The Worst Beatle

I've posted a couple Skrillex remixes just a few days ago, and I've posted the Bad Romance remix a while ago. But Skrillex, from LA, is one of my favorite electro producers right now, so I thought he deserved a post all to himself.

He makes wild electro bangers with lots of eclectic sounds, including 8-bit, dubstep, and yes, trance. Skrillex uses all those old trance sounds everyone thought had died in 2002. I think this is such an interesting direction, and it takes a lot to keep some of these songs from sounding cheesy. But overall I think he pulls it off.

The Alejandro remix, his latest, is a good example. The breakdown sounds like circa-2000 trance, with that cheesy little breakbeat during the build. But the drop....goddamn! It goes hard. Such a surprising track!

The Black Eyed Peas remix is more consistent. Sounds like it was influenced by Wolfgang Gartner to me, and that's a very good thing. The Bad Romance remixes are top notch, of course, being what Skrillex is most known for. Keep an eye on Skrillex this year, he's doing big things.

Lady Gaga - Alejandro (Skrillex Club Mix)

Black Eyed Peas - Rock That Body (Skrillex Remix Extended)

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance (Skrillex Radio)

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance (Skrillex Club)

The latest Noisia album, Splitting the Atom, is interesting. It's part traditional drum and bass, part insanely hard electro, part house, part ambient IDM.

"Red Heat" is one of the housier tracks on the album -- it has that filtered nu-disco vibe with the hard electro sound of the last few years.

I like it a lot. It's funky, it's house-y, and most importantly, it goes fucking hard.

Noisia - Red Heat

Drake - Over (HYPER CRUSH Remix)

La Roux - Bulletproof (HYPER CRUSH Remix)

LMFAO - LA LA LA (HYPER CRUSH REMIX)

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This is the best electro banger I've heard in a LONG time. I thought electro bangers were pretty much dead until I heard this monster. A spooky keyboard build-up finishes with an absolutely insane drop of pulsing hard electro and chiptune. Did I mention Ludacris is in it? This is serious, throw your drink in the fucking air and start dancing. The Filth is a new producer out of Boston, so new his myspace at the time of writing has just a single post. A very creative remix. I hope to hear more from him.

Ludacris - How Low (The Filth Remix)

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I never listened to Slipknot. I knew a few guys back in junior high who were all about them. I just couldn't get into the whole heavy metal/nu metal thing. I used to listen to ISIS, which was about as close as my arty, liberal arts ass would ever get.

Years after they've peaked in popularity, and about 8 years too old for it, I've decided to give Slipknot a listen.

If you've never heard of them, think if Dream Theater and Disturbed had a lovechild that was about as cheesy as P.O.D.. It's pretty bad. The other thing you may not know about Slipknot is that, besides headbangers for 14 year olds, they have some goth/emo ballads with acoustic guitars and whiny, Wurthering Heights-esque lyrics.

My sudden interest in Slipknot came about from this monster electro remix of a Slipknot song. I can imagine this completely wrecking a dancefloor -- either for good or for bad. This is the first new electro banger I've enjoyed in a while.
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Slipknot - Duality (Belzebass Remix)

Fucking crazy Aussies.

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Van She - Kelly (M83 Remix)

Van She - Kelly (Shinichi Osawa Remix)

Dragonette - Pick Up The Phone (Michael Di Francesco [Van She] Remix)

Dan The Automator - Rapper's Delight (Van She Tech Remix)


I Am Finn - I Love You (Van She Tech Remix Animalistics Re-Work)

Monsieur Bird, aka Mr. Oizo, is X parts genius, Y parts shit.

The X and Y variables vary. But the recipe remains the same.

This is true for each track, each album, each remix, and even each tweet.

@oizo3000: Best of 2009 : 1-some of my stuff. 2- MJ death. 3- world trade center terrorist attack. 4- dj mehdi's coming out. 5- hitler's blog.

@oizo3000: Jhfufxhuffigdsdvofffifehhi

@oizo3000: just saw DAVID GUETTA selling crack on sunset bvld.

@oizo3000: 'fag and fat' is a better name than 'digitalism', don't you think?

LOL, right?

The face of experimental French house, Mr. Oizo is definitely the most interesting DJ / producer signed to Ed Banger. While it seems everyone is tired of the in-your-face Justice sound, Mr. Oizo never really made "bangers". He's always made weird, off-kilter house.

While his original tracks are mostly destroyed miniatures, and quite frankly are to this listener more annoying than they are enjoyable, many of his remixes are funky as hell.

Below are my favorite Mr. Oizo tracks.

Want more Oizo? All Mr. Ozio remixes, including a few Oizo rarities, are available here (via Apes With Barrels).


Mr. Oizo - Gay Dentists (JFK Edit)

Calvin Harris - Merrymaking at My Place (Mr. Oizo Remix)

Busy P - To Protect and Entertain (Mr. Oizo Remix)

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Miami Horror - Make You Mine (Codebreaker Remix)

image via lookbook

Darwin Deez – Radar Detector (Xaphoon Jones Remix)

X & Hell - My FKN Hat

Cheesy electro pop with guitars and slap bass. Sign me up.

Xuman - Panic

I love these guys. I know they get blogged a lot. I posted their Katy Perry remix a while back. Yesterday I posted two of their Kanye West remixes.

They’re uncle and nephew. They rock sunglasses with the lenses popped out. They often collaborate with Pitbull, which makes sense since they both make uptempo hip hop that samples house.

Their work could be described as comedy electro-hop. Yes, that’s comedy rap over electro house. They have a song called “I Am Not A Whore” which is pretty much every single Benny Benassi song but with tongue in cheek lyrics about being taken advantage of by women for sex. (Yeah, right.) They have the best shot drinking song ever created: “Shots”. They also had a Top 40 51 hit with “I”m In Miami Bitch Trick”.

LMFAO – Lil Hipster Girl

LMFAO feat. Lil Jon – Shots

David Rush ft. LMFAO, Pitbull & Kevin Rudolf - Shooting Star (Party Rock Remix)

Here are 3 remixes of "their most serious song", in their words not mine,"La La La":

LMFAO – La La La (Hypercrush Remix)

LMFAO - La La La (Terror Dactel Remix)

LMFAO - La La La (Death to the Throne Remix)

KANYE WEST IS AWESOME. HE TYPES IN ALL CAPS. HE GETS DRUNK AS A SKUNK DURING THE VMAS AND ENTERTAINS MILLIONS. HE IS A DECENT PRODUCER AND A BRILLIANT SAMPLER. I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT HIM ON THE MIC, BUT HE’S A HELL OF A LOT BETTER OF A RAPPER THAN KID CUDI WILL EVER BE. FUCK KID CUDI. CUDI SHOULD THANK HIS LUCKY STARS COOKERS REMIXED HIM, HE’S WACK. ANYWAYS, BACK TO KANYE. ALMOST ALL THE KANYE SINGLES HAVE AT LEAST ONE GOOD REMIX AND/OR MASHUP. THIS IS BECAUSE PRODUCERS USE KANYE’S WORLD FAMOUS EGO TO SPICE UP THEIR PRODUCTIONS, JUST LIKE I DUMP SEASONING SALT ON ALL THE FOOD I COOK.

Kanye West – We Major (Kickdrums Remix)

A hip-hop remix with scratching, pitch changing, and a funky beat. Must be from some mixtape since it cuts off early.

Kanye West feat. Chris Martin – Homecoming (Discotech Remix)

A fun remix, expertly looping and cutting the vocals with a warm electro synth. Discotech picked a pretty cheesy song to remix, and with that in mind, I think they did a phenomenal job. With this said, I often just loop the beginning--“JUMP, JUMP, JUMP IN THE CROWD!”--and mix in another song.

Kanye West – Heartless (DJ Kue Klub Mix)

Fairly simple electro house remix. Rough and punchy stabs of a synth with Kanye’s sometimes filtered vox.

Kanye West – Paranoid (LMFAO Remix)

Kanye West – Love Lockdown (LMFAO Remix)

Both are ruckus party jams with LMFAO adding their own vocals. The Love Lockdown remix has the following line: “You broke my heart into a million pieces, I can’t love you but I can fuck you till you call me Jesus.” What?

Kanye West – Love Lockdown (1994 Pilotpriest Remix)

A weird and fairly original electro remix by Pilotpriest that I always pitch up. (It’s a bit slow.) I think it’s a great track, but because of the kind of creepy vocal loops saying “I love you so much” or something, you have to be smart when you’re mixing in into a party. You might get weird looks.

Kanye West – Stronger (A-Trak Remix)

Fantastic, upbeat remix. Electro -- with a lot of breaks but easy to mix. Remixes with the Harder Better Faster Stronger sample are difficult to sound like they belong to a new song, but this one does.

N.A.S.A. feat. Kanye West, Santogold & Lykke Li - Gifted (Steve Aoki Remix)

Kanye’s flow actually shines on this remix. Tip: Mix out before Lykke Li comes in.

Kanye West & Lil Wayne ft. M83 - Lollipop (The Remix of the Remix by Team Teamwork)

I know Lollipop was played out in 2008, but this mashup is noteworthy for how well Kanye on Autotune sounds with M83’s We Own The Sky.

THE ORIGINAL:

Daft Punk – One More Time

THE REMIXES:

Daft Punk - One More Time (Dskotek Remix)

Daft Punk – One More Time (George Lenton Remix)

Top Billin - One Last Time

Super Mash Bros. - I Fucking Bleed Purple And Gold

What a find. Neo Tokyo combines elements of electro house, rock, breakbeat, 80s, and chiptune to provide energetic, upbeat music that hits hard and continually surprises. Distortion, filter, vocoder, and glitch effects are used liberally, often with disregard to a cohesive song structure. This isn’t music for everyone, but for a listener well versed in electronic music, especially EDM, Neo Tokyo is a pleasant surprise.

The Robot Disaster - Guitars Are Overrated (Neo Tokyo Remix)

Passion Pit – Sleepyhead (Neo Tokyo Remix)

Chanty Poe – YesNoMaybe (Neo Tokyo Remix)

Britney Spears - Womanizer (Neo Tokyo Remix)

Tronik Youth – LaughCryLiveDie (Neo Tokyo Remix)

Two more tracks are available at Tracasseur.