It's Mad Decent! La Roux, the British synth-pop duo, and Major Lazer, a hipster dancehall vanity project helmed by producer-DJs Diplo and Switch, don't share any obvious aesthetics. But their respective bodies of work -- just one 2009 LP, each -- are a jumping-off point for "Lazerproof," a mix tape as chaotic as it is cohesive. Like M.I.A.'s Diplo-helmed "Piracy Funds Terrorism, Volume 1" mix tape, it succeeds by acting more like a broad survey of emerging music trends than a compilation of remixes and mash-ups.
Download the new release for free. Bill Gurley: Customers seem to really like free as a price point.
Have you heard The Swinger? The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this by taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. It has quite a magical effect.
From last year, Sasha Frere-Jones: According to Mad Decent, the record label, Major Lazer is a Jamaican commando who fought in the "secret Zombie War of 1984" and lost both arms in combat. Then the US military equipped him with experimental lasers that double as prosthetic limbs.
George Romero: How many zombies do you know?
Stuart Heritage: We should probably tell you that the full title of this game is Zombies! Apocalypse - Massive Multiplayer Online Zombies Massacre, even though that's basically given away the point of it all.
Lily Allen: Hi. Um, I'm just wondering, have you got any kind of like, sort of punky, electronica, kind of grime, kind of like, new wave grime, kind of maybe like more broken beats, like kinda dubby broken beats, but a little bit kind of soulful ...? but kinda drum and bassy, but kinda more broken drum and bass, like sort of broken beats, like break-beat broken kind of drum and bass ... do you know what I mean? No?
Lazerproof, by Major Lazer and La Roux |