Meet the mushups: Next generation mashups

The Processed Press is a bastard pop bootleg of DJ Shadow's The Private Press. First appearing this summer, it was attributed to Prosac but the site that hosted the album recording removed it a while ago. Prosac is now busy with much new fine material, apparently. But luckily, a lot of the individual tracks are still out there, including my favourite "Mongrel Galang..." - (DJ Shadow vs M.I.A.). It's a simple overlay - more of a mushup than a mashup, but not that that's a bad thing.

For a while it was hard not to be jaded by mashups. I got the feeling that after the right amount of tinkering, one song's beats could be eventually be mapped perfectly onto any old track. In the worst cases, it was all math and no poetry. When the goal is to come up with something that is greater than the sum of its parts, arithmetic ain't gonna get you there.

Mushups more or less have two tracks playing together and just let the sparks fly, which exactly describes Prosac's "Mongrel Galang...". Because it's a track with vocals laid down on an instrumental there's a seamlessness like an A vs B, yet it offers so much more: One voice, two rhythm tracks that compliment each other, and as an added bonus, Prosac brilliantly pulls in M.I.A.'s nonalbum self-titled track towards the end. DJing masterstroke! You know you've spun it right when you'd rather hear these three tracks together than on their own. The word is synergy.

The g58 mushup...

Until I get some proper webspace for hosting, it is the same lame routine to hear the sound file (at least this m4a was done with Audacity rather than Wiretap):

Go to the Yahoo briefcase login screen and enter...

Yahoo ID: golb58
Password: Click here and I'll tell you
(from there, click on Briefcase address http://ca.briefcase.yahoo.com/golb58)