Shitmat

Brighton, England-based madcap Henry Collins records plunderphonic breakcore under the name Shitmat. His rather tasteless moniker is a riff on happy hardcore originator <a href="spotify:artist:0F71ra6iKMvn6ndmnaM2Lr">Slipmatt</a>, and his music is even more giddy and over the top, pushing jungle and breakbeat hardcore to their extremes while chucking in samples of pop tunes, TV theme songs, and nearly every other form of music. He has no problem with endlessly recycling samples or dance music clichés, even going so far as to record entire albums using the same vocal sample on every track. Collins was one of the co-founders of the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Wrong+Music%22">Wrong Music</a> collective, which included similar-minded artists such as Ebola, <a href="spotify:artist:6kT2ganTwvbrbw42IJLC1K">Chevron</a>, and Collins' former roommate <a href="spotify:artist:635iXMXTO6yzxEPdqzbwof">DJ Scotch Egg</a>.

Collins began distributing CD-Rs of his tracks during the early 2000s, and he quickly caught the attention of <a href="spotify:artist:4jrCn6qNmrb5ee7EeURQaZ">Jason Forrest</a> and Mike Paradinas. The latter signed him to <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Planet+Mu%22">Planet Mu</a>, and his first release was the <a href="spotify:artist:1co4F2pPNH8JjTutZkmgSm">Ramones</a>-sampling single "Shopliftin' Gabba" in 2003. His debut full-length, Killababylonkutz, arrived the following year, and all of the album's tracks sampled <a href="spotify:artist:5G8IlDlnPQPN4YmtJ6NDxK">Baby Cham</a>'s "Babylon Bwoy," which had already become a favorite a cappella of many ragga-jungle producers. A second full-length, the absurdist masterpiece Full English Breakfest, arrived later in the year. In addition to its CD release, it was issued as five separate 12" EPs, each containing bonus tracks. Further releases continued on <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Planet+Mu%22">Planet Mu</a>, as well as labels such as <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Death%24ucker+Records%22">Death$ucker Records</a> and <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Ad+Noiseam%22">Ad Noiseam</a> (a split EP with tourmates <a href="spotify:artist:4S8XZ6FgGp5KKwymL8E6Hz">Enduser</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:6dD5LzTwdYS3gRvRSCOIVP">Bong-Ra</a>). Collins also released Pur Cosy Tales, an album of ambient pieces under the name <a href="spotify:artist:1CgrV85eyFoPFLr3rQbt6g">Kyler</a>.

Hang the DJ, originally scheduled for release on <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Sublight%22">Sublight</a>, ended up being released by <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Wrong+Music%22">Wrong Music</a> in 2006. Grooverider, named in tribute to the pioneering jungle DJ, appeared in 2007, and was followed by One Foot in the Rave in 2009. In 2012, Collins took the Shitmat project to its logical conclusion with Mash Hits, an ambitious undertaking that found him remixing every song to reach the number one spot on the U.K. pop singles chart, which had been in existence for 60 years at that point. He created hundreds of remixes and mashups over a nine-month period and uploaded them all to SoundCloud as they were finished, although many of them ended up being taken down for copyright infringement. Following this, he retired his moniker, but he resurrected it in 2016, releasing Roughneck Rarities and Killababylonkutz 2 on Bandcamp. He then toured with <a href="spotify:artist:4S8XZ6FgGp5KKwymL8E6Hz">Enduser</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:6dD5LzTwdYS3gRvRSCOIVP">Bong-Ra</a> again in 2017. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi