Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but could you remix “Head Like a Hole” by Nine Inch Nails and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe?”
That’s pretty much how these seemingly unrelated tunes came to be mashed up together. Reddit user carly_rae_reznor posted to r/mashups that he or she had the yet-to-exist song stuck their head. “It cannot be exorcised until I hear it,” they pleaded with the community of mashup enthusiasts. “Can one of you please make this happen!” Thankfully for carly_rae_reznor and everyone else on the planet, pomDeter obliged and created this dark yet life affirming mix: Call Me A Hole.
But maybe the fact that Jepsen’s bubbly beat and Trent Reznor’s gut-wrenching vocals fit together perfectly isn’t such an accident. Vancouver-based mix engineer Dave “Rave” Ogilvie, who did the mix for “Call Me Maybe,” has a history of working with industrial bands like Skinny Puppy and Marilyn Manson. He even did mix engineering for some Nine Inch Nails’ tracks (though not “Head Like a Hole.”) A 2012 profile of Ogilvie in Sound on Sound explores how his background with industrial music helped him nail the pulsing drums on Jepsen’s mega-hit and might explain why these disparate tracks sound so right together.
LISTEN TO “CALL ME A HOLE” ON SOUNDCLOUD.
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Michael Kolberg is The Sprawl Editor at Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter for jokes @mikeykolberg.
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