Posted by Budgie at April 1, 2004 06:02 PM

It's been around for a number of years now, it's getting more and more popular by the day and it shows no sign of dying. No, I'm not talking about June Sarpong, I'm talking about the rise of Bootlegs.

The Pipe aims to bring you, yes YOU, some of the best, worst, funniest or just down right odd free, yes FREE, MP3s that you can find on this little old thing called the Internet. My findings will be posted up here on a regular basis for your listening pleasure or to just complain about in the forum.

This week, as you've guessed, I'm listing a few Bootlegs.

Bootlegs, Mash Ups, Bastard Pop call it what you want, the art of putting one track over the other is becoming more and more popular. PCs and audio software are getting cheaper by the day and anyone with a bit of imagination, and who doesn't posess Van Gogh's ear for music, can easily cobble together a bootleg track. Except, of course, for me, as I downloaded a dodgy copy of ACID and it stopped working after a week. Pfft. Serves me right.

This breed of Bootlegging is just another chapter in the ever growing history of the sampling / cut up scene. I'm not going to bore you with the history of this, so I'm bypassing the history of the tape loop / edit, turntablism, samplers etc, and I'm just going to put you in the right direction of some of the peope around the world who are making these tracks on PCs using tools such as Acid and Soundforge.

With current bootlegging artists like Freelance Hellraiser remixing people like Christina Aguilera, Richard X working with people like Liberty X, Sugababes and Kelis, Go Home Productions working with David Bowie and Soundhog finally getting signed to a label, it seems that the record industry is looking more at this underground scene to discover the future talent that is hiding there. Quite right too. And the quicker people like Lionel Vinyl and McSleazy get signed up the better.

With the current Dance scene in the UK going through a rough patch just now, is the future in these guys / producers hands?

Be sure to check out the above links to find out some more about them and to check out some of their mixes.

Anyway, down to business, here are some of my favourite boots from the past few weeks or so...

Outkast Vs The Streets - "Hey, Ya Mug"

God, the stick I got over on Chutney for mentioning The Streets... Anyway, this track by London's IDC takes Outkast's "Hey Ya!" and drops Mike Skinner's vocals from "Don't Mug Yourself" over the top. It's a sound system banger, as the cheeky Brummie would say.

Check out the Mashmix site that this is hosted on. It's not long launched and is a great resource of boots. Including some of the MTV Mash ones that air on that channel and it has a nice selection of classics on there too. I heartily recommend you get the Kings Of Leon Vs Girls Aloud and the KRS One Vs S Club 7 tracks...

MP3
IDC's Site
Mashmix Site

Dsico - "100% Electro"

Dsico That No Talent Hack, to give him his full name, is from Australia and he's been churning out bootlegs for a while now and while the majority of them are great, I have to say I prefer his other direction as featured in this MP3. He has over the past year been putting out electro cover versions of tracks by people like Nirvana, The Strokes, The Ramones, Avril Lavigne and *cough* Good Charlotte. This track is an electro / vocoder take on the classic Sonic Youth song "100%". Its taken from his "Punk As Pussy" 12" EP, which also features a new version of his Nirvana cover.

MP3
Punk As Pussy Site
Dsico's Site

DJ Dubz - Toxic Shack
John Marr - Toxic Rhythm
E-Jitz - Toxic Narcotic (No Good For Me)

As you can probably tell from the titles, yup, 3 Britney Spears "Toxic" boots. Saying that, only one carries her vocal. The first two of these tracks use the backing track and that string sound to good effect. The DJ Dubz one puts The B52's classic "Love Shack" over the top and is a fine pop boot. John Marr, formerly known as SCO Network, has been around on the scene for quite some time and for his latest outing he takes the acapella from Cutback's "Rock To The Rhythm", adds some extra drums and then unleashes a dancefloor friendly track. Just download, play loud and wait for the vocal to kick in... Finally, and added at the last minute, is Scotland's (I think they are from Aberdeen) E-Jitz. They have had a few boots out recently, about 3 or 4, and this is their latest. If the John Marr one isn't hard enough, then surely this one will hit the spot. It takes Britney's vocal and has it hammered by the old rave anthem "Narcotic Influence" by Empirion and adds a dash of The Prodigy's "No Good (Start The Dance)" for good measure. I am absolutely loving this one, but that's the old rave fanboy in me speaking.

MP3
MP3
MP3
John Marr's Site

Kasabian - "Reason Is Treason (Fake ID Remix)"

I'll put my hands up now. I'm a Lionel Vinyl fan boy. This guy is unbelievably prolific and talented and has been known in the past to knock out bootlegs in less than 15 minutes. He has an alter ego, a more electro tinged persona called Fake ID. His remixes under this guise are well worth a listen. There are far too many to mention but highlights for me are his reworks of Travis' "Re-Offender", Kelis' "Get Along With You" and Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" (which was moon miles better than Morgan Geist's remix...). Here I have plumped for his take on new band Kasabian's "Reason Is Treason" track, purely because it has an evil bassline and sounds just like what I had imagined The Cooper Temple Clause to sound like when they promised a more "electronic" sound on their, a bit of a let down, second album.

MP3
Fake ID Site

Jamspota - "Hard To Forget"

Finally a nice mellow one for you, and for Pojmasta this is a mellow one. Pojmasta is an incredible talent, another future prospect for some record company man out there. He is one of the youngest bootleggers out there and is notorious for his headfucking glitch mixes. I'm not the biggest glitch fan, but I do admire the boys talent in cutting up those tunes like that. My favourite of his glitch tracks is of Massive Attack's "Teardrop". Here, though, is a track under his alter ego Jamspota. A three way mash up between the strings from William Bell's "I Forgot To Be Your Lover" (last used to great effect on the Dilated Peoples hip hop track "Worst Comes To Worst"), the beats from NWA's "Express Yourself" and the vocals from Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"

MP3
Pojmasta's Site

Well, thats the first of hopefully many posts finished. Feel free to discuss and recommend any MP3s to me via the forum. Hope you enjoyed the selection.

Cheers,
Budgie.

[if anyone is not happy about their files being linked to, then get intouch via the forum and I shall remove the link]