Talkin' To Dudes

For “Phase II” of your party playlist.

sashafrerejones:

Wayne Marshall, Vijay Iyer and M.I.A., “Galangs,” 2010.

I get crabby about mashups. You laid a rap vocal over Beach House? OK. That’s what djs do. Maybe it’s good. Maybe it’s great. But if there’s something different about this whole combining deal that someone called “the mashup,” it’s the reckoning with the song itself and all the very tricky bits that have to interlock. “Stroke of Genius” is two songs making one, keys and changes and words and moods all lining up. It’s musical and it’s hard and people don’t do it right much. The blends thing is a billion years old and fun but tends to spit out the same kind of material because it’s so easy now with the computerz. Straining and struggling tends to make you work it out and think it out.

Wayne killed it with this one. I am happy to say the word “musical.” I also love “no musics.” But this is the musics.