a mash dat

congratulations to boston's own mashit records on being named to john peel's label of the month club. mashit has been serving up hot ragga since june of 2003 witnessed the crushing breaks of conscience a hang dem. (which, when i played it for some bredren in kingston, got more pull-ups than i can recount. we drove all the way from stony hill to port royal without getting to the end of the track!)

mashit's critical success is especially exciting for me right now as their next release is a 12" pressing of boston jerk's a it dat (complete with instrumental and acapella versions) with two junglistic remixes courtesy of mashit's dj c. the first remix takes the vocals of the original, chops and plays with them a bit, and employs a vocal-line by dami d (which i didn't actually include in my own mix) to great effect.

of course, it also brings in some intense double-time breaks in fine ragga fashion. we might even call the breaks more-than-double-time, since the song's original tempo, which dj c preserves, is 102 bpm--making the breaks gallop at what feels like 204! taking this extreme tempo into account, dj c produced a second remix that slows the track down to around 90bpm, making it easier to work into the average jungle set. although trad jungle tends to hover around 80/160, in faster moments (and, i'm told, increasingly these days), sets can hover around 90/180, or faster.

when i played dj c's remix for dami and wasp--the two vocalist that appear, alongside me, on the track--a few months ago in kingston, they were floored. oddly enough, jungle doesn't very often travel back to yard. a couple of times i heard some drum'n'bass played on "alternative" radio stations in kingston (which are as likely to play contemp alt rock), but i've never heard those distinctive double-time breaks inna di dance. go figure.

at any rate, i plan to hit them off with some copies, so keep your ears peeled back a yard. the mix of reggae, hip-hop, and jungle in this tune seems likely to grab the attention of some listeners. it has already received some advance praise in distant corners as a result of a promotional mp3 version. an mp3blog/radio-show out of australia put the track on a compilation of favorite mp3s from the past year. in another cool development, a hip-hop producer out of portland, oregon emailed me a remix he had produced by downloading the acapella from the mashit site. i enjoyed hearing the track over a dre-ish hip-hop beat, which made for quite a contrast from the dancehall and jungle versions. here's hoping the record leads to more collabos, direct and indirect.

look for mashit005 - wayne&wax "a it dat" - soon, in record bins 'round the world.

and catch dj c conducting weekly beat research at the enormous room.