This Week in Mashups (02/02/2008)

When I first heard about the uncovered David Lee Roth vocal track from Van Halen’s “Runnin’ With The Devil” my initial thoughts were aimed at the clip’s mashability, or lack thereof.  So far there have been a few attempts floating around the interwebs to make the clip work as a mashup, but for the most part the tracks simply identify how awkward the DLR track is to listen to – let alone work with.  This, from The Hood Internet’s DJ STV SLV, however is probably the best example that I’ve heard – combining a classic Biggie beat with Roth’s vocal track.

This week ToToM returns with a rock-based mash, combining Queens of the Stone Age’s “Little Sister” with Bloc Party’s “Flux.”

Also featured this week on The Hood Internet is ABX’s Styles P/Vampire Weekend bootleg.  Last night a friend asked if I had heard Vampire Weekend’s new album, and I responded that I hadn’t.  It’s an odd situation to be emerged in an online culture that bubbles sometimes with overwhelming support for an act because when you truly attempt to identify a sense of taste for their music it becomes impossible with all the surrounding nonsense.  This last happened for me with Cold War Kids, a band that was branded by Rolling Stone and Pitchfork as a “blog band” in hopes to cast a negative or shallow shadow on the group.  As it stands right now, tracks from Vampire Weekend account for five of the top ten tracks on Hype Machine’s Popular Blog Tracks list and the group is the number one ranking band on Elbo.ws’ What’s Hot: Artists list.  In the meantime I think it’s still fair to say that the album may best be heard apart from all this, and as I continue to avoid it (if only momentarily) I take great enjoyment in this mashup, combining the fantastic Styles P with a beat from a track that is entirely alien to me.