In December 2015, Miami-based DJ and producer Total Freedom (aka Ashland Mines) uploaded "DOWN ACTIONS, LOW KEY CHILDISH AF" to his SoundCloud, a frenetic edit combining LA-via-DC R&B artist Kelela's " All The Way Down" a cappella with baile funk and the "In the End" piano instrumental. These re-imaginings weren't just confined to the dancefloor either. Describing the crowd's positive reaction to the track, The Atlantic's Spencer Kornhaber wrote, "Here we were at this festival devoted to supposedly the hippest things in music, at this night devoted to one of the most blogged-about music collectives of the past year, where just about the least-cool song on earth had been turned into a touchstone." And at PC Music's showcase at SXSW 2015, London-based DJ and producer Spinee sped up and pitch-shifted goth poster children Evanescence's overwrought anthem "Bring Me to Life" into bubblegum rave-pop. Now more than ever though, it feels like that impulse is hitting critical mass.ĭuring a nostalgia-themed Boiler Room event at New York's Museum of Modern Art last year, rapper and producer Le1f effectively deployed Linkin Park's "In the End"-another staple of my angsty teenage years-in the middle of his DJ set. Bambii's deft use of the 2001 track-which was infamously played repeatedly by torturers at Guantanamo Bay a few years after its release-was the latest example of DJs reaching back to macho-emoting, early aughts alt-rock and nu-metal for a left-field twist in their sets. But something about this time-flattening choice was different-I felt like I was an acne-covered, MAD Magazine-reading 16-year-old again. Like many moments in great DJ sets, it provided the unexpected shock of hearing something familiar in a totally irregular context. It was of course, the opening strains of Drowning Pool's nu-metal hit "Bodies," and I was immediately, and disorientingly transported back to the halcyon days of the early 2000s.
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