Today, I want to blog briefly about my love of the bastard-pop mash ups. Basically, when a DJ or otherwise interested soul combines the vocals and/or backing music from two or more pieces of music to create a composite work from all the sources. The end results are much more satisfying than my description lets on. The most obvious examples of the form would be Danger Mouse's The Grey Album (Jay-Z's Black Album lyrics on top of music remixed from the Beatles' White Album), and also the Collision Course Album MTV put out with Jay-Z and Linkin Park collaborating and mixing their music together live on stage.

I am also getting my weekly (and sometimes even more often) fix of mash-up love via my podcast subscriptions. I am not going to go into podcasting in detail (it's been done to death everywhere else), but I will say that I love the fact that I can automate the process and have free new music waiting for me every time I sync my Ipod up with Itunes. Between the podcasts from Mashuptown.com and my own searching I have more bastard pop than I know what to do with.

My favorite sites right now are the ones for djBC and Lenlow. There is a wealth of music, info, and link to many other mashers via these websites. I personally recommend "Can't you hear Biz knocking?" from djBC and "Mercedes Beck" and "Oooh Cheers" from Lenlow, but I'm sure you will all find tracks that you love. The best thing about any of these tracks is that they explore new directions in the music most of us already hear and know. Hearing how parts of different songs (oftentimes from completely different genres) fit together really intrigues me, and every new mash-up I hear only makes me want to find more of them.

Enjoy y'all, and until tomorrow . . .