious - Halo Gimme A Kiss (Abba Kiss Mode) (Depeche Mode vs ABBA vs KISS) mashup cover

You never knew Depeche could be so disco? Or ABBA could be so goth?

And the ABBA reject train rolls on, with this funky number because Captain Obvious was appalled that Gimme Gimme Gimme, ABBA’s best tune might not be on the compilation album, and that a disco classic might be denied.

Well, turns out, it wasn’t to be 🙁

Shame cos Halo by Depeche Mode works *so* well with Gimme Gimme Gimme, as does KISS but only in the verses, so we do a disco switcheroo.

“And when our worlds they fall apart
When the walls come tumbling in
Though we may deserve it
It will be worth it…”

Depeche Mode – Halo

Captain Obvious – Halo Gimme A Kiss (Abba Kiss Mode) (Depeche Mode vs ABBA vs KISS)

tbc aka Instamatic - Long And Winding Way (That Old Friends Do) (Barra McNeils vs Beatles) mashup cover

This last one I love, but a bit like an ugly child no-one seems to like it (is folk really such a four letter word?). This got disqualified on a technicality cos it’s a cover of ABBA by the Barra McNeils, not the band themselves. I couldn’t use the original ABBA track, because it was further away tonally so sounded odd/chipmunked. This was the first attempt at an album closer, Day was the second.

Shame because it’s a real tearjerker, contrasting old friends reconciling with old friends – the ABBA song – and old friends going their different ways (which is what the Beatles track is about, at the end of the dissolution of the Beatles). Total mood, and very about what I feel at this time, and a good place to end this post.

tbc aka Instamatic – Long And Winding Way (That Old Friends Do) (Barra McNeils vs Beatles)

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