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Brooklyn-via-Baltimore-via-Australia spazz-punk act The Death Set have kept pretty quiet since guitarist Beau Velasco died in September 2009. But the trio is starting to release some new tunes: Oin February, Ninja Tune will drop the band’s new album, Michel Poiccard. To feed its fans’ collective appetite, the group released a 43-song mixtape earlier this week called Artificially Sweetened.
Artificially Sweetened is best treated as something akin to a The Death Set for Dummies: Clearly, the dudes in The Death Set are big fans of all the artists featured on the mixtape, and the brief selections and odd mash-ups of hip-hop acts and punk bands certainly show their mark on the frenetic punk act.
A few D.C. acts make an appearance on Artificially Sweetened. Black Eyes shows up early on, as track No. 7 fuses the screeching “Deformative” with Jamaican dancehall artist Buju Banton’s “Circumstances.” Fugazi‘s “Public Witness Program” remains almost untouched for most of the 1:07 cut that’s included on the mixtape. That is, until the end of the tune,when Notorious B.I.G.’s voice shows up to drop some rhymes from “Hypnotize.” Bad Brains‘ “At the Movies” shows up at the end of the mixtape, though it’s not mashed up.
You can grab the rest of The Death Set’s ADD-addled mixtape over at Mishka Bloglin.