Mutamassik Productions from 1996-2003
Produced, mixed, written, scratched & engineered by Mutamassik for Sa'aidi Hardcore Productions//KMT BBB USA, unless otherwise noted.

SKIM SKAM - an essay/manifesto by Giulia Loli, May 15, 2010, Italy

The term 'Mash-up' (said to be coined in 2001 by dj Freelance Hellraiser?) really embodies the Zeitgeist. But before I blow the term to bits, let me take a moment to appreciate it's use as contaminant and destroyer of corporate systems, in line with hackers, adbusters, pirate radio broadcasters, etc . Also, to be clear: this is not a semantics debate. I had fair warning from my dad when I was little with our first drug chat. He used to tell me that 'cocaine', for example, as a word and even a drug shouldn't necessarily be demonized. It's how people use it that makes it 'bad'.
So how is this term being used in music/art now? Glibly, superficially, glossed-over to make sure it's party-ready. Ready to be consumed and vomited.
We're living in an era of the ultimate Cliff Note, of Cultural Bulimia.
In whatever blaze of creative brilliance it may have started, 'Mash-up' has become synonymous with 'Skim-Skam' (aka Lay-Z!), my term for the current musical/journalistic/PR trend that nonchalantly quotes and glibly references African, Jamaican, Arabic, Celtic, etc music (i.e., music embedded in a culture that means alot more to it's people than an outsider could ever understand) without going deep (Skim), regurgitating it back out into the world with an air of 'Uh-huh, got it' and making a career out of it (Skam). {Seems to have become an especially useful cover for people who really have no ideas of their own, but still want to appear cool by affiliating themselves with whatever they're 'mashing up'}.
Adverse effects include the ubiquitous and oblivious, existential-ontological-digital delusion that all that IS must BE online (I'm googlable therefore I am). All of this neatly disposes of the harsh reality of how experience + information + spiritual weight used to be got: from donkey dumps squishing between your toes (then losing your flip flop in it), power shortages, grumpy locals and bumpy bus rides. The Mash up Zeitgeist dictates that entire sounds, cultures, peoples can be gotten as quickly as an FTP(Flippant Tourist Pretention).
The grand and sapping illusion of the "thumb generation" is that everything in the world can be found online...somewhere. The fact remains that there is an infinite, valuable myriad of phenomena that is NOWHERE to be found online (I have proof).
And while I'm amped to be part of the beauty of uploading, inputing, sharing rare information via this neo-Alexandrian-human-rhizome library (maktoub ya’ll), what I'm seeing is a gradual evolution of humans into the Wellsian Elois prototype; limp-wristed, brain-heavy, bloodless, nutless, post-humans living in paralytic fear of anything that operates with a body, blood, breath, passion.
I hope this fact encourages more people to get off their — and actually leave their safe abodes to physically go check things out--empirical knowledge-style before ripping it off. Of course, I'm addressing mostly the part of the world afflicted with this new disease, which is the privileged world (people who have access to food, water, 'peace'-redefined as no bombs dropping on your house, education, money--which nowadays does not only mean the 'West' anymore).
We still have bodies for a reason. "Use 'em or lose ‘em".