In 2004, Danger Mouse (real name: Brian Burton) released The Grey Album, which took the burgeoning mashup culture to a logical extreme. A mashup is a track comprised of two or more songs, which are seamlessly blended together. The most common trick is to take a vocal from one song and lay it over the instrumental backing of another. Mashups reached considerable popularity in the early 2000s, with artists such as 2 Many DJs seizing on easy-to-use audio editing tools (Wavelab, Soundforge) to bring their bastardized creations to life. The proliferation of free MP3 files available through Napster and elsewhere, coupled with the rise of broadband Internet speeds, suddenly led to a glut of amateur mashups all over the web.Read full article here.
