2000 Fragma: Toca's Miracle

With the increasing ubiquity of affordable and easy to use software, musical mash-ups born of bedroom programmers were incredibly popular at the turn of the Millennium. Something more than just sampling, mash-ups took a part of Song A, coupled it with another part of Song B to create 'brand new' Song C. The best examples spun gold out of what was, on the face of it, chalk and cheese (for example, The Evolution Control Committee's mixing of Public Enemy and Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass), but not every instigator showed half as much imagination or wit. Such as 'Toca's Miracle'.

Basically a straight layering of the vocal from Coco Star's 1996 'I Need A Miracle' dance track over a musical backing from German act Fragma's 'Toca Me', the seamless mix of the two generates no friction or sparks or points of interest and is content to simply create a.n.other trance anthem that, in 2000, sounded about five years out of date. And without that lightbulb over the head realisation that you're listening to twains that were not supposed to have met, the absence of all components of the thesis + antithesis = synthesis equation begs the question as to the merit of bringing them together in the first place when all you get at the end is more of the same. Frankly, I'd rather listen to both pieces in their orignal formats.