so i played some shows in june... (or: two new tracks)

i played a couple shows in nashville and louisville a few weeks back. i sold a little merch, went to cool places like the patterson house and eiderdown, bought a bunch of records at great escape, and of course got to hang out with old friends like pimpdaddysupreme, EBNC, dj empirical, trademark G of the evolution control committee, and more. good times.

in addition to premiering two new tracks, i also busted my ass preparing glitch video for the nashville show (which nobody really watched). here's some video filmed by EBNC:


my two new tracks feature a new twist on my post-mashup style: they have more overlapping and layering. i deliberately avoided using much layering on a huge smash, as i was trying to explore other compositional techniques—and in particular, i wanted to demonstrate that you can do a lot more in the "mashup" realm than just laying two tracks on top of another and calling it a day. of course, the problem isn't that layering is bad, but that too many use it lazily. so, after introducing some different musical ideas in the mash smarter EP and exploring them in increasingly complex ways over the course of a huge smash, the time felt right to start playing around with layering again.

first up, i decided to revisit the title track from mash smarter not harder—the original track is strong, but the edits unfold pretty slowly compared to the stuff i'm doing now, and i wanted to play with some of those samples again in a more sophisticated way. the result was the drastically reworked "smartass mix", which is up on soundcloud:

stAllio! - mash smarter not harder (smartass mix) by stallio

the other track is the all-new "bust a groove", which can be heard in the video above, and is also on soundcloud:

stAllio! - bust a groove by stallio

i'm extremely pleased with both of these tracks. i think they're more accessible than some of my other post-mashup work but still live up to the principle of "mashing smarter", and i think you'll agree. ¶