Pump up the ridiculousness

Like all the best ravers, we absolutely LOVE breakneck, bonkers, madder-than-your-gran-when-she’s-on-gin-‘n‘-pills mixtapes. Especially ones that are ‘eclectic’.

A while back we told you about a ‘crush mix’ that our New Favourite Producers Pirate Soundsystem had done for Xfm. That was a 100mph race through a series of rave classics new and old, and featured delights including Whigfield singing over the top of Vitalic.

Now it’s the turn of eccentric and brilliant Scouse electro poppers To My Boy (who we mentioned in Spinning Around a few weeks ago), who’ve put together their very own mix for people to play “at MySpace parties while causing £20,000 worth of damage to somebody else's parents' house”.

Starting off with a steroid-abusing ‘SexyBack’, this party animal takes in many old school highlights (including Kenny Dope and Techno-fucking-tronic) as well as some more recent ‘cuts’.

It’s a lot of fun too - where else could you expect to hear M.I.A. newie ‘XR2’ (which is amazing, FYI) segueing into Paul Simon’s ’classic’ ’You Can Call Me Al’? Not many places, is the unfortunate answer.

Download the mix and read the superbly-punctuated blog post that accompanies it…

HERE!

Shiver me timbers, etc.

You may remember that some time ago we wrote about sonic scrapbook merchant Josh Console, ADHD’s very own Fatboy Slim. Since then he’s been hard at work producing stuff as part of the Pirate Soundsystem, sensibly having realised that remixing credible artists with your mates is about 500% more enjoyable and profitable than sitting in your bedroom making Rage Against The Machine records sound even more stupid ever will be.

One of Pirate Soundsystem’s latest remixes is for Hadouken!’s excellent new single ‘Liquid Lives’, which is out this week. In true Josh Console style the remix is loud, glitchy, stupid, needlessly showy, borderline unlistenable - and fucking brilliant.

It starts off with the sound of Pirates repeatedly throwing Hadouken! (and the entire contents of their kitchen cupboards) down the stairs, before morphing into a great big daft UK Garage track that bounces, twists and turns all over the shop, turning the original into a veritable rollercoaster of beats, bleeps and the obligatory MASSIVE RAVE SIRENS.

It’s such a good idea for a remix that Hadouken! themselves have done similar things on their own equally ’heavy’ ‘re-rub’ of the single.

You can listen to a clip of the PS version here. As well as looking at this.

"It's the remix!!", etc.

Imagine what would happen if you left your young, hyperactive (and possibly disturbed) nephew in a room on his own with some scissors, some neon highlighter pens and at least a decade’s worth of Smash Hits and Mixmag back issues to get through.

It would be a complete mess.

Now imagine that your nephew was really good at sticking together all the bits of paper he’d cut out and scribbled on.

In fact, he’s so good at it he’s able to turn them into a completely new work of art; a scrapbook collage comprising twenty years of mad pop culture, with all the shit left out and all the good bits left in.

Now (and this is the last one) imagine what all this sounds like.

The answer, is cry.on.my.console, pictured above.

cry.on.my.console, Josh to his friends, is the genius behind various remixes, mashups and other such dancing-related sounds that we have come to love somewhat over the past few years.

A cohort of the GYBO scene which was popular about a million years ago, he’s previously turned his considerable talents to remixing, covering and generally fucking up work by artists as diverse as M.I.A., Girls Aloud, Rage Against The Machine and, er, Chas N’ Dave.

He describes himself as a “top quality DJ of UK Garage, Breakbeat, Techno, Rave Club, Bootleg, Remix, Nerdcore, Bleepstep & Pirate Love music”, and is the kind of remixer who turns things out that sound either ten times better than the original, or nothing like it at all.

Perhaps the pinnacle of his achievements is the frankly unbelievable ‘YAear!!! Mix!!’, which is a lot better than its title and basically consists of six minutes and twenty seconds worth of 2004’s biggest chart smashes taking a ride in a washing machine. It’s the very epitome of c.o.m.c’s scrapbook style and is by turns thrilling and hilarious, like getting beaten up by a dwarf.

We strongly recommend you investigate Josh further at his website, although the downloads page is not what it once was, which is a shame.