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"How To Kill The DJ Part Two"
Tigersushi is obviously trying to exceed the benchmark they set for
themselves with last year's Miyage mix orchestrated by vegan DJ collective K.I.M. This double-disc mix is billed as the second volume in the How To Kill The DJ series, and is by far the most schizophrenic, eclectic and downright random collection of tunes ever presented under the pretext of a continuous DJ mix. The first volume was a relatively tame affair mixed by Ivan Smagghe, containing a standard cross-section of danceable material drawn from vintage 80s sides, with a full complement of newer electroclash and dancepunk material.
Part Two, as conceived by DJ Optimo, takes a completely different tactic, preferring sheer volume and eclecticism to any notion of consistency. His bizarre behemoth of a DJ mix fuses together close to 70 tracks from a myriad different styles all over the musical map—from 70s psychedelic funk and rock to 80s Detroit techno, from leftfield disco to completely tangential trips into outsider, avant-garde and industrial noise music. On this particular voyage, it's not at all surprising to hear Soft Cell's "Sex Dwarf" rubbing shoulders with Carl Craig's "Demented Drums," or later to hear Gang of Four's "Damaged Goods" fade out into The Langley Schools Music Project's version of "Good Vibrations" (for the uninitiated, the LSMP is a gymnasium full of Canadian grade school kids playing gamelan percussion and singing guileless versions of famous pop songs).
Because of the sheer number and variety of songs selected for the mix, Optimo does not let any track play for very long, editing most down to one or two minutes, and endeavors seamless transitions between each, even when attempting something insane like fusing a mashup of Akufen and Monte Cazazza to a mashup of Nurse With Wound's "Two Shaves and Shine" with Blondie's "Atomic." I'm aware that this sounds completely fucking insane on paper, but it somehow succeeds. If it's not very satisfying in the sense of a dance-friendly party mix, it does appeal on a purely intellectual level, as hidden connections are revealed between disparate strands of music that might have been thought nonexistent. For all of my DJ ambitions, for instance, I never would have thought of gluing the bubbly tropicalia of Os Mutantes' "A Minha Menina" to Pablo's classic "Cissy Strut," but it sounds amazing.
The second disc, entitled Espacio for no apparent reason, forgoes the short-attention-span mixdown of the first disc in favor of letting each song play out in its entirety. As such, it's more of a "chillout" disc than the first, as thee infinite beat is not kept in perpetual motion, and tracks such as the Angelo Badalamenti theme to David Lynch's "Mullholland Drive" or Arthur Russell's beatless voice-and-cello "Another Thought" could by no stretch of the imagination considered dance songs. Kudos to Optimo for including such excellent, if completely random selections as Sun City Girl's "Opium Den" and The Only Ones "Another Girl, Another Planet" on the same disc. For sheer eclecticism and varied musical taste, Optimo's How To Kill The DJ Part Two is the one to beat, although beyond the initial novelty, I'm not sure what particular use it has for the average listener.
