One of my favourite albums of all time – Hold Your Colour by Australian/British Drum and Bass group Pendulum – is great for several reasons, but I’ve always loved the genre’s quirk for using samples and sound bites from the most obscure sources.

There’s something fascinating when a piece of media seamlessly remixes bits and pieces from another composition. I’m not sure if it’s the thrill of a surprisingly fresh final product or admiration for the editor’s skills at fusing scraps of previously random stuff.
One track from the album I’ve embedded above – Through the Loop – struck me as a simply fantastic song the first time I heard it, but when I found out that the main sample in it was from the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory I was amused, to say the least.
However the track is impressive, despite using a rather silly film to sample, in that it manages to build itself on that one particular sound bite creating a particularly dark composition.

Similarly, the track Another Planet samples Jeff Wayne’s 1978 musical rendition of War of the Worlds, a quaint meeting of old musical production and new. I figure there’s a couple of reasons to enjoy this the first being a pretty impressive use of mundane samples and making them musical, but secondly there’s a comfort in hearing a nod to something familiar.
Really, it’s nice to know somebody else enjoys the same things you do, so at a very basic level it’s fun to listen to an original composition interspersed with references to something you also like. Drum and Bass is my favourite genre of music for this reason; not only is it a volatile and versatile sound, but it can be playful too.

This concept of remixing is taken even further with a strange type of media perhaps more controversial with the general populace, that being, YouTube Poops.

To make the debrief, brief here’s a short explanation video from one, more successful ‘Pooper’ DaThings1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aMnOIo5aIo

…and unless you want to see some really weird stuff, I wouldn’t recommend going any deeper than that video embed there.

Source material can range from early 1900 films to any form of modern media and simple aim to make ridiculous and generally perverted remixes of them. With no original material YouTube Poops create their own comedic scripts and narratives with strictly found footage.
Another less common technique is imitating music by using just source material to compose a rhythm. Website ‘Know Your Meme’ best breaks down the Poop’s elements also giving a brief history of it.

Why do I mention both YouTube Poops and Drum and Bass alongside one another? They are both relatively new, most likely due to the growth of the Internet and availability of digital material toward the end of the 20th century, and both use found materials to contribute to the character to the final product.
However, YouTube Poops in particular could only exist with the prominence of the Internet and availability of digital media. Drum and Bass sort of set the tone (pun not intended) for sampling, YouTube Poops take it to a whole new level.

I guess the point I thought I was trying to make was that these kinds of media production are an excellent example of the growing convenience of access to any and all media, and the subsequent freedom in reshaping it. Plus it’s fun to see old stuff get recycled into something completely new.