DJ Mark Vidler Gets Record Deal From EMI To Make Mashups

[DudeAsInCool]

CEO of musical mergers

Mark Vidler's mix of a Blondie song with a Doors tune is a worldwide hit. Now the DJ has a record deal to create 'mash-ups.'

Mark Vidler has a knack for making opposites attract. The British music producer is one of the leading practitioners of the mash-up, an art form in which a disc jockey cuts and pastes songs from very different genres to create unusual hybrids. One of Mr. Vidler's recipes goes like this: Take a dash of Lionel Richie's piano from "Hello," sprinkle in the vocal from The Police's "Wrapped Around Your Finger," pour in the melody line of Elvis Costello's "Watching the Detectives," add a slither of Peggy Lee singing "Fever," and garnish with a pinch of back-up vocals from The Hollies and Led Zeppelin. Now mix ... but ... very carefully....

The DJ is poised to take the burgeoning music form mainstream. Until now, mash-ups have largely been an underground phenomenon because of the murky copyright issues involved. But Vidler, who first attracted notice by creating a mash-up of "God Save the Queen" by The Sex Pistols and Madonna's "Ray of Light," has been signed to the EMI label to create a whole album of mash-ups - the first official (and legal) album of its kind. In the interim, he's enjoying great success with one of the tracks that will appear on that record, a mash-up of Blondie's "Rapture" and "Riders on the Storm" by The Doors. Already a hit in the Netherlands, Italy, and Australia, "Rapture Riders" was recently released in the US as a single from Blondie's new "Greatest Hits: Sound and Vision" album.

Read more at

The Christian Science Monitor

Or visit his website:

Mark Vidler

Listen to Rapture Riders - Blondie versus the Doors - here

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