Mashups are an intrinsic segment of electronic music. Starting simply as laying the vocals of one track over the instrumental of another, mashups have evolved into a number of different subgenres including cut-ups, A vs B, Version vs. Version, Remixes, Glitch Pop, and Bootlegs. Some incredible pieces have come out of mashing, such as ‘The Grey Album’ by Danger Mouse and Numb/Encore by Jay-Z and Linkin Park. Although many mashups wouldn’t necessarily qualify as “electronic music”, they are readily accepted into the EDM scene due to fast tempos, creativity, and “moments”. 

Girl Talk is by far the most well know mashup artist of today. The former biomedical engineer turned DJ has made it big by ripping apart the billboard charts, smashing them together in a deluxe pan-genre music sandwich, and then pumping them out to packed crowds of hungry college kids. His shows are a blast and typically digress into a luxury frat-party once throngs of punch-drunk students storm the stage in order to dance beside the sweaty and shirtless Girl Talk.

Generally, I feel that the mashup variety crafted by Girl Talk is slightly too schizophrenic for it to be much more than danceable chaos. But there is certainly a time and place for that madness and it is always well received in such a forum. One reason I admire Girl Talk is how he manages his album sales. After the success of his Album Feed The Animals, for which listeners were asked to pay a price of their choosing, Girl Talk’s other albums have been offered under the same terms. So head over to http://illegal-art.net/allday/ and grab his newest dance-pop-electronic-rock-oldies-metal-hiphop-RnB-techno runaway train of sound, All Day.