Artist Profile: DJ Battlecat
Nick Reiner is a good dude. I met him at Vice last summer when we interned together, and he was the first to tell me about Girl Talk wayyy before any of the blogs began to catch on later in the summer, so I knew he was mad decent from the get-go. We saw some bomb-ass shows together, had an awesome time at Vice and generally hit it off quite well. And then he’s all, “Oh yeah, I’m the lead singer of this band called Goodnight & Goodnight“, and I’m all, “Awesome, I remember downloading your tracks from Gorilla vs Bear a while back and enjoying them immensely”, so that was just icing on the cake. Then later I found out dude was the touring keyboardist for Union of Knives in 2005, which I find to be at least 1000% bad-ass, considering they’re maybe my favorite electro-rock act in the UK and “Evil Has Never” is like, MY JAM.
So naturally, I was sufficiently pumped when I heard that he’d started DJing in Philly under the name DJ Tanner with a party night called Full House because, I mean, anything referencing Full House is pretty solid in my book. After the realization that there were a shitload of like-minded, musically-inclined kids with a penchant for irony calling themselves DJ Tanner out there, he changed his name to DJ Battlecat and started to get serious. Below you’ll find his masterwork, “Bump It”, an incredible mash up of Spank Rock’s “Bump” and Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It”, along with a seriously ill dance edit of Grizzly Bear’s “Knife”, the original of which I’m just now starting to wake up to as one of the best tracks of last year. “Bump It” falters a bit once or twice towards the beginning with a few minimally awkward moments, but once that synth line from “Push It” drops it’s just game over. Feel it below.
MP3s:
“Bump It” (Spank Rock vs Salt-N-Pepa) - DJ Battlecat ((highly recommended))
“Knife” (DJ Battlecat’s Can You Feel The Beat Remix) - Grizzly Bear