Created for the Spoken Word challenge at Crumplbangers Discord, probably the first and only Nils Frahm mashup in existence?
Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: “Is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say: “Hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.” … and we kill those people.
Bill Hicks
This almost became a Captain Obvious track, because to me, the new one from Lil Nas X – Sun Goes Down is basically Wonderwall by Oasis? It was either this or the Verve’s Lucky Man, there’s a real Britpop vibe with this song about struggling as a queer teen in the closet – I can totally relate. Maybe because when I was a struggling queer teen, Britpop was my soundrack.
This is a real lighter in the air track! I made it with the first night of clubbing in mind in June….as a sort of drunken ‘everyone come together’ closer. And also a first – I have never done a Wonderwall mashup in nearly 20 years. Came together really quickly because I suspect someone will do it very shortly…like other Lil Nas X tracks I put it out there and just hope it’s in key 😛 I think this one is….
Thanks to IamJstncrdble for the acapella.
3rd place inthe Crumplbangers Discord ‘reverse’ challenge which was a hard one – use a reversed instrumental or acapella in a mashup. Not many things sound good reversed, and beats were a tricky issue…it was hard to get something listenable beyond 30 seconds of reversing, the novelty wears off fast.
I’ve always wanted to work with musical palindromes (music that plays the same backwards as well as forward) and although most of them are classical pieces, there are a few modern tracks like Boards of Canada’s Music Is Math from Geogaddi (an album full of Satanic Reverses – spooky reverse/backmasking songs – interestingly this doesn’t seem to have any). It’s like a mirror song, you can see it in the waveform, part backwards, part forwards.
So following the mirror theme, I looked for tracks that reference beginning and ends, Smashing Pumpkins and NIN didn’t work, but a new track by Crosses did. I knew nothing about Crosses til I found it, it’s the side project of Chino Moreno of the Deftones. And it’s a cover of Cause & Effect.
I also then found the Black Sabbath track, which together give it a doomier feel and something of a paean to the planet and it’s destruction and return to the ‘new normal’ as we come out of lockdown.
Is it the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? We need to repair the system, as Ozzy says…again a personal mashup from me about the status quo.
Crumplbang Discord challenges that is (kind of like the old GYBO challenges). Why, what were you thinking of?
Enjoying my ‘retirement’ as an undead zombie producer so much I’ve done these mashups, and I think they are rather good. Decided to just post stuff and critics be damned.
The first one was done for the EDM challenge I’m rather proud of this one. The challenge was to have a song with an EDM drop in it – this is as close to EDM I’ll ever get, the new Bicep album Isles is ace.
And a rare thing from me – a multimash, well sort of, there are tracks from each artist – Bicep and Fleetwood Mac. You might not spot it, but I mixed in and out of Lido and Cazenove by Bicep – same key….And it uses Dreams and Tango In The Night by Fleetwood Mac – 1975 meets 1987 in this dreamy call and response. Dream house, indeed (yes that was a genre, once). And an acapella I made from that exceedingly hard to extract album.
Instamatic – Lido Tango (Cazenove Dreams) (Bicep vs Fleetwood Mac)
The second was for last week’s Crumplbangers Discord challenge – which was to create a A vs B but add drums or percussion from another track. After a failed attempt to make a drum and bass Nirvana track about educational policy (ya rly) I decided to start again with the Old Skool Breaks idea and make a proper old school battle weapon. This is what I would enter the ring to, if I was DJing IRL anymore (and indeed if anything was open…)
I’m no stranger to mashing either of these artists together – my Genesis of the Rascals uses Fix Up Sharp vs the original Genesis as a naughty DJ Hero stealback, and also did a version with Stand Up – but weirdly never Old Skool by Dizzee even though I tried many times. And I never worked with the Think Break AFAIK. Also I never got a Phantom mashup to work back in the day either, so this is revenge as I used the WWW version which is a Justice mashup in itself.
It didn’t win the challenge, but got a respectable fourth in a field of 15 other entries. Not too shabby. Listening back to my other track, I might fix that and try and find a better vocal for it. Drum and bass Nirvana does work, just not with that vocal.
P.S. have to thank Ian from Shitty Mashups whose Episode 16 mashup using Justice’s Genesis with Young MC and Bruno Mars reminded me of how ace Genesis is under a hip hop track. Well why reinvent the wheel?
Instamatic – Old Skool Justice (Battle Weapon – Dizze Rascal vs Justice vs Lyn Collins)
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.
The full album zip is here, or links/players below.
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
Post Malone – Circles
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”
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.
And a silly one, a mashup of seasons – Wonderful Summertime (Paul McCartney vs Don Henley)
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 tried the reverse of this…talking of which – Summer Drive (Don Henley vs The Cars)
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.
“Who’s gonna plug their ears
The Cars – Drive
When you scream?”
What Am I Going To Do? / The Disco Dancer’s Lament (Chic vs Michael Mayer live demo) – another live Virtual DJ mashup demo of Chic – I Want Your Love vs Michael Mayer & Burger / Voigt & Voigt – Disco Dancers, sounds surprisingly good for the limitation. Again might finish this at some future time but not now, and not possibly ever,
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
ABBA – Like AN Angel Passing Through My Room
Now and then become entwined, playing games within my mind
Like the embers as they die
Love was one prolonged good-bye”
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
Fleetwood mac – Never Going Back AGain
Been down two times
I’m 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 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 DP 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.
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.