Chris DeLine

After opening with “It’s A Fact (Printed Stained)” at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival, Matt & Kim broke into a song that found the crowd responding with a boisterous thunder: a rendition of Dead Prez’ classic “Hip-Hop.” The song’s electronic-based loop is one of the most recognizable to come from the decade and one that sounds surprisingly just as raw when performed by the all-smiles Brooklyn duo. The flip side to that equation is Dave Wrangler‘s recent mash, pairing Dead Prez with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah; a mashup that sounds far closer to what one might expect from Matt & Kim.

Also touching on the P4k Music Festival; Chicago’s the Hood Internet have, for the past three years, led up to the festival with a series of mashups pairing artists who were on that year’s bill against one another. This year the duo’s DJ STV SLV combined  the Black Lips with Pharoahe Monch, an unlikely pairing, but one that would foreshadow two of my favorite performances from the entire weekend.

Following last week’s contribution by Copycat to the celebration revolving around Audio Porn Central‘s second anniversary, Dutch producer Pheugoo jumped on board in offering his services. “Pony Pony Run Run’s ‘Hey You’ is one of the songs i picked up by a daily AudioPornCentral check. Simon [Iddol] posted a video on the blog and that video made me think of Spillers Groovejet right away (don’t ask me why). That inspired me to make a summer dance mash out of it and nobody is more summer and dance than Kylie. What do you get when you decide to listen to it? Pony Pony Run Run – Hey You (acapella) vs Kylie Minogue – In Your Eyes (instrumental).“

Pheugoo has a unique ability to take parts from multiple tracks and create something that sounds so genuinely fresh, his tracks come off as though they are original recordings; something as true when he created the remarkable clash between Justin Timberlake and Snoop with Kiss as it is now.

It’s hard to even know where to begin with DJ Funktuall. He doesn’t make mashups, but I’m sharing this video because in it he shares his favorite of all time (closer to the end of the video). I suggest you checking out some of the videos that he might be best known for: his “Top 10 Samples in Hip-Hip History” series which dissects various tracks on each clip (well, 10 on each video). If you can stand his mugging for the camera and self-indulgent dancing/lip-synching, it’s 100% worth your time. And if you’re into remixing or creating bootlegs, this series is key to grabbing some of the best samples in the history of music. (Sidenote: on this video he touches on two movies – Logan’s Run & The Addiction. Based on his recommendation I’ve watched both, and while I can’t vouch for Logan’s Run, I will definitely cosign his love for The Addiction: a black and white vampire movie revolving around the philosophy of evil featuring Chistopher Walken, Lili Taylor & Edie Falco. And as he said, the soundtrack is killer, what’s not to love.)

​Last month George Thorogood was teasing that his latest album, The Dirty Dozen, would be his last; and while time will tell whether or not he makes good on his words, he also reflected on how some of his peers have kept his show on the road. “I kind of look at Mick Jagger as the barometer of how long I’m gonna go. He’s about seven or eight years older than me, and Eric Clapton’s five years older than me. l look at those guys and I say, ‘Well, they’re still going, which means I have no right to retire.'” Adding another taste of the Netherlands to this week’s mashups, G3Rst drops his rebuttle to all this by combining Thorogood’s legendary “Bad to the Bone” with the Upsetters’ “Dollar in the Teeth,” suggesting that even when ol’ George thinks he might be done, he can always resurrect himself as a reggae star.

This week Schmolli takes us back to March of 2007 when he mashed (it almost pains me to even put these two in the same sentence) Carcass with Madonna. But in all honesty, after a few weeks of looking at metal mashups, this one actually takes the cake in terms of its production and general compatibility between the source tracks. (And the video’s not bad either.)

[This post was originally published by City Pages.]