Maybe you can resist remix talents, like AXWELL, which flocked to her music and turned it all house techno, but I really doubt it.

AZEALIA BANKS sings, raps and makes suggestively offensive noises on her track 212 featuring LAZY JAY. It’s all flirting and fighting, sex and threats, but that works for me. Notice the heavy drum-n-bass techniques applied to hip-hop production. What a fantastic mix mash of styles, which somewhat remind me of THE CLIPSE’s agressive synth beats.

No, it’s not duck season or rabbit season. Rather, it’s time to sample Tex Avery cartoons and apply some super massive dubstep drops to the Elmer Fudd and his trigger-happy self. MISSHIN rocks the remix with style and grace. Z-Props to whoever re-edited the animation. This track bangs like a 30 foot gong.

Glitch-Hop is a funny little label for such a diverse genre of music. TORO Y MOI do a fantastic job applying a’80s R&B persona to the new glitchy category based on heavy crossfade action with manically altering beats and truncated samples. Very danceable stuff.

Sounds like Phil Collins on mescaline, no?

TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB, like a lot of pop rock, sound great when remixed as dnb or dubstep. Again, already great tracks live an extended life when the YouTube musical democracy gets at it. Rude internet trolls don’t always have the best taste in music, still the voting remix/mashup community can really critique and even encourage new beats. Listen to FEED ME’s remix of “What you Know.”

First of all, I love KID CUDI’s production, which is not all hiphop nor all R&B. mixed in are vocals from Canadian rapper DRAKE, who sings over hooks like a character from Peter Pan. I’m more than a fan of this remix, therefore I had to make an alternative music video using the timeless animation of UB IWERKS, whose proto-Disney character FLIP THE FROG inspired the design of MICKEY MOUSE, long before Disney was a known brand. The eye design and walk cyclce came directly through the character FLIP, making UB IWERKS the originator of the Disney style, meanwhile his name gets scrubbed from the title cards of early Disney cartoon shorts. Know your animation roots.

Band PHOENIX gets a remix treatment worth a few listens. The original is a quality track, but don’t forget to check out what clever folks have done with the  source material. DEF STARR’s version of “Fences” has to be my favorite of what remixes I’ve discovered.  Zombies like this sort of meta-music.

Z-Props to any hiphop producer sampling the squeezebox (re: Madvillian’s Accordian) which got a live cover from Weird Al and the Roots.

ROTLD takes viciously wild punches at most all of the standard clichéd tools used in horrific monster movies, especially those featuring flimsy teen characters prone to vice. Those wacky teenagers, an endlessly excitable bunch prone to poor decisions and quick retribution. Meanwhile every character in Return of the Living Dead lacks all motivation outside the single goal of self satisfaction — sex, drugs, violence — shortly followed by self preservation. One exception: a particularly strange punk rocker played by Thom Mathews (Freddy). Pretty much the youthful protagonist of Dan O’Bannon‘s undead melodrama — the suddenly sympathetic Fred has to deal with a world of occult flesh eaters, government cover-ups and the desires of his recent girlfriend…all this on his first day at work.

Freddy still reveals himself as slightly dumber than a box of hammers, or maybe a bowl of screwdrivers. Whatever simple machine in a container, our friend Freddy ain’t smart and neither is his friendly superior (Frank) played by Clu Gulager. Their combined stupidity is exponential and ever-expanding, especially with the introduction of Frank’s boss (Burt) a selfish dick played by the always intimidating James Karen.

Half of the movie  involves these stooges try their best to maintain composure while every piece of death flesh around them comes back to life, a distracting challenge when you work in a medical supply warehouse, next to a morgue…outside a cemetery.

Our friend Freddy is persecuted, not only by his punk pals, each of them pained by reality’s lack of chaos and sententious pleasures. Even though they’re technically protagonists, you pretty much delight when the punks get attacked by the viral zombie contagion, brewed by our rather incompetent military.

Consider this — our primary fear in the 20th century…you know it. Total nuclear oblivion. The final end of human life, the trigger pulled by a willing human hand. Grab your book, El, because the zombie weapon of self destruct was inspired by plagues…AIDS, small pox, Ebola virus, etc. Something about rapid decay. Our nightmare monster shrunk from the size of King Kong to the nanometer scale. In ROTLD our antagonist originates in a spray of weaponized gas created by the corrupt military industrial complex for which we, the uneducated voting public, are responsible. The best part of all this biting commentary is that the audience sees no heavy hand, just solid comedy and gore.

Deadmau5 is best known for his progress deep house mixes, nevertheless Joel Zimmerman seems totally comfortable changing styles midtrack. In fact, at the five minute mark, this trance track centered around haunting female vocals from Greta Svabo Bech turns into dark dubstep. I love the Franz Ferdinand method of cramming two or more musical patterns in a single song.

If you’re like me, you adore songs that sample horror and sci-fi movies. Check out Moar Ghosts n Stuff by Deadmau5, which samples dialogue from the film The Brain from Planet Arous; “After I’m gone, your Earth will be free to live out its miserable span of existence, as one of my satellites, and that’s how it’s going to be…”

YouTube is rampant with these. Be careful, you could spend a whole Sunday exploring what folks have done sourcing audio and video from the survival horror game Silent Hill.

Hold up, y’all! I must report on the export of American rap into British dubstep DJs’ sample repertoire.  Kid Sister, a young rapper from Markham, Illinois presents her skills with Chicago heavy hitter Kanye West. What started as a pop-rap song about getting your nails did gets a music video remix involving stop motion shorts and military archival footage…plus break dancing finger puppets!

Just like how hip-hop evolves by the biting of styles, stealing samples and coping turn of phrases, dubstep music eats from multiple genre plate and seems to grows in varying directions. ”Pro Nails” is just decent as a radio-ready rap song, audio property which benefits from a hot injection of beep-boop bass bolstering thanks to the redheaded Rusko out of Leeds, England. The influence of Jamaican sound and strip club trance will no doubt leave the lingering taste of tong in your mouth. Grab a mint and turn it up, yo!

Dubstep is the champion sound, whether you pay attention to modern UK electronica or not. What started with dance hall rock steady, broke off into ska, dub, and reggae. Jungle more or less came and went in the 90′s, meanwhile house and trance converged with rap lyrics and hip-hop sampling style in the form of glitch-hop as well as grime. Once born in Jamaica, crossing Queensbridge and swimming back to the Britain, dubstep exists now as the product of an evolving family of music, one which pulls from nearly every genre. This video is called “Zombie Jig” by Benga.

Dubstep producers to follow: Skream, Hatcha, Rusko, Caspa, Datsik, Diplo, Coki, Nero, Bassnectar

“Digitalis” is the song by the awesome retro-electro rockers of ZOMBI. How cool is it to make new music that sounds like classic euro-horror?

Really not sure why the music video contains so much nature footage of fish, sea mammals, the ocean, etc. Somehow it works for me.

re: “The Cool” — Chiago rapper Lupe Fiasco lays down  a descriptive third-person narrative about climbing out of the grave in search of human brains. Bravo. Now I demand more zombie hip-hop. Get to it, Music Industry.

Exhibit ZED (Lyrics of “A Time to be Small” from the Antics album)

A time to ease your solace, a time to be so small

We saw you from the urchin’s side, from under the boat
We saw you making knots, we saw you get the rope
The boy appearing on the deck and making it lurch
The bubble of your interests ready to burst

He whistles and he runs

We saw you in distraction: a sleeping, slow despair
Rehearsing interaction, he wasn’t even there
A creature is a creature though you wish you were the wind
But the boat will not stop moving if you tie him up until the end

He whistles and he runs so hold him fast
Breathe the burn, you want to let it last
He might succumb to what you haven’t been
He has a keen eye for what you didn’t see

When the cadaverous mob save their doors for the dead men, you cannot leave
When the cadaverous mob save its doors for the dead men, you cannot leave

Fancy summer’s stall, a time to be so small
To the urchin, see a mirrored time for all
A summerside way of life, a time to be so small
Stronger from the urchin’s side, a time to be so small

Urchin will lurch into there, for the facts
Urchin will lurch into there, for the facts
Urchin will lurch into there, for the facts
Urchin will lurch into there, for the facts

When the cadaverous mob save their doors for the dead men, you cannot leave
When the cadaverous mob save their doors for the dead men, you cannot leave

Searching, still searching
Urchin will lurch in there, for the facts
Urchin will lurch in

It’s all in the faded past
The bottom of the unwind
It’s the end of the world, the past
The bottom of the unwind

Land of the Dead poster

George primarily sticks with what he knows. Commentaries on social & economic class warfare get delivered in dump truck-sized doses. The wealthy few have managed to hole themselves up in a mall/condo/high rise called Fidler’s Green, an island protected by water on all sides, all made possible by Kaufman (the enterprising capitalist played by the impossibly difficult Dennis Hopper). Everyone else who managed to survive this long is relegated to the drug and disease-ridden slums surrounding Fidler’s Green.

John Lequizombie

As an aside, exactly one month before the June 2005 release of LAND OF THE DEAD, the ensemble genre blending hip-hop troupe THE GORILLAZ released DEMON DAYS which rocks. And how could the album suck with guest spots from some of the industry’s greatest: MF DOOM, Dangermouse, Roots Manuva and Del tha Funky Homosapien to name a few? With heavy sampling of tracks from GOBLIN and Dario Argento’s music

composition from the original DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), DEMON DAYS remains an impressive tribute to zombie myth and culture. In addition to overt z-tracks like LAST LIVING SOULS, the album contained a strange song called FIRE COMING OUT OF THE MONKEY’S HEAD, which is basically a dark fairy tale narrated by weirdo alien-sent-to-earth Dennis Hopper.

As Romero expands on his own zombie mythos, braking previously established rules, as the undead learn to communicate with gestures and problem solve while mastering tools and weapons. Romero implies that zombies feel empathy towards each other and simply desire to survive. Damn those zombie peaceniks!

While he occasionally employs gorgeous gore via timeless practical effects, Romero opts for CGI more than ever before, with questionable results which already show their age. George returns to the basics in DAIRY OF THE DEAD but will no doubt be forever haunted by the melodramatic z-parody that is John Leguizombie’s performance.

Whether a result of radiation, rage virus or Haitian voodoo, one aspect I adore about the impending zombie invasion is the situational madlib of humor & horror that occurs when soulless monsters take the place of “normal” humans doing “normal” human activities.

For example, a clown at an outdoor birthday party seem like a childhood cliché. Cake & balloon animals. Presents with bows and colorful streamers. But when Z-Day hits, this typical suburban scene turns into an absurd and terrifying display. Cannibal children pass over chocolate ice cream for the neighbor’s Scottish terrier. A decaying grease-painted clown greedily chews at spleen of the a parent slumped over the charcoal grill. No one’s even touching the cake!

Post-invasion, traditional culture and practice are immediately subverted, while our bodies continue wearing a costume of “normal” humanity.

Smaller confines result in an even faster spreading of zombism. As a survivor, there are few places to hide and remain protected. Rural areas work until the zombie hordes see your fire, hear your generator running or simply catch a whiff of your delicious brain. Eventually they will get though the fence, window, basement, back door or just pile on top of each other like a cannibal cheerleader pyramid until they reach you in the attic. Your house is not made of reinforced concrete, so the big bad zombie wolves will find a weak point and break through.

Your best bet remains in big box stores like Target or Walmart, since they can be locked securely and tend to have a sizable stock of preservative-heavy snack foods that won’t spoil for a couple of decades. After all of the sodas, twinkles and candy bars, you may develop diabetes but you yourself will not yet be zombie food.

Ideally, you want to find a prison for it’s maximum security locks, bulk food storage and acceptable cooking/living quarters, which leads me to the irony of the prison yard. Because of the close confines, prisons are highly susceptible to mass zombie infestation. One sickly guard is all it takes. So how do you clean out thousands of shoulder-to-shoulder zombie inmates? Who knows. What if the jail is free of the undead? Now, in order to get to the most secure safe house, you have to break in and coexist with the prisoners still locked inside.

Remember, there is no safe place after the zombie apocalypse. There will never again be a safe place.

“They’re coming for you, Barbara!” – NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Nice music video recut of Romero’s 1968 classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD from high-pitched nerd/cartoon rapper MC CHRIS.