Mash-up artist Gregg Gillis, affectionately known by millions as Girl Talk, released his latest album All Day earlier today. I couldn’t be more excited. On All Day, Gillis mashes up tracks like Cali Swag District’s “Teach Me How to Dougie” to the 1987 hit “Jane Says,” Portishead with Big Boi, and Lady Gaga with Aphex Twin. His ability to make an un-danceable song danceable is pretty amazing. I’m sure a couple of these songs will find themselves on your weekend playlist.

His previous album, Feed the Animals, was released back in the summer of 2008 to critical acclaim.

All Day can be downloaded for free on from his label, Illegal Art.

EDIT: Seems that the download site is down due to heavy traffic. Here’s an alternate download link.

The second mixtape from Wait What entitled This is Real Life brings us a fresh collection of killer mash-ups perfect for your weekend dance party. From P. Diddy & Black Rob vs. Sleigh Bells to Nas vs. MGMT & Justice to Crystal Castles vs. Drake, Wait What gives mash-up duos like The Hood Internet and The White Panda a run for their money.

Wait What, aka Charlie K., has decided to adopt a pay-what-you-want model for This is Real Life, with all proceeds going to 826 Valencia which supports youth writing. Be sure to check out his previous mash-up album The Notorious xx, which mixes Biggie Smalls and The xx.

this is real life by wait what

DOWNLOAD: This is Real Life by Wait What

New Phoenix tracks seem to be popping up left and right these days, which makes sense because their new remix album is slated for release this Tuesday. Phoenix is seriously having a hell of a year.

Anyway, this new mash-up by Dutch producer Don Diablo, will not be featured on the official remix album. It should be though, because it’s just as good (if not better) than some of the other Phoenix remixes. On it, Diablo mashes up the King of New York‘s classic “99 Problems” with the French rock foursome’s smash hit “Fences.” Listen and download below.

DOWNLOAD: Don Diablo – Phoenix vs Jay-Z – 99 Fences

Dick Flink and Nick Fenmore – or the Super Mash Bros – describe their group as “Girl Talk’s Hot Cousin.” Despite the abundance of family terminology, they manage to put together some extremely danceable stuff, with samples ranging from MGMT to Death Cab for Cutie to Nelly. With a few of these samples, it’s tempting to write off the group as a Girl Talk knockoff, but once you begin going through the album,  listening to tracks like “Meet Me at Fantasy Island” (which samples Blink 182), or “Stop that Booty” (sampling Modest Mouse and Bubba Sparxx) you begin to understand that the Super Mash Bros sample sources much more diverse than Girl Talk. Spanning the spectrum from indie rock to Top 40 to european electronica, Fuck Bitches, Get Euros should be the next mixtape you download.

Listen to track #2, “Monsieur Fischel, La Tour Eiffel”

Click here to download Super Mash Bros – Fuck Bitches, Get Euros

Jim’s Bonus Mashup for this week is “Love songs,” an experimental song by Christopher Han that samples virtually every song with the word “Love” in the title. Big ups to Mr. Han for throwing this together.

Click here to download Love Songs by Christopher Han

So I stumbled across this interesting video/song a few days ago. DJ Earworm, a San Francisco-based mash-up artist, created a 4½ minute song from the top 25 hits of 2008, according to Billboard magazine. I was a little hesitant to post it, since most of the music that is included in this mash-up reminds me of how mediocre/boring the year 2008 was for pop music. Nevertheless, DJ Earworm manages to create a decent, catchy mash-up track, and an even better music video to go along with it. The tracklist for this mashup is as follows:

Flo Rida Featuring T-Pain – Low
Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
Alicia Keys – No One
Lil Wayne Featuring Static Major – Lollipop
Timbaland Featuring OneRepublic – Apologize
Jordin Sparks Duet With Chris Brown – No Air
Sara Bareilles – Love Song
Usher Featuring Young Jeezy – Love in This Club
Chris Brown – With You
Chris Brown – Forever
Ray J & Yung Berg – Sexy Can I
Rihanna – Take a Bow
Coldplay – Viva La Vida
Katy Perry – I Kissed a Girl
T.I. – Whatever You Like
Rihanna – Disturbia
Rihanna – Don’t Stop the Music
Natasha Bedingfield – Pocketful of Sunshine
Chris Brown Featuring T-Pain – Kiss Kiss
Ne-Yo – Closer
Colbie Caillat – Bubbly
Mariah Carey – Touch My Body
Madonna Featuring Justin Timberlake – 4 Minutes
Pink – So What
Finger Eleven – Paralyzer

Late one night, I was at a small party, doing DJ duty and selecting songs on my iPod. I searched for a while, scrolled to a song, then clicked “play.” Chris Martin, of Coldplay, began to croon out his slow (medical?) ballad, “Fix You.” Initially, the crowd was not happy with this choice. “When you feel so tired that you can’t sleep,” Chris sang, slowly. “Stuck in reverse!” he whispered. Suddenly, the word “reverse” began repeating, and a bass beat started thumping. People at the party started tapping their feet. The beat built up, people started dancing, and by the time Jay-Z (aka Jazzy, Sean Carter, Jiggaman, Hova, The Roc, etc.) began rapping, the party was bumping.

Such is the brilliance of Viva La Hova, the mixtape by Mick Boogie and Terry Urban. It samples a huge variety of Coldplay beats – extracting them older songs, like “The Scientist” and “Trouble” and from more recent ones like “X & Y” and “Speed of Sound.” It mashes these beats up with a cappella tracks from some of Jay-Z’s best songs – like “Falling,” “Song Cry,” “Party Life,” and “Pray”.

Like most good mashup CDs, this one really makes you listen to the lyrics in a new and sometimes revealing way. “What if We Cry?” – which mashes up “Song Cry” by Jay-Z and “What If” by Coldplay – becomes a genuinely mournful peace, much moreso than the nostalgic track Jay-Z originally produced. Similarly, the aforementioned “The Reverse Fix” – playable, below – becomes an astonishingly upbeat take, both on the originally slow “Fix You” and “The Bounce” by Jay-Z.

Here is the complete album tracklist:

1) Intro (produced by Mick Boogie & Terry Urban)
2) Public Speeding (produced by Cookin’ Soul)
3) Know My Place (produced by The Amps)
4) Never Changing (produced by nVMe)
5) Miss Trouble (produced by Judah)
6) Back At My Place (produced by Remot)
7) No Love Coming Home (produced by The Kickdrums) Lost Part 1 (produced by Coldplay)
9) A Spy’s Prayer (produced by nVMe)
10) Science Is Ignorant (produced by Gooch)
11) The Reverse Fix (produced by Mick Boogie & nVMe)
12) Hola Blanco (produced by Garbs Infinite)
13) Take The Hill (produced by nVMe)
14) Lost Part 2 (remixed by Mick Boogie)
15) Cold Success (produced by 9th Wonder)
16) What If We Cry? (produced by Remot)
17) Beach Chair (produced by Coldplay)
18) Falling In Shadows (produced by 6th Sense)
19) Life of Clocks (produced by Terry Urban)
20) X-Y-Z (produced by Hasan Insane)

Updated Link on Dec. 28th 2008
Click here to download Viva la Hova.

Finally, to conclude, here’s Jim’s Bonus Mashup. It’s DJ Earworm’s cross between Radiohead’s “Reckoner” and Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown.”

One way to describe The Hood Internet could be “Girl Talk on Ritalin”. If you are like me, you tend to get sick of listening to mash-ups that suffer from ADD. After listening to one of these mash-up albums long enough (Feed the Animals anyone?), your head feels likes its going to explode à la Scanners. The Hood Internet is a breath of fresh air in the mash-up genre. In case you were wondering, The Hood Internet is comprised of Aaron Brink (aka ABX) and Steve Reidell (aka STV SLV). The Chicago based duo specialize in mashing up hip-hop with indie rock. On The Hood Internet vs Chicago, the two allow each sampled song to play for 30 seconds or longer which results in a much more listenable mixtape.

Here’s a 1 minute sample:

Here’s the tracklist:
1. Intro
2. 2. Pro Nails Forever (Kid Sister vs Walter Meego)
3. Frog Minutes (Shawnna vs LMNOP)
4. Cakeicide (Hollywood Holt vs The Prairie Cartel)
5. Juke And Pop (Mic Terror vs Green Velvet)
6. Superbowl Jesus (Kanye West + 1985 Chicago Bears vs Wilco)
7. Trenchache (Juice vs Liz Phair)
8. 80s Problems (Tha Basix vs Mahjongg)
9. When Baby Mamas Collide (Qualo vs Chin Up Chin Up)
10. Simple X-plosion (Diverse vs Andrew Bird)
11. Your Love Iz What It Iz (The Cool Kids vs Frankie Knuckles)
12. Sisters Of Chicago-Rillas (Rhymefest vs The Changes)
13. I Ain’t That Bowie (Twista vs The Sea And Cake)
14. Hay Electric (Crucial Conflict vs Reds and Blue)
15. Watch My Big Feet Jump (Dude N Nem + Twista vs Office)
16. Ten-Day High (Do Or Die + Kanye West vs Tortoise)
17. Eatchyo Stigmata (Yea Big + Kid Static vs Ministry)
18. Smash That There (Yung Berg vs The Smashing Pumpkins)
19. Stages Of Standby (Psalm One vs Kleenex Girl Wonder)
20. Can You Eat Some More Heavy Fists Of Love? (Kanye West + GLC vs Bumps + Terminal 4 + Big Black)
21. I Used To Love The Blue Line (Common vs Bang! Bang!)
22. I Gotcha Trees (Lupe Fiasco vs May Or May Not)
23. What Chu Like, Old Mare? (Da Brat vs Sleep Out)
24. Kells-Tone For The Painfully In Love (R. Kelly vs Casiotone For The Painfully Alone)

Click here to download The Hood Internet vs Chicago.

Earlier this week, a new mashup videosong was released onto Youtube. This time it was a mix of Aphex Twin’s Flimand Bright Eyes’ First Day of My Life. In case you were wondering, a videosong is a new type of medium comprised of two rules:

1. What you see in the video is what you hear. There is no lip-syncing/dubbing for the instruments or vocals.
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it. There are no hidden sounds.

This amazing videosong is performed by Jack Conte. In his performance, Flim is played at a much higher tempo than in the normal song. I think that most people would agree Jack Conte’s vocal rendition is much better than Connor Oberst’s in the original Bright Eyes song as well.

Here’s the videosong. What do you think?

[flv:/wp-content/video/aphexbrighteyes.flv 460 345]

A new mash-up album by Audiobytes for Autobots has taken the internet by storm. Released on May 18th, 2008, the new album entitled simply 2.0 is the brainchild of 21 year old Dashiell Driscoll. The tracks on 2.0 have been characterized as a “dramatic shift towards a cleaner, refined and generally more danceable sound.” Imagine hearing the cartoon Batman theme song mixed with Kelis’ “Milkshake”, Broken Social Scene’s “KC Accidental” superimposed over a hip hop beat, or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers mashed with Dr. Dre. There are even clips from Jurassic Park and Knight Rider thrown in there. 2.0 can’t adequately be described in words, it has to be listened to. Recently, Jetcomx’s head writer was lucky enough to chat with the man who has opened for artists such as Dead Prez and the RZA.

Boni: So, tell us a little about yourself. Who is the man behind Audiobytes for Autobots?
Dashiell: My name is Dashiell Driscoll and I’m originally from Los Angeles. I go to school about 40 miles outside of Los Angeles at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. I’ll be a senior in the fall.

Boni: What made you decide to begin mashing up songs? It seems like an odd hobby to pick up.
Dashiell: I used to really enjoy making mix cd’s and wanted to make a mix cd with every single song I was listening to at the time. I started to notice little similarities in songs and would sometimes hear where a song might fit over another one if it was in heavy rotation. Plus, when I started in March of 2004, there really wasn’t anything like it. I just wanted to see if I could make something new out of old material, or something original out of something that wasn’t even mine.

Boni: Audiobytes for Autobots is a pretty atypical stage name. How did you decide on it?
Dashiell: I’m a pretty big Transformers fan and I just sort of liked the idea that if there was a genre just made up of digital timelines and cuts in audio files, it would be made by a robot. I’m also an admittedly huge Daft Punk fan, so robot vocabulary just felt right. …If that makes any sense at all.

Boni: Who are your biggest influences in the music world?
Dashiell: When I started, old school rap and motown was pretty much all I was listening to. Now I’m definitely more influenced by clear cut digital feeling music with really rigid beat structures. I’d say on 2.0 the biggest influences were Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, Ratatat, and Mike Relm, who’s been a huge influence on me for quite some time.

Boni: I’ve read that your first release Prime Cuts took 3 years to make. Is this true?
Dashiell: Yeah it’s true, but it’s kind of a misleading way to phrase it. I started Prime Cuts in 2004 and put it out in 2007, but most of those songs were completely done in 2005. I just could never get comfortable deciding what would be on the final version. I would drive myself crazy fixing little things or making new songs. Then, I went to college and was frustrated [with the project] my freshman year, so I just threw up my hands to the whole thing. The following year I decided to put the time in and finish up the project, so I could just put it out there and know I had a definitive copy.

Boni: So are you completely satisfied with Prime Cuts, or are there still parts that you would like to fix/change?
Dashiell: Yeah sometimes I listen to parts of it and just cringe, but I try to use that as an opportunity to do something different with those tracks, if I choose to play with any of them live. I think there are always going to be rough patches considering I had no formal training and no idea what I was doing. I was just messing around on GarageBand in my spare time. I just had to let it go and put it out there.

Boni: Your new album 2.0 made big waves on the internet, especially after you made Digg’s front page. Did you ever expect to gain the amount of notoriety that you did?
Dashiell: I’ve been lucky enough to have a pretty solid base of internet support from various communities for a long time, including Digg, but I definitely didn’t expect what happened. The original zSHARE link I put on Digg hit about 17,000 downloads, my last.fm listens shot up, and I’ve been getting contacted by a ton of people who just want to express their interest. It’s a great thing to be able to share something you spend time on with so many people and have such a positive response.

Boni: Have there been any offers of a possible signing with a label (Illegal Art, etc)?
Dashiell: [chuckles] Not yet. I doubt that’s going to happen, to be honest. I contacted Illegal Art when Prime Cuts came out but never heard back from them. I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do that again.

Boni: Yeah, it couldn’t hurt. Have you begun to make any profit off of your releases?
Dashiell: Nope. My server costs actually went up so I’m losing a little more money per month than usual. I don’t really plan on making any money off of this in the foreseeable future, it’s just a hobby I enjoy sharing with people. And for the time being, I’m lucky enough that there are people who are showing some interest in it.

Boni: What exactly is the legality of sampling all of these artists’ work? I’m assuming you didn’t ask each one for permission.
Dashiell: Yeah I have no idea, to be honest. I know I’m not making any money but it’s probably some gray area.

Boni: How much time exactly did you spend working on your latest album, 2.0? How did this compare to Prime Cuts?
Dashiell: I started 2.0 in September 2007 and put it out in May 2008, so about 8 months. I would work on it for hours some days and then just ignore it for a week or so when I felt like I was hitting a wall. I definitely spent more minutes messing around with the tracks in Prime Cuts but it wasn’t as focused as the time i spent on 2.0.

Boni: The album art for 2.0 is pretty cool since it looks hand drawn. Tell us about it.
Dashiell: It goes back to the whole relationship between humans and technology, which robots sort of represent to me. I’m a huge fan of the film Tron. I’ve been a big fan of that particular artist rendering of Tron for a long time after I found it on Deviant Art a while ago. It also seemed especially appropriate because this was an artist who took the time to re-interpret and re-create someone else’s iconic pop culture work.

Boni: How did you decide on which song/beat/lyric to mash up with what? It seems like there are millions of different ways you could do it.
Dashiell: It’s all trial and error. I just decide I want to sample some song I’ve been listening to a lot lately and drag it into Ableton Live. Sometimes I’ll drag it into a track I’ve already been working with and completely re-work everything to fit it in. Other times I’ll just start something new around it. The worst part is struggling with the pieces and just realizing it’s not going to work any way you re-arrange it.

Boni: Most people say that you are essentially another Girl Talk. Do you like this characterization?
Dashiell: It’s a little frustrating just because I can hear a lot of differences between us. I think we’re both definitely part of the same genre but we do things a lot differently. He samples a lot of things I probably wouldn’t and I’m guessing that’s just based on his own personal music preferences. I think he definitely exploded and it’s hard to stand alone and not get compared to him, but I’m genuinely flattered that people would even put me in the same sentence as him. I have nothing but respect for his work and think he’s one of the better live performers I’ve ever seen. I actually hesitate to listen to his albums just because I’m worried it will somehow affect me to the point where we would start sounding alike. I’d like to keep as much difference as possible. I think two artists can occupy the same genre at the same time, but there needs to be some differences.

Boni: Speaking of Girl Talk, he just released his new album Feed the Animals via a pay-what-you-think-is-appropriate system. What are your thoughts?
Dashiell: The whole Radiohead archetype is genius. I absolutely love that. Offering music up for free is great, but giving people the option to pay isn’t capitalistic or greedy – it’s just a fair exchange between the person with the product and the consumer. I gave the album one full listen just to make sure we didn’t have some serious overlaps in samples. I really enjoyed it a lot and then had to put it down to make sure it didn’t influence me too much. He really did a great job with it though.

Boni: Do you have any tips for people who are looking to make a name for themselves in the mash-up genre?
Dashiell: [They need] patience. It’s so time consuming sometimes and you can’t expect to go anywhere too fast. You need to really learn to read the soundwave and make cuts that do more than just playback a song you like. Re-arrange parts, loop, layer and take chances. I try to make it a rule of thumb to only sample songs I enjoy listening to in their entirety, but that’s really for the person in front of the sequencer to decide.

Boni: Is it possible that we could get the full list of all the artists sampled on your tracks? A lot of people are dying to know.
Dashiell: [chuckles] Wow, didn’t realize a lot of people were interested…I saw what Girl Talk did with his Wiki page for Feed the Animals and might put something like that up in the near future. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell you everything. There are some samples I still have to manually look up when people ask me. I drag so much random stuff in there and cut it up beyond the point of recognition that I can’t always hear what the original track is.

Boni: Can we expect any new releases any time soon? What about performance dates?
Dashiell: I’ll definitely be doing some shows over the summer in the Los Angeles area. Nothing is confirmed, but I’m working on putting a few things together. As far as new material, I’m guessing it will be at least 6 months. Six months is the very, very low end of the amount of time it might take.

Boni: Alright. This concludes the interview. Is there anything else you want to say?

Dashiell: That was pretty painless [chuckles]. Shoutout to Coachella music festival founder Paul Tollett! I named the track “Sahara Tent” on 2.0 after a tent at Coachella that had Chromeo and M.I.A. playing back to back – both of whom are featured on that track. If he wants to have me do a set in there next year I’d be more than happy to.

The first album Prime Cuts can be downloaded here via zSHARE.
The newest album 2.0 can be downloaded here via zSHARE and streamed here via Last.fm.

Our prayers have been answered. Greg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, is back and better than ever. On June 19th 2008, his new album entitled Feed the Animals was put up for download. This is the fourth album by the mashup king who is signed to Illegal Art. The delivery system is the same pay-what-you-want style that Radiohead pioneered with the release of their In Rainbows album. According to the download website,

any price grants the download of the entire album as high-quality 320kbps mp3s
$5 or more adds the options of FLAC files, plus a one-file seamless mix of the album
$10 or more includes all of the above + a packaged CD (when it becomes available)

The physical copy of the album is due to be released on September 23, 2008. You can download the album for free HERE.