Monster Mash Up

If the crowds that show up to "Bootie" were any indication, he'd be right. But I disagree. Dancing your ass off to a series of pre-burned mash-ups at a club may be a kitschy-fun time, but it doesn't compare to one of Z-Trip's live sets, during which he takes you on a guided tour through the whole history of recorded music. Not only can you hear the difference in Z-Trip's seamless mixes -- there are no pitch-shifted vocals, no artificially time-stretched rhythms, no glitchy, digital hue -- but you can also feel it on the dance floor when he massages one song into the next, dropping beats in and out with the grace of a symphony conductor. The fact that he doesn't rely on prerecorded material allows Z-Trip to be much more responsive to a crowd, and the booties, in turn, have a way of responding.

"The whole point is for us to go up and do it all on four turntables, in front of a crowd, rock the party, do it all on wax, do it all with skills," says the DJ proudly of his farewell performance of Uneasy Listening. "It takes a lot of fucking time and energy to match shit up. And if you fuck up, you fuck up hard. That's the other thing about it: The rewards are so much better if you pull it off. People who know, they recognize it, like, 'Wow, this guy's up there doing it with two records,' versus, 'This guy just pushed play on a CD.' If your back is turned to the DJ or your head is in the clouds, it doesn't really matter. But to me, it totally matters."

Mash-up fans would do well to attend this show on Sunday, where they may discover that it matters to them, too.