For those of you who attended—or at least wanted to attend—Girl Talk's show last month, you may be interested in a local alternative: DJ Jewboy. Despite the quirky name, DJ Jewboy, also known as Andrew Heisler, is a Badger with chutzpah. A UW-Madison freshman, Heisler has gathered an online following for his creative cross-genre mashups. A Chicago native, Heisler has been mixing urban beats with indie rock, country and Top 40 music since his beginnings, when he was inspired by the mind-blowing mixes on Girl Talk's Night Ripper to obtain his own audio editor. He has since brought his passion to UW-Madison, where he has performed live at ZBT house parties and continued to provide free albums for his fans online.
Heisler brings great potential to the table—he started mashing back in the fall of 2007 and has been honing his skills ever since. When asked what has helped him become a better artist, Heisler mentioned it required ""a lot of patience … once I got used to the program I was using, I was able to adapt and create more intricate and creative mixes that sounded pretty sick.""
From his humble beginnings with a computer-based audio editor, Heisler is learning to expand his skills to live-performance venues. As for his hopes for the future, he says, ""Live-mixing is something I want to master and eventually get paid to do."" This hope for a more popular future in live mixing is only exacerbated by his love of music and his all-encompassing tastes. ""New music is never-ending, the sky is the limit for how many mixes I can make,"" said Heisler.
Of course, to have an ear for musical layers and intricacies, Heisler has to stay on his toes with new music. But when asked who inspires him musically, his responses were far from Top 40: He says ""If I'm not listening to Girl Talk, I'll be listening to Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Pink Floyd. I've got a relatively eclectic taste in music and that's where a lot of my mashup ideas come from.""
For those who are interested in hearing more from DJ Jewboy, his albums available for download online include such gems as Keepin' It Is-Real (Vol. 1 and 2), Chrome Kippur and Israeli Hip-Hop Mashups at http://djjewboy.blogspot.com/. Another long-awaited release dropping today, entitled Let My People Flow, dutifully follows the Jewish-themed trend. Heisler is intending to turn more to live-mixing performances rather than just continuous albums, so local listeners should look forward to jamming with Jewboy more in the future.
