Making up with Mashups

From broccoli and barbeque sauce melted in a Proctor panini to snow boots worn over springtime leggings to Shakespeare scholars rocking out geology classes, the Middlebury campus seems to be all about mixing the incongruous. So I suppose the success of mashup artist Girl Talk's January concert should not have been such a shock. I mean, the fact that MCAB actually managed to book a creative act absent of alienation is as a rare an occurrence and as pleasant a surprise as a working Creamee machine in Ross Dining Hall, but I personally never got behind the mashup. Maybe it's because I am anal retentive about keeping my foods separate from one another — I am ever vigilant about that deserter pea trying to cozy up to my mashed potatoes. The closest I get to mingling the divergent is wearing brown boots with a black sweater.

Let's talk of individuals whose seemingly incongruous creations are always en vogue. Head of Radio is at it again. The '90s alt, millennia-revolutionary quintet is positioning itself as puppet-master of the media yet again with the release of its single "Nude" in three different stems. In late 2007, the British electronic rockers did not just make the record industry's already waning financial flow skip a beat with their download-only name-your-own-price release — they set the industry's economic ecosphere into cardiac arrest. And just when the uncooperative commerce started collaborating with instead of condemning the MP3, the less ubiquitous, but still vaguely threatening concern of the mashup manifested itself. Furthermore, to twist the metaphorical knife into the already nickel-bleeding industry, Radiohead is promoting the use of their music for remixing, making other artists who complain about creative reconstruction of their works look like "The [ever-villainized and unequivocally lame] Man." But Thom Yorke is not quite the Messiah of market-free music — the Web Site is charging 99 cents per stem-sample.

Where is the line between self-expression and stealing? Dissect DJ Danger Mouse's seminal The Grey Album, for example. A mashup of The Beatles' The White Album and Jay-Z's The Black Album, many of the cuts do not even resemble either source tracks, instead melding into a musical motion that is neither 60s mod nor mercantile hip-hop - delivering an album that is a flawlessly danceable and meditative movement. While Danger Mouse was able to rise above the threatened lawsuits from Shawn Carter by not charging for the album's release, don't lose sleep fretting that you're feeding your appetite for the latest installments in the bastard-pop genre while Danger's little mice starve — thanks to the success of the online-only album, brainchild Gnarls Barkley was born. I know you cynics claim it's easy for established Brits and self-proclaimed auteurs turned multimillion-dollar producers to be in favor of mashups, but lack of notoriety and no Washingtons in sight are not stopping some ambitious and occasionally absurd artists from cropping up.

I mean, look at the viral entity of procrastination known as YouTube. Our generation demands to be a media mouthpiece and apparently has too much time on its hands. My new favorite incarnation of the mashup is The Hood Internet. A Chicago-based band, The Hood Internet specializes in mixing indie-rock with both underground and mainstream hip-hop, releasing all tracks for free on their Web Site of the same name. One of their treasures is R.Kelly vs. Swedish indie-pop darling Jens Lekman. On MP3 blog-aggregator Hype Machine, even 15-year-old boys from Vancouver post their latest creations. My most recent mashup addiction — Crystal Castles vs. Health's "Crimewave" — is thanks to hotspot Friction NYC.

So while I thought I was incompatible with the mashup, if gangster rappers and skinny white boys with guitars can come together so harmoniously on a track, I am starting to think bootlegs and my stereo can get along after all.

"Crimewave" Crystal Castles vs Health

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