Alex Borowski, a member of band Cobra Moonshine, is into mashups. Popularized by the artist “Girltalk,” mashups sample different parts from different songs and mix them together to create an entirely new song. For example, one of Cobra Moonshine’s songs mixes rap track “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It” by Dem Franchize Boyz with the guitar part from Green Day’s song “Brain Stew.”
The band exercises its creativity by coming up with silly song titles having little to do with the music, including “It’s Not Gay (Our D**** Didn’t Touch),” “Glock in My Knee-high Sock” and “See, It’s Not Gay (Now You Try It.)”
The band, which got its name from an old legend about Southerners using cobra venom to make strong illegal booze during prohibition, is made up of Borowski and Sean Albarran, both UNM students. The duo DJs using computers and performs at house parties and, recently, the Cellar in Hokona Hall and Fiestas. Its debut album, T.H.U.G., is available for free download on Cobra Moonshine’s Facebook page. The Daily Lobo caught up with Borowski to dig deep into the details of a mashup artist’s work.
Daily Lobo: How did you get involved with working with computers and doing mashups?
Alex Borowski: The first DJ I listened to was “Girltalk,” and I really liked what he was doing. So I first thought about how he does it, and then I looked into what software he uses and I got a copy of the software from one of my friends.
DL: One thing I always wondered about this style of music is, if you want just the guitar part or the drum part, how do you cut out the other parts?
AB: It’s not very easy to do that. And if you try, a lot of times it sounds really bad. But a lot of artists will release either, like, the instrumental to the song they make or their a capella, which is them either singing or rapping, so you cut up those. And then a lot of times you’ll find parts where, in the original recording, they dropped the drums out for some reason. They just wanted the guitar to be heard. So a lot of times if there’s a song I want to sample I’ll look for a part like, “Okay, there’s no voice here.”
DL: So how many shows have you guys done so far?
AB: Barely any. We just started working together around December, and we’ve played maybe two of our friends’ parties. We did play Fiestas. That was a big show for us … and we played the dorms here, in Hokona.
DL: How did you get the dorms people to let you do a show there? I imagine it’s pretty loud.
AB: I had talked to them about doing a 90s night, because I think 80s nights are really cool, but our generation more closely identifies with 90s music. So they had 90s night, and I asked if I could DJ and they said sure.
DL: When you guys do live shows, how do you divide up the work?
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AB: A lot of times it’s just one of us does the a capella parts, and one of us will do samples of the instruments, the music. So that’s how we usually start, and then sometimes there will be times where there’s tricky samples, like if you have to get a lot of samples at once or something, divide the work up.
DL: What do you guys actually do at a live show that’s more than just pushing play on a recorded track?
AB: Your job is to stop the clip that’s playing and start the new clip, or do whatever you need to do to keep the continuity of the flow in the beat of the song, whatever you’re doing. And then also at times you want to slow down the beat or bring it up, and that’s probably the trickiest part.
DL: Do you guys practice for your live shows?
AB: Yeah. Before a live show, we have a rough outline of, like, a set, and then we’re each trying to add something new. So we make the set, and then you practice it.
DL: How do you guys deal with the performance/showmanship aspect? I’ve seen people play a computer, and sometimes it’s not that fun to watch.
AB: We mostly just focus on … for the most part, just keeping the beat going and making sure it’s danceable.
DL: What do you think about some of the copyright problems that have happened with this type of music?
AB: I think whenever Apple tries to make it so you can’t crack an iPhone, it’s like a challenge. Within a week, someone comes out with a crack. And so, really, it’s sort of futile on the part of the big corporations to try and stop this … Giving it away for free is kind of a way to skip around the copyright thing. I always think about it like a collage.
DL: Your album is called T.H.U.G. What does that stand for?
AB: “The Hand Uv God.” I like to think it can stand for whatever you want, but I like it ’cause it works with the album artwork, which is the part of the Sistine Chapel where God’s finger is touching Adam’s finger. We made a photo collage of that. And all the pictures in the photo collage are — well, what we wanted to do originally was have all our friends and fans send us pictures of parties they were at and collage all of those. We didn’t get enough. We used album artwork for the rest.
