Aphex Twin + Britney + Beastie Boys + 808 State + anything, really

If you mashed-up this blog with a successful blog, the internet would probably explode.

Some things shouldn't be mixed. I remain convinced that most MTV mash-ups were a calamitous waste of cathode rays and I have heard too many DJs ruin two separate tracks by smashing them together until the clubbers were sliced to death from airborne shards of shattered vinyl.

I always beatmixed until I started DJing my particular brand of electronic complexity some years ago. I then boasted that my record collection was beyond any sensible time signature and tracks could not be mixed or mashed into each other without the result sounding like some elephant in chainmail parkouring over corrugated shed roofs.

But that hasn't stopped people trying, particularly with the Cornish king of electronica, Mr Aphex Twin. Let's have a look at some of them, shall we?

Aphex Twin mash-ups
This MIA versus Aphex Twin mash-up sounds impressive at first, but it's a little muddy and the Aphex track, Windowlicker, inevitably ends up drowning out the genre-hopping vocalist.

This AFX  mash-up with classic jam-pumpin' house band Technotronic really is just a DJ finding the right BPM and making sure the audio train stays on a very narrow track. Same for this mix with Daft Punk.

When you throw Aphex's Windowlicker (again) with Vanilla Ice, Missy Elliot and Britney Spears, the result is a lot more pleasing. Especially when there's a cut-up video to go with it. My gosh, though, it doesn't half look dated now.

Someone has melded Aphex Twin with the Beastie Boys and Tokyo electro-popper De De Mouse to produce a track that has a higher feelgood factor than if the entire cast of Glee got pilled up and spent a night sweating and hugging and gurning at Sankey's Soap.

Jack Conte has done his own mash-up of Aphex Twin and Bright Eyes, but to my purist ears, it is ever-so-slightly spoilt by the Bright Eyes bit. And the Jack Conte bit.

Never mind all that. The bestest Aphex Twin mash-up I can find is this shaky mobile clip of Tim Exile blending AFX and 808 State. If I had heard this in a club, I would have been riding his back in seconds shouting "ride 'em cowboy" whilst dribbling all down his hairy back like a mentalist.

DJing at its best. Do you know any better mash-ups (or "mashups" as Wikipedia would have it)?

Edit: As seen in the comments below this post, I missed something pretty obvious. 100dbs take on Aphex Twin versus Snoop Dogg, Q Tip and plenty more is worth a (NSFW) look-in.

Top of the bleeps: what's hot and banging bad-style right now

Topping the downloads list on electronic music's answer to the Arndale Centre, Bleep dot com, is Clark's Totems Flare album. I've got it cranked to the gills as I type; it's a brilliant analogue wig out designed as much for the tootsies as for the cranial glue.

The second most downloaded album is a debut LP from Bibio. Ambivalence Avenue has been covered here before: click the Bibio link at the bottom of this article. Bleep says it's like a lost 70s folk record.

Here is the rest of the top ten on Bleep:

3. Clark - Growls Garden (track). Marvin The Paranoid Android malfunctions at an 80's disco.

4. Tim Exile - Listening Tree. Another debut album and probably Warp Records' only gabba opus.

5. The Black Dog - Further Vexation. I'm pimping their previous album Radio Scarecrow a lot right now, but this record is darker, frownier and more techno.

6. Battles - Mirrored. An old one but a classic, described by Pitchfork with this trio of scintillating sentences: "Marc Bolan is dead. But Battles can rebuild him. They have the technology."

7. Diamond Watch Wrists - Ice Capped At Both Ends. This is Prefuse 73 stretching out his legs and playing footsie with a percussionist. 

8. Floating Points - J & W Beat. Best described as bubbly 2-step. Yes. Bubbly.

9. Bizzy B - Retrospective. A look back at the best of the master of the Amen break. No Bizzy B, no Venetian Snares.

10. Moritz Von Oswald Trio (pictured, photo from Stink Finger) - Vertical Ascent. I don't know too much about this, although I think it's got something to do with AGF.

Damn, this Clark album I'm listening to is good. It's like old Aphex Twin a million years into the future. Meanwhile, the top ten on Bleep has already changed while I've been typing this. Please scrub out this post. You'll find a permanent marker pen under your chair.

Shut up, just shut up, shut up, shut up, just shup up, shut up

Will you please, please just shut up?

Some people need to learn less is more. One of those people is Tim Exile (photo: Stephen Pariah), whose new album Listening Tree is out in a week or two.

Exile, when he was just known as Exile, had a fearful reputation as a god of techno. Debut album Pro Agonist raged with killer snares and beat-pummelling Squarepusher-ness.

Fast forward to 2009, and Tim Exile's Listening Tree is crammed with bizarre rants about spiders webs (When Every Day's A Number) and one-way streets (Bad Dust). The "dreams of a lifetime wrapped in plastic" line on Carouselle is pure Mighty Boosh.

Squish the fussy vocals underfoot, and Listening Tree is beautiful, intricate, thrilling and theatrical. I just wish he would tone it down. The analogue ferocity is here, but it's on a leash and it's wearing those annoying white glasses worn by people like Sam Sparro.

Another album now. And just to show I'm over my grouchiness I displayed on Sunday, let me be sparkly and fairy-like for a moment.

Röyksopp's Junior is a magical world of glittering synthesisers and heavenly vocals. It chuckles where other albums growl, and soars o'er melody and harmony where other albums grate and scrape.

The album is as middle-of-the-road as you'd expect from the Bergen boys, and it is all yay-and-light where Exile is boo-and-dark. But the production is as pristine as Exile's in its own way: it sweeps you up on a giddy, unscary rollercoaster especially designed for princesses.

For example, the sawing synth line on third track Vision One is the most delightful thing I've heard for ages. I could just do without the Air-style cutesy vocals.  Which, of course, brings me back to the theme of this post...

A mallet-pawing, arm-throating, wrestle-bashing preview of 2009 (part two)

I'd better get my 2009 preview finished before this whole New Year lark becomes unfashionable.

March.

Berlin adrenalin-techno kid (and former classical violinist, 'pparently) Tim Exile will plant his Listening Tree album.

The Future Sound Of London, whose artwork make gatefold vinyl a pleasure to ogle at, will play their first live date for over a decade at the Bloc weekender. It is unlikely to be as frenetic as Dan Deacon's live performanced.  Deacon counts a mallet among his percussion instruments, and has been taking to the stage with a synth-heavy 14-piece ensemble at recent gigs.  For that reason alone, seek out his new long-player Bromst.

Oh and former members of Plone and Broadcast have formed Seeland, who I reckon are a hot tip for 2009. When you clap ears on their debut album, you'll spot whispers of Stereolab and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The rest of 2009.

One of Paul Simon's favourite bands, Grizzly Bear should give Warp Records a new album in May, or thereabouts.  Speaking of Mr Simon, I still haven't forgiven the garfunkled-one for Graceland.  And while we're at it, I'm still boycotting Sly Stallone films for the travesty that is his 1996 movie Daylight.

If I kept my CDs on shelves, with my favourite artists on the higher shelves, and my least favourite artists on the lower shelves, Plaid would have their very own shelf about fourteen miles above my house. They are putting the finishing touches to their album Scintilli, and it will be released on Warp some time in the middle of the year.

In August, Orbital will morph together for their first live performance since John Peel's Maida Vale sessions, this time at the Big Chill. As I said in this post back in November, they have promised it won't be "an exercise in nostalgia". Of course, we all know it will.

Portishead ended 2009 without a record contract, so expect some In Rainbows-style tomfoolery with their fourth album. It should be out around September.

On a more commercial tip, ex-Pop Idol contestant (spit!) and new darling of the press Little Boots will claim 2009 as her own. She's worth watching because she uses a Tenori-on, which is a pretty Japanese music making box that lights up. The same people who rave about 'Boots enthuse about La Roux.

Finally, you may need to strap me down because I am insanely excited about one particular artist.  The Glaswegian Hudson Mohawke refers to everything as "shite" on his Myspace page.  He's not being negative: he's just being, well, Scottish.

Mohawke is a new signing to Warp Records, and he flips between electronica, hip hop, electro and soul in ways that really shouldn't be possible.

Someone somewhere labelled his music as "emotronic" (probably H-Mo himself).  He's working on an album which should sound a little like this: