Alex H is UK Mashup artist Alex Harrison. The former teacher and current software developer has a penchant for creating Bastard Pop, when he's not recording his own big-beat and downtempo Jazz and Hip-Hop compositions. You can download these and dozens of mashups at his website.He's also produced several remixes and DJs at events such as Bastard, in London. He has pages at Last.fm and Myspace, but aside from a large number of mp3s to download, there's a real lack of information about the artist himself. Hopefully this Q&A will get the ball rolling in a different direction.
Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Alex H...
*Name: Alex H
*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: None so far.
*Do you use a pseudonym? No!
*Members: Alex Harrison
*Founding Members: That would be me.
*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Definitely digital. I tend to work with mp3s for mashups as they are so easy to get hold of. I chop loops out using Adobe Audition then load them into cubase SX2 to mix them all together.
*Another genre descriptor: Mashup is my preferred term, although my website describes the tracks as “Mashtastic music.”
*Is there a story behind your name? I didn’t have a chance to think of an exciting name to operate under before I put my first tracks online – then it was too late!
*Location: I live in a cottage surrounded by fields, in Somerset UK.
*Original Location: South West London.
*What is your creative/artistic background: I’ve always been involved in music as a pastime since learning the violin when I was very young, then piano and guitar as a teenager. My family are all very musical, my parents play in orchestras and my brother is a sound engineer. I taught music production for a living for a while, now I work as a flash developer.
*History: I’ve been messing around with Cubase for years, since starting on a 486 PC running windows 3.1. I started creating mashups in ’05, but have recently been concentrating on writing original music.
*Born: I was born in Virginia USA, but that doesn’t make me a yank – I moved over here before my 2nd birthday.
*Motivations: Coming across a really cool loop in a track that is unlikely to have been used before. When you then find another riff that goes really well with it unexpectedly its great fun.
*Philosophy: Mashup should never take itself too seriously – it’s not big and it’s not clever – it’s just a bit of fun! It doesn’t really take a huge amount of skill to do, unlike the music it takes its samples from.
*How would you like to be remembered: As a bit of a pisstaker.
*Web address: http://www.alexh.org
www.some-assembly-required.net
