Maiden Goes To Hollywood (Wax Audio)

Mash-ups are a curious thing. Some are trying to get four-minute mileage out of 30 seconds’ worth of “oh, hah. that’s funny.” And perhaps that’s how most sonic mash-ups are viewed by many people. But I love that clever entwining of music mostly due to it resembling that supervillain’s refrain: “we’re not so different, you and I.”

Works like “A Stroke of Genie-Us”, Go Home Productions’ “Making Plans For Vinyl”, and Girl Talk’s albums (though especially his opus, Feed The Animals) all reveal the ways that different generations, countries, genres, and more are in a sort of conversation with each other. Those oft-repeated chords and arrangements produced from a myriad of different instruments intended to elicit disparate emotional responses from varied audiences point to a grander tapestry of experience.

The guitar licks of thrash metal met with the percussion from an Indian Alghoza and combined with some pop singer’s plaintive song bemoaning a lack of sex come together in actual, literal synthesis (thesis + antithesis).

That’s centuries of tradition in arts from different regions encompassing that wide spectrum of human experiences are now all bundled together into one piece of music that sounds great and reveals how it’s all part of a larger web. Tom Compagnoni, aka Wax Audio, has been one of the best mash-up producers for over a decade or so. His artistry lies in an astounding talent for seeing those connecting threads where others perceive genre barriers or incomparable noises.

One of his more recent works, “Maiden Goes To Hollywood”, combines the naughty invitations and sexually-charged curiosity of ‘80s pop group Frankie Goes To Hollywood with the more epic feel that lies in the metal of Iron Maiden (who also just released a new album, Senjutsu, which is pretty stellar). He manages to not only mash-up a few of the groups’ songs together, but creates a sort of classic retelling of works of Coleridge (and a couple of other classical poets) through a delightfully entertaining music video. Enjoy Wax Audio’s “Maiden Goes To Hollywood”!