Beatmixed

IDC, an extremely talented producer with a number of notable bootlegs under his belt, was gracious enough to take time out of his busy schedule to participate in a Q&A session with beatmixed.com. Read on for the full interview with David, a.k.a. IDC.

Name? Age? Location? Occupation?

David AKA IDC born in the 20th Century live in London occupied by whatever takes my fancy at the time.

How did you get into producing mash-ups?

I used to earn my living Djing, started putting vinyl on CDs to save carrying so much stuff around, then worked out I could cheat at Djing by mixing a couple of tunes together without the chance of getting it badly wrong on the night…that lead to putting them together in ways that you’d couldn’t really do live and voila!

Then I decided I wanted to stop doing club residencies and create more of my own stuff – I thought doing remixes would be a way to get to do original material, and bootlegs then became a way to get remixes. There’s a radio show on XFM in the UK called “The Remix” that I wanted to get onto, so I made a couple of booties I thought they’d like and play, and they’ve ended up playing over thirty different ones over about 18 months…

What was the first mash-up you remember hearing?

Fatboy Slim’s “Satisfaction Skank” is the first time I consciously thought “That’s a record made up of two separate records”!

What was the first boot you produced? What’s your latest? How long have you been doing this?

The first was called “Fountfool” in early 1999 and was a simple thing done for playing out. It’s Ian Brown’s “Love Like A Fountain” with Stone Roses “Fools Gold” and “Love Spreads”. It was a bit of a thing on Napster at the time, got picked up by some of the Stone Roses websites and is hanging round cyberspace on Soulseek and the like to this day. The latest as of late January 2004 is a mash-up mix for MTV Europe’s new content show “MTV Mash” which consists of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” and The Streets “Don’t Mug Yourself”. The whole IDC thing became my main outlet in early 2001 when MTV Europe picked up on a track I did which featured an Eminem acapella over an original backing track which then got a few words about it in the NME.

Do you have any ‘trademark’ techniques you like to use in your productions?

Yes, I like to re-record all the parts and instrumentation of the constituent tracks so that nothing at all exists of the original but it still sounds EXACTLY like it and then I put it all back together again. (for any lawyers reading)…

Do you have any musical goals? What motivates your musical pursuits?

My musical goals are quite simple – I want to earn a living making original music that I can be proud of, however that might manifest. That’s the baseline, then of course on top of that is the huge wealth, influence and sheer love from humanity that comes of selling lots of records.

Are you classically trained in any musical instrument?

Not trained at all but self-taught on guitar and a little keyboards.

What tools/software do you rely on to create a bootleg?

Like many other PC users I utilise Soundforge to hack and mutate stuff and then Acid to put it all together.

Where does inspiration come from for you? How do you work out your ideas? How long does it take you to typically produce a bootleg from start to finish?

Inspiration comes in three ways – a) a sudden, obvious idea of a pairing that usually just seems to work out well, b) a more complicated idea that involves sourcing bits and re-playing various parts, and c) someone offers me money to do something

Timing wise anything from under an hour to a period of about a month for something of the category b’s.

What advice would you give someone wanting to learn more about and/or get into producing mash-ups?

Get a copy of acid from wherever and just get on with it. The software companies spend millions making the stuff easy to use and your own ideas and efforts will be as vaild as anyone elses.

Are there any fellow bootleggers whose work you admire? Who? Why?

One of the beauties of this being the first internet-based musical “movement” or scene or whatever is that it’s easy to make contact with other people interested in the same stuff and it’s pleasantly surprising to find it’s a real, genuine sharing thing going on. As such it’s hard to name names because you always end up leaving someone out that you don’t mean to, but Go Home Productions output always has a mark of quality, Soundhog’s stuff is ploughing a distinct and remarkable furrow and Loo & Placido produce some of the most professional work out there. But you have to mention Poj Masta as a huge tip for the future, Grant McSleazy for consistently surprising work (as well as being responsible for the hub of internet forum bootlegery), I could go on and on…

What’s your take on re-appropriating the works of others into a bootleg, presumably without the artists’ permission? Do you feel you face a moral and/or ethical dilemma as a mash-up producer?

Not at all. I see it as fitting into the history of rock’n'roll in several simple ways – most bands started by playing covers of songs, until they end up forging their own sound out of their influences. Look at The Beatles and Beach Boys with Chuck Berry right up to the Sex Pistols with the Stooges and The Who etc. This is like a 21st Century version of that. Then there’s the wholesale lifting of the blues that went on in the Sixties by the Stones, Clapton, Beck and Page ending up with the blatant plagarism of Led Zep et al. I think many “bootlegs” are far more creative than that sorry period. I guess the only problem would be if you were making a fortune out of selling the stuff, but at that point you’re basically doing the record companies job for them and they’re more than happy to step in and take their huge cut of the pie. Finally of course at its very heart the whole bootleging/mash-up thing is a post post-modern aural equivalent of the whole Warhol/Lichtenstein Pop Art movement, appropriating “found” materials by way of cutting edge technology and forging them together to quite literally create something new and separate.

All that from slapping a dodgy acapella over an illegally downloaded instrumetal mp3 eh?