Strictly Kev’s “Raiding the 20th Century” (warning: 54MB download; site is often down) is an amazing mash-up, or rather meta-mash-up. That is to say, this almost-40-minute-long mixtape doesn’t only sample multiple sonic sources at once; but the sources it samples are themselves mash-ups, composed of multiple samples at once (e.g., it doesn’t sample James Brown, but Double Dee and Steinski’s James Brown mix; it doesn’t sample Eminem, but the Freelance Hairdresser’s mix of Eminem with a ragtime piano). It’s sonically dense, in a way that repays multiple listenings: I’ve been playing it over and over for the last couple of weeks, and I still discover fresh things each time, that I hadn’t noticed before.
“Raiding the 20th Century” works in a variety of ways: 1)by moment-to-moment juxtapositions, in a sort of manic free association; 2)by recurring motifs, as sonic landmarks old and new (from the Beatles to Beyonce) keep on returning in varying combinations; 3)by suggesting a sort of narrative, with suggestions of chronology from the invention of mixing in the mid-20th century through the digital developments at that century’s end (though the chronology is not strict and is often violated, there’s enough of it there to reinforce the suggestion that some sort of story is being told: we start with the brute fact of the tape recorder, mixing sounds promiscuously; then at about 14 minutes into the set, we are invited back to the origins of taping, and from there we progress forward to the present; 4)by the insertion of various voices discussing the art of the mixtape (William Burroughs discoursing on the cut-up method with tape recorders; John Lennon being interviewed on how he put together “Revolution 9″; fragments of McLuhan’s ‘The Medium is the Massage” recording, etc.).
“Raiding the 20th Century” is emotionally gripping as well as intellectually challenging: it is exhilarating like I imagine a ride in a space ship would be. Beyond the game of identifying fragments (that’s Jimi Hendrix! that’s Kelis! that’s … it is so familiar but I can’t quite put my finger on it), it powerfully suggests a continuum through time (if not quite space: it is nearly all Ango-American, with little or no “world music”), a Celestial Jukebox in which patterns of musical invention jostle one another without being bogged down by ownership, copyright, and other barriers to (even if they are supposed to be rewards of) creativity.
Raiding the 20th Century
Strictly Kev’s “Raiding the 20th Century” (warning: 54MB download; site is often down) is an amazing mash-up, or rather meta-mash-up. That is to say, this almost-40-minute-long mixtape doesn’t only sample multiple sonic sources at once; but the sources it samples are themselves mash-ups, composed of multiple samples at once (e.g., it doesn’t sample James Brown, but Double Dee and Steinski’s James Brown mix; it doesn’t sample Eminem, but the Freelance Hairdresser’s mix of Eminem with a ragtime piano). It’s sonically dense, in a way that repays multiple listenings: I’ve been playing it over and over for the last couple of weeks, and I still discover fresh things each time, that I hadn’t noticed before.
“Raiding the 20th Century” works in a variety of ways: 1)by moment-to-moment juxtapositions, in a sort of manic free association; 2)by recurring motifs, as sonic landmarks old and new (from the Beatles to Beyonce) keep on returning in varying combinations; 3)by suggesting a sort of narrative, with suggestions of chronology from the invention of mixing in the mid-20th century through the digital developments at that century’s end (though the chronology is not strict and is often violated, there’s enough of it there to reinforce the suggestion that some sort of story is being told: we start with the brute fact of the tape recorder, mixing sounds promiscuously; then at about 14 minutes into the set, we are invited back to the origins of taping, and from there we progress forward to the present; 4)by the insertion of various voices discussing the art of the mixtape (William Burroughs discoursing on the cut-up method with tape recorders; John Lennon being interviewed on how he put together “Revolution 9″; fragments of McLuhan’s ‘The Medium is the Massage” recording, etc.).
“Raiding the 20th Century” is emotionally gripping as well as intellectually challenging: it is exhilarating like I imagine a ride in a space ship would be. Beyond the game of identifying fragments (that’s Jimi Hendrix! that’s Kelis! that’s … it is so familiar but I can’t quite put my finger on it), it powerfully suggests a continuum through time (if not quite space: it is nearly all Ango-American, with little or no “world music”), a Celestial Jukebox in which patterns of musical invention jostle one another without being bogged down by ownership, copyright, and other barriers to (even if they are supposed to be rewards of) creativity.