2 for the price of one!

[both free]

I’ve had an idea for a while of putting out an album of mashups where one “side” has the singing of “song a” over the tune of “song b”, and vice-versa on the other “side” of the album.

The name of this project is “a//b” , and my first experiment with this are these two new mashups, combing Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks” with Nine Inch Nails’ “The Good Soldier”.

I’ve been asked how do I come up with these mashup combinations. Each mashup is different, e.g. for my last one "“Broken Shallow” , I knew I wanted to use the Broken Arrow theme with something, so I cast around for a song that rhymed with “arrow” - "“Shallow” was close enough!

For this one the answer is simply: Spotify’s randomisation algorithm. I have a large playlist which is full of all the music I like, which I just put on shuffle when I can’t be bothered to choose specific music. Last week on my commute, the algorithm played these two tracks one after the other and I realised their harmonic, rhythmic and thematic similarities (dealing as they do with war, race and religion). Perfect for an experiment with my “a//b” project.

Feel free to comment below to let me know which one you prefer:

• “The Good Jesus” (Kanye rapping over NIN) or;

• “The Soldier Walks” (Reznor singing over Kanye).

Songs sampled:

Kanye West “Jesus Walks” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYF7H_fpc-g

Nine Inch Nails “The Good Soldier” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQcMQ4LYiNQ

The Arc Choir “Walk With Me” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ib36OXrEL8