This is not a new track by Daft Punk

Today's blog post is about 17-year-old French dance producer Madeon who burst into our consciousness last year with a breathtaking, 39 song mash-up performed live on a sampler. The appropriately-named Pop Culture incorporated bits of tracks by Buggles, Kylie, Girls Aloud, The Killers and ELO - comme ça:

Madeon - Pop Culture


An astonishing display - and one that has rightly seen him booked for a ton of DJ sets around the continent.

He's also been working hard on his debut album, and the first single - Icarus - got a preview on Pete Tong's radio show a couple of weeks back. Clearly, Madeon has had to borrow all of his equipment from Justice, who bought it second-hand from Cassius, who had it on loan from Daft Punk after they won it in a bet from Stardust.

Seriously, all French house music sounds like this, doesn't it? Not that I'm complaining.

Icarus - Madeon

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A little treat: Katy Perry vs A-ha

Purveyor of top quality remix work Pop Pants (aka @DaftBeatles) just messaged me a link to this his latest mash-up, which splices the Y chromosomes of A-ha's Take On Me to the X chromosomes of Katy Perry's ET and makes a weird Frankenstein DNA baby.

It's bright and poppy and pleasing to listen to, although the chorus definitely works better than the verses.

Worth three minutes of your life? Yeah, I reckon so.

Aha vs Katy Perry - Take On mE T

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Roundup: A ragtag collection of videos and songs from the last seven days

As often happens, Friday has come around and there's a ton of new music that didn't quite warrant its own blog post this week, but which doesn't deserve being consigned to the dumper either.

So here, basically, are six tracks I don't hate.

1) Madeon - Pop Culture (live mashup)

This is mind-boggling. French DJ Madeon creates an entirely new song out of bits of 39 other songs. Oh, and he does it live, playing the samples in off a 64-button Novation Sample Pad. There are bits of Kylie, Jacko, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Daft Punk in there... Astonishing work.

2) Pixie Lott - All About Tonight

Multimedia teen brand Pixie Lott is back with a new single All About Tonight, which roughly translates as *yawn* All About Going To The Club. (I keep meaning to ask - why is there only one club?). This isn't the barnstorming comeback Pixie needed to reinvigorate her see-saw chart career... but it's better than, say, anything Jason Derulo has ever written. And by 'written', I of course mean 'stolen'.

The video is mainly notable for the hilarious legs akimbo dance routine (see above). Pixie Lott has long legs, in case wall-to-wall tabloid coverage had failed to make you aware of this fact.

3) Sufjan Stevens - Get Real, Get Right

*6 Music face* Sufjan Stevens is a hugely talented artist given to massive bouts of creativity and self-indulgence. His new album, The Age Of Adz, contains delicate moments of ephemeral beauty and a bunch of songs that waffle on for 10 minutes about absolutely fuck all. This is one of the former - and it comes with a mesmerising stop-motion video, which Sufjan directed all on his own, despite previously suffering a nervous breakdown during Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox.

4) DJ Earworm - Party On The Floor

Another one of DJ Earworm's semi-annual mash-ups for Capital FM. He's kind of hamstrung by the alarming lack of decent pop music this year, but the juxtaposition of LMFAO and Katy B is sublime.

5) Niki And The Dove - Gentle Roar

Unbelievably, people are still persisting with the whole "[female name] and the [noun]" concept. Latest off the block are Niki And The Dove, a Swedish duo signed to the ultra-hip Subpop label. Subverting the "Alice And The Cheese Grater" subgenre, they make earthy, pagan click-pop, which sounds like Florence Welch swallowing Radiohead. Very classy.

Gentle Roar by subpop

6) Nicola Roberts being hit on the head with a beach ball

As discovered by the incomparable Robot Pigeon blog, here is Nicola Roberts being hit on the head with a beach ball (scroll through to 2'40"). Nice work, everyone.

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