The SF Weekly is running a feature on Z-Trip which says some less than favorable things about mash-up artists:
As he vehemently points out, Z-Trip is not a mash-up DJ. He’s a turntablist, first and foremost, and there’s a big difference. Mash-up DJs are known for working primarily on the computer, uploading tracks into ready-made programs that conveniently do the work of syncing up the two songs for you; the mashers then burn the resulting pieces onto CDs, which they spin at clubs. It takes little or no musical talent to make mash-ups this way, which explains why the trend is so popular — and why it has become so saturated with crap. This, to Z-Trip, is a problem.
As expected, the backlash is fierce over at GYBO. As one poster puts it:
I quite like Z-Trip’s stuff… I hate finding out that artists I like are c*nts.
It’s unfortunate Z-Trip and this journalist are so eager to alienate fans. Maybe the fame has gone to his head.
(Thanks to Mysterious D for this submission.)
3 Comments
check out Z’s more complete comments on his website’s message board http://www.djztrip.com.
Z is absolutely in the top-tier of djs: Shadow, Steinski, Coldcut, Nu-Mark, P & Radar… You can’t fault a guy for being serious about his craft.
Of course, any slappy like myself can program a mashup, but what Z does is art, a thing of beauty. There is no mashup in the world that can beat a single 3-minute chunk of any Z-Trip mix, but mixing vinyl live is the top of the form, so you accept that as a music-lover and then move on…
I’m a huge fan of boomselection and culturedeluxe and GYBO, but if I had a choice, I’d take a live dj any day…
cheers-
brew
As ever there are arguments on both sides. I have to admit, there is something thrilling about seeing and listening to a DJ mixing live – sonic invention on the fly can be exhilarating. And I have to say there is also something exhilarating about listening to a new mash-up that combines a few tracks you would never have dreamt of putting together, and is done so seamlessly.
Z-Trip has a point – there are many people sitting in front of their computer, quickly mixing new tracks. And of course the quality is going to be variable – but that’s no different to thousands of kids in the bedrooms strumming thousands of guitars. Some of them will be good. Some of them will be terrible.
The thing about appreciating music is, don’t set arbitrary boundaries about what you will and will not listen to. Good music happens everywhere – in front of a computer, behind some decks, in a Balinese village, in an orchestral concert hall, wherever. Z-Trip might be frustrated about the ease with which some mash-ups are put together, but he shouldn’t be. There’ll be some great ones, there’ll be some bad ones. It’s not about how you do it, it’s about what you get done.
I am not mad at the guy, he has a point, my friend Gerry (who by the way, has an excellent mix on the new KILL BILL mash-up EP ‘HANZO STEEL’) pointed out that all of this stuff just used to be called ‘a mix,’ and Z Trip is from that generation, where it was pretty special to wow people with a weird combination of songs that you beatmixed live at a club or on a tape – now that is all lumped into the ‘mash-up’ moniker, and you need to admit that people are tossing out some crap as of late – at least match song structure and measures, for god’s sake!
And don’t front, you and I know that the software is making this stuff a lot easier!
My problem as of late is, I can’t listen to more than a minute or two of a mash-up… I’m bored and ready for the next one – so where is this headed?
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