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Everything All The Time
Read Dave’s post on Girl Talk’s insane new mix, Night Ripper. Go download the mix somewhere. Froth at the mouth over dude’s cheeky splicing of Smashing Pumpkins and Young MC and Laid Back and Three 6 Mafia and and and…
Then let’s take a step back and discuss.
I just got this mix last night (internet's back on!), and I was excited to finally hear it. A friend came over around track 6 and immediately told me how sick he was of Night Ripper already. Apparently he'd gotten a copy a few weeks ago and, after an initial burst of great enthusiasm, completely burnt out on it (but not before all his coworkers got copies and started playing them at work). I'm still just so psyched to have an internet connection again that it'll probably be at least a week until I can hate on anything that it gives me, and I'm still pretty damn impressed with this mix. That said, I can see where he's coming from.
Does a mix like this have much replay value after the novelty has worn off (once you memorize exactly when that Phantom Planet sample or that Biggie verse drops)? Do you ever just want to listen to the whole song(s) instead?
The thing this mix most reminds me of isn't a banging club night (where some people might find this level of ADD mixing a little difficult), but rather of being 10 years old and listening to the Top 40 countdown on Sunday mornings. Just as months and months of Top 40 are mixed up and de-contextualized by my fuzzy memory, so too are tons of chart hits arbitrarily mashed together on Night Ripper (with the occasional Neutral Milk Hotel or Pavement sample thrown in for good measure). It's all amazingly well done, but I'm not sure I want or need a new way to listen to Top 40.
This whole school of DJing (basically just skillful hip-hop mixing with a grab-bag of recognizable hooks) is fine if you really do want to listen to everything all the time, but genres and themes can be useful things sometimes.
The other thing that troubles me is the almost anti-social nature of this mix. It just can't exist outside the digital world, it's been stitched together on a laptop and downloaded by individual kids at their computers. It would be almost impossible to do "live" in any real sense of the term, and maybe that's fine because it's not so much a club record as a novel reshuffling of your ipod.
Of course, it's still this Summer's best mix so far by a long shot.
Comments
you should re-up this comment on my other post. damn my prolificness!
I haven't listened to the whole thing as a mix, due to it being broken down into 'tracks' on the radio station system. In 3 minute blocks every couple of weeks, I still love it.
The best part was playing one track over air and hearing "HEY.... we want some PUUUUUUSSSSSY!!!" all of a sudden. I don't think the FCC would approve.
FCC, RIAA, dude's gonna have all kinds of acronyms on his ass.
I checked out his myspace page which has a few tracks on it. The guy's freaky talented and has a good ear for finding sounds that mesh. A lot of it reminded me of how I've spent the past year avoiding MTV like the plague but watching an insane amount of BET instead. There's more freshness in this stuff than the staid indie-rock of today.
don't remember the guy's name, but there was a tall blonde guy with a shaggyish haircut that used to work at orpheum. no matter what you were looking for, he gave you a look like you were buying a steaming turd.
Actually, that sounds like it's a friend of mine. I'll punch him next time I see him for retroactive asshole-ocity.
If it's the dude who looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo, he fully sucked.
If it's the dude who looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo, he fully sucked.
Was he about 6'4", skinny, and Scandinvian-looking? If so, then that's whom you must be thinking of.
technically proficient, yes, for a dude that splices everything digitally. listenable? er... uh.... kinda. it's a bit to heavy on the novelty tip for my liking. i bought the damn thing and will probably never get to that second run through of it, although there are definitely moments of brilliance sprinkled about in that collage-tastic hyper kid on 40 pixie stix head smash.
i guess i respect it more for the sheer amount of work dude put into it, but it's a little too geeked and "flowless". pass.
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don't remember the guy's name, but there was a tall blonde guy with a shaggyish haircut that used to work at orpheum. no matter what you were looking for, he gave you a look like you were buying a steaming turd. and god forbid you had to ask him for help. oh the disdain you would garner for asking him to point you in the right direction or *gasp* look something up. i hated that guy, and despite the nice people that worked there as well, he was enough to make me glad when orpheum closed down.