25 March 2011

MiX&DORP ~ BLUES + BEAT: The Blues Deconstructed & Reimagined

Mix&Dorp online // Facebook // iTunes // Soundcloud

I'm no purist & I just love folks who love to fck sht up challenge me musically. 
As I've said before,
music that is not evolving and changing is busy dying.  Which is why i've  always appreciated the art of the remix.  Yes, Virginia it is an art.  It used to be said, eons ago when the 12" remix was first coming to market that a remix is something that wasn't done right in the first place. How boring is that?
    
If anybody should know the score on whether or not it's being done right it'd be Netherlander
Jan Mittendorp, boss of Black and Tan Records.  Mittendorp has released a slew of terrific modern blues recordings by the likes of Boo Boo Davis, Billy Jones, Big George Jackson, Roscoe Chenier, Harrison Kennedy, as well as a beautiful (and essential) recording by the late Ernie Payne.  Each of these artists, save Payne, Mittendorp lovingly mines for deep dirty roots, gold, and blue diamonds.  Smelting the raw vibe in the crucible of his Macbook he grinds, twists, and remixes the beats & boom into funkyass grooves that would make most DJs  weep white hot tears of jealousy.
  
 
    Moby's brilliant 1999 album Play, and the remixes Fat Possum Records did of tracks by T-Model Ford, Asie Payton, and Paul "Wine" Jones, along with their brave yet spotty 2000 release New Beats From The Delta which pitted dirty south hip hop producers against tracks by Fat Possum artists, and perhaps more importantly R.L. Burnside's 1998 album Come On In, drove blues purists out of their ever-lovin' gourds. Those recordings set the stage and pryed open our ears for what MiX&DORP is doing today.

     Mittendorp tells me that his ultimate goal with this music is to form a band to play his mixes (I really should stick to the term reimaginings here as what he does is more than a mix) live, much like the work France's Eric Bling, or Skip "Little Axe" MacDonald (guitarist for Sugarhill Records artists like Grandmaster Flash, Fat Possum alumnusreal worl & now with Peter Gabriel's challenging Real World Records) is doing using samplings of Howlin' Wolf and others.

   Be sure and check MiX&DORP's Soundcloud page for more reimaginings of the likes of John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, and an axe work gang field holler sampled from Lomax's prison recordings.  MiX&DORP - Blues + Beat takes the blues remix to wicked fresh & durrty heights. It's a thrilling & joyous ride forward through the past & future of music.
   


  

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