For years now, Shitmat has been twisting hardcore, jungle and more into some of Britain’s most fractured music, his albums finding a home on Planet Mu and similar labels.
His latest project comes under the banner Mash Hits and represents, in his own words, a reimagination of “the entire history of chart music through remixing, bastardizing and reconstructing it.” With the UK singles chart 60 years old on November 14 2012, Shitmat has been uploading a series of tracks that, once the whole project is done, promises to feature music from every single UK number one in that time – 1209 songs in total, of which Shitmat has already used 960 – with “no other samples, synths or sound sources allowed at all.”
Naturally, a lot of these tracks have been sped up and distorted beyond repair, but there’s also a lot that you’ll recognise, from ‘9pm til I Come’ to ’99 Red Balloons’, ‘Summertime’ to ‘Spaceman’. [Note: The project has been going on for the best part of 2012, but Shitmat just brought it to our attention on Twitter.]
You can read more about the Mash Hits project here, and hear the tracks here. We’ve embedded a few highlights below.