Something I have realized of myself is that I love a good remix. I am willing to accept a mediocre remix but I really enjoy a solidly done reimagining of an original work. There are a lot of songs where I am significantly more familiar with a remix than with the original and generally prefer the remix. Taking that to an extreme is a ‘band’ like The Kleptones.
The Kleptones are actually one guy (Eric) who takes a whole lot of different music and creates new work out of them. These are called mash-ups or bastard pop. He has released several different albums. One of the big ones is A Night at the Hip-Hopera which, as the title implies, is a reimaging of Queen’s classic Night at the Opera with a lot of rap songs. All of their stuff is available for download at their site as linked above. Note: some of the language in the source songs is, shall we say, questionable, so please be fore-warned.
Here are a couple of cuts from various albums:
This video is also a mash up of a whole lot of different dances from movies/tv shows. Some of the more noticeable songs that you’ll hear in this are
- Aerosmith – Dude Looks Like a Lady
- White Stripes – Hardest Button To Button
- NIN – Hand That Feeds
This video has a song from the album 24 Hours which is a brilliant concept album outlining a full day in someone’s life. It has quite a bit of Daft Punk in it.
