S/FJ

THE NIGHT IS LONGER THAN THE LONG DAY

Boot for boot, Mark Vidler is the Barry Bonds of this bootleg game. He's done nothing world-shaking recently, but his game is still tight. Let us now go on a quick (on your end, not mine) stroll through Mark's link section. To mix sports metaphors, GHP is heading for some Phelpsian numbers, but Soundhog and James Hyman could be pulling a South Africa round the outside, round the outside.

Boomselection is back up and offering amazing James Hyman and Soundhog longform mixes. Listening to these, the game clock is very much still running. Soundhog is no longer hosting tunes on his own site, but he does update the News section. Try to find a 45-minute Soundhog set called "Live Mix February 2004". It used to be on boomselection, but it seems to have disappeared.

The board is up, but this bit isn't up yet.

The creepy-looking Frenchbloke & Son site has a radio stream and a link to a long, typically noisy and typically great Superchunk mix. Optimo offers mixes for a limited time, and there's a good roots reggae set by JD Twitch up now. Ultra396 also enjoys the reggae music, and has recently introduced Big Youth to Britney, which is strong (though not very reggae), but the older "Toxic" dub is killer. New Lamb track is good, too. You'll find some Ultra396 back catalog, but very few of the video mashups are on-line. This is all likely to change in the next few seconds.

IDC offers a bunch of tracks, none great, none bad—only the MBV/Lo-Fi track really stuck in my head. Thee mightee Osymyso is not posting anything new, possibly because he is doing a BBC comedy thing called Milk Run which I haven't heard but seems to involve editing a lot of comics together. (The career-establishing tracks like "Intro-Inspection" are still available on his site.) McSleazy is posting stuff slowly but surely, all of it fun but nothing to climb over your fellow man to get. Unless, of course, you download the recent Superchunk mix, in which his A game kicks in and McSleeze jumps into the top seven. Nice to hear some non-English vocalists in the mix. (I said "in the mix"!)

Though Braces Tower hasn't posted anything since September 03, I am still fond of the four tracks remaining for d/l on the site. (The linked EP is a bit fern bar for me.) BT's style is distinct enough from the mashup quo that you might actually recognize his tracks as Braces Tower issue the second time around. (Nicely thought out, less likely to stack up into crosstalk noise, not all pop-derived, bit sad, bit funny—you know).

John Marr/SCO Network's tracks are fun, but most interesting as evidence of being the work of a 2nd or 3rd generation booter. Many of these tracks are conceptually based on earlier boots: a classic rock + "Work It Out" boot, a "Freak Like Me" + X, etc. Lots of the usual suspects—Missy, Destiny's, etc—but this collaboratively filtered verdict of the bootsquad simultaneously asserts and defends the obvious fact that Missy and Beyoncé are geniuses in fact, not just in concept. How thoroughly tested do you have to be before you get your Genius Hat? (Listen for the moment, if you have the stamina, when Kelis takes over from Missy as Acapella Queen of the Mashosphere. [Ew. Bootzone? ugh. Time to abandon neologizing.] Related: N.E.R.D. sure are lucky all these people went and improved their album. Inverse relation: No matter how fun all the "Toxic" boots are, none can smoke the original.)

Poj Masta has loads of tracks up and seems to have stayed in business. Donwloads split between mashups and remixes. All a bit twitchy and DSPy for me, though I did enjoy the Mario Brothers flicker of "Play My Game." Listening to all the tracks from this site, one after the other, is driving me fucking crazy. Not a Poj fan.

I couldn't make any of the d/l links on Andreas Churchill's site work. Also a little hard to tell if the site's being updated with fresh tracks. Seems not.

Lionel Vinyl the cheeky human bootmaker (Yes & Mixalot is still good) seems to have morphed into electroid remixer Fake ID. That's nice. I have to stop now.

This is a big Blur remix bootapalooza. It's great. It's terrible. I can't tell. I don't know why I started this horrible project. These songs are all fine the way they are. Just go back to revising for your exams.

Dunproofin' has a couple of really strong boots. Just a few. Not too many. Only a few. This is how it should be. Therefore, we vote Dunproofin' as greatest masher-upper ever.

(Doing this all at one sitting was not a good idea. I'll finish this later when my head isn't a big throbbing plum tomato.)

Posted by Sasha at August 18, 2004 12:42 PM | TrackBack