Smash mash-up

Famed mash-up producer DJ Zebra is coming to Israel to spin two consecutive shows in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv.

By ARI MILLER
dj zebra 88 (photo credit: )
dj zebra 88
(photo credit: )
Famed mash-up producer DJ Zebra is coming to Israel to spin two consecutive shows, one in Jerusalem and the other in Tel Aviv. "Mash-up" is the combination of two tracks over one another, one vocal and one instrumental. Made popular via the Internet thanks to the unbridled access to virtually every music track out there by means of popular file sharing programs and the ease of sharing the resulting product by way of those very same channels, it was not long before the new genre made its way from the UK, where it originated, to other parts of Europe and ultimately across the pond to America. Antoine Minne, the 34-year-old Parisian who is DJ Zebra, gained much of his experience playing bass and as technician for the popular French rock group Billy Ze Kick during the early 1990s. From there it was a short jump to producing his own first album, a Sex Pistols remix titled, Anarchy in the UK in 2002. With his second album, Processed Ring, in which he meshed together the hip-hop group De La Soul and indie rockers Kasabian, Minne delved further into the genre that most often positions two groups against each other in an ironic manner that results in a composition not quite like either of the originals. One of the most well known mash-ups is DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album which meshes Jay-Z's Black Album with the Beatles' White Album. Other examples include the ironic combinations of Soundgarden and Joni Mitchell with Like Woodstock and Christina Aguilera against the Stokes in A Stroke of Genius. Popular in France for his daily radio mix for the Paris radio station OIU FM and his weekly mash-up chronicle on the national radio station FRANCE INTER, DJ Zebra has been making a name for himself abroad. Recently, he DJed at San Francisco's Bootie Club and, like his peers, his music is traded internationally online. In Israel, DJ Zebra will appear at the Goldstar Zappa Club on Thursday in Tel Aviv and the next night, April 6, in Jerusalem at The Lab (Ha'Mabada).