Pitchfork

In late 2005, we can examine the parabolic course of the mashup/bootleg craze, an early-century phenomenon both fueled and doused by the internet. In its beat-matching, genre-collapsing heyday, the best examples (think 2 Many DJs or "A Stroke of Genius") revealed previously un-thought-of connections between seemingly disparate material, deflating indie notions of superiority by revealing the pop undercurrent in their favorite anti-mainstream warriors. But after the market became glutted with any combination BPMs allowed, the mashup's appeal quickly dissipated.

But as with most musical trends proclaimed dead by armchair analysts, mashups haven't really gone away, they've just evolved beyond the definition boundaries hastily set around them. In one way, they've returned to their ancestral home: DJ mixes that have been feeding off of unusual segues and loop constructions for decades. Yet simultaneously, there's been a progression of the form into new landscapes, beyond the simple combination of Beat X with Acapella Vocal Y, into more complex arrangements of previously released, recognizable, copyright-flaunting material.

A healthy avenue for this progression is the willfully underground breakcore scene, made up of artists who often seem to be competing for the title of Most Abrasive. The movement's forefather Kid 606 may have steered the way with his The Action-Packed Mentalist Brings You the Fucking Jams album, and others have followed him into the breach, notably frenetic song-welders like Duran Duran Duran and more obscurantist chin-strokers like DJ/Rupture. Falling closer to the former group is Jason Forrest, née Donna Summer (but not that Donna Summer), whose '04 long-player The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post-Disco Crash re-imagined classic rock staples like Creedence Clearwater, the Who, and Elton John amidst skittering drumbeats and Michael Bay speed-editing.

Unrelenting Songs was notable for its willingness to treat big '70s hits as open sources for loop-plundering, but struggled somewhat to shake the technique > song prejudices of Forrest's genre loyalties. Brief moments where innovation met listenability-- the ultimate guitar solo of "180 Mar Ton" or the shattered and reassembled "Who Are You" remix "10 Amazing Years"-- hinted at a pop sensibility underneath the beat terrorism, kept frustratingly just out of reach. Shamelessly Exciting makes good on that promise, showcasing a Forrest just as ambitious in his use of samples while sanding down the sharper corners of his sound.

Thus, a song called "My 36 Favorite Punk Songs" is exactly that, pieces of three dozen songs thrown on the ground and reshuffled like a game of musical 52 pickup. But rather than sounding like a jumbled mess, Forrest carefully mosaics the songs into the Ultimate Punk Song, scraps of the Ramones, the Clash, the Misfits, and many others bubbling up over the traditional 4/4 chug. "War Photographer" montages numerous passages of rock-soul brass (including the godly "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat & Tears) into an epic-sized Stax-ified "Theme from Shaft", while "Dreaming and Remembering" plunders the jazz section in a smooth strut that tries to dance-off Prefuse 73.

Most of the samples here are less obvious than those used on Unrelenting Songs, memory-jarrers that tauntingly float just out of reach. The prog-organs and guitar-windmills of "Dust Never Settles" could be from any Boston, Kansas, or Styx record, though exactly which is impossible to place; "Skyrocket Saturday" merges bluesy solos with forgotten TV show themes, somehow begetting disco as a result. "Evil Doesn't Exist Any More" seems to use another swampy lick from the Creedence catalog, but before it can be properly labeled, the song morphs into an expansive Bollywood meets drum & bass crescendo that Tarantino has probably already earmarked for his next fight scene.

Forrest even finds time to take an atmospheric breather on "Nightclothes and Headphones", with an assist from Laura Cantrell that wouldn't sound out of place on a Dido record, save a few extra rhythm skips and squiggles. The song may be far and away the closest Jason Forrest gets to traditional song formatting on Shamelessly Exciting, but its presence is indicative of the concessions towards accessibility that permeate the entire album. By remembering the pop elements of the source material he uses to construct his tracks, and incorporating that FM-dial ear for melody into even his most adventurous collage projects, Forrest takes the mashup form beyond gimmickry into an entirely new, refreshingly listenable, excitingly shameless realm.

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