The Mashup Artists Who Inspired Me

For a final bonus part to the last month’s making mashups series, today I’m going to share just some of the artists and music that inspired me to move to making and performing sample-based mashups for myself.

A lot of tricks can be learned from these mixes and compilations. I hope this music also inspires you to go beyond traditional mixing, and also helps you finding your way onto this “new DJing order” that is appearing. You can hear a live mix of mine on my SoundCloud as well, and see how I’m doing it for myself.

Girl Talk

Possibly the one artist that made me make the jump to sample-based mixing. Any of his albums have ridiculously good combinations of general popular music samples, I definitely recommend any of his latest three: Night Ripper, Feed the Animals and All Day. They are all free and can be downloaded from anywhere you find them.

My personal favourite is Feed the Animals. Not a single second in the entire album was overlooked, it all fits to excruciating perfection. A lot of sample mixing techniques can be appreciated in his work. There are over 350 songs mixed in 53 minutes in there.

Diplo

If there is one dude that got me into hardcore mixing and not the run-of-the-mill song to song mixing, it was Diplo. This guy knows what is and what’s not. The best studio DJ sets I’ve heard in my whole life were from this guy. He also has the most far out influences I’ve seen in a DJ, mixing just about anything.

I can’t avoid recommending his BBC Radio 1 Essential mix from September 16th, 2007. It has a lot of different music in those two hours, everything fitting to perfection. Expect to find just about any modern genre and a good bit of electronic feel.

Other nice sets from Diplo are “Diplo – Sesiones Replicantes 03-08-2008”, his Major Lazer Essential mix from 07-24-2009, and his Baile Funk mix “Favela Strikes Back” for those into exotic sonorities. These sets and compilations are also all free and can be downloaded anywhere easily.

A-Trak

This guy came from hip-hop onto the general electronic music scene. He mixes just about anything as well, but focuses more on house and electro styles.

He’s won the DMC World Championship for the first time at the tender age of 15. So expect to hear the most incredible things done with the records.

I definitely recommend “A-Trak – In The Mix (N-Joy) 05-15-2009” for a great listen.

Bassnectar

Finally, the most electronic of the four. Bassnectar has its electronic roots in glitch-hop, and similar electronic. Expect to hear a lot of dubstep. He does a lot of popular music remixes and re-edits, he also does dubstep mashups of them and then remixes and re-mashes these tracks with others all over again.

Any of his mixtapes on the “Bassnectar Transmission” podcast are a very good listen.

Who’s your favourite mashup artist? Why? Let us know in the comments.