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Mash-ups, Remixes and Covers

• Nerm
• 1 May 07, 12:25 PM

I’ve been trying to write a blog entry about Remixing for ages. It started out as an entry about the show that aired at Christmas, that we called “The Ultimate Electro East Christmas Office Party”...

For the uninitiated, the show I present, Electro East, is an alternative show rooted in Drum and Bass but covers Electro, Breaks and pretty much any other form of up-tempo, Alternative, Underground electronic music.

For the Christmas special I played a ton of commercial tracks that had been bootlegged or remixed from a lot of artists; from Britney Spears to Bally Sagoo, The Eurythmics to Amerie. It was a lot of fun and we had a special exclusive mix from bootleg master .

As soon as I started writing about Remixing, I realized that the barriers between Remixing (where the original elements of a track are pulled apart and put back together with varying tempos and additional production to give the original track a new genre) and Mash-ups (where anything goes – whole tracks are treated, stretched combined with other bits of other tracks and sometimes new beats and sounds) were so blurred that sometimes it was difficult to tell what was what.

I then wrote four pages on the , how taking a break (a bar of a clean drum pattern), cutting it up and re-programming a beat was an art where as taking a whole beat and replaying it was more of a mash-up technique than production. I realised that this was becoming very, very boring to read! I started getting bogged down with what you do in a sampler to make it original and what the differences between a good ‘jack and bad ’jack were. Dull stuff.

Then there's the whole "Live Remix" thing that DJs and performers do, where two tracks blend so perfectly, they become something new. This is especially true with the emergence of DJ/Performance software such as , and .

In the end it’s all about what sounds good and what breathes new life and new vibes into a track.

This is what a new part of Electro East is all about: Mashtracks.

The idea is that we take three completely Desi-fied, commercial tunes that you’d never hear on Electro East and have someone from the Underground Remix or Mash-up the track. Except there are a couple of strings attached to make it a bit more interesting. First, you the listener can vote on which track the producer has to work with and secondly, the producer only has ONE WEEK to turn it around!

So far it’s going really well and stirring up lots of debate. I Mashed Up Lady Ru’s Chances Are into “Nerm’s TC In A Dark Alley Remix” – the TC part of the title is in homage to the I lifted the breaks from - while this month the ripped Punjabi MC’s Snake Charmer apart, threw the best bits in a blender with their own production and created a fantastic Drum & Bass dancefloor stomper, “The Audio Dakoos One Eyed Serpent Remix”. The next producer up is who has to hold out for the next three weeks or so until you vote for which track you want him to remix!

So as I finish writing about remixes, something troubles me. What about cover-versions?

I first played cover version of Spirits In A Material World by the Police in November and thought it was truly groundbreaking (and for the record, that’s not Sting singing, it’s Karsh.)

That track and the cover version of Led Zepplin’s Four Sticks appear on the Six Degrees Album Backspin but they both do exactly what a Mash-up or Remix should do!

Maybe the one of the Producers up for Mashtracks could turn in a cover version? That would be something I’d love to hear.