Let me be frank: I usually despise mash-ups. I normally would rather listen to the actual songs. With DJ Hazmat, however, this is not the case. Out of Burlington, VT, Matt Weston is an up-and-coming DJ that is killing it with creative mmixes that capture the energy and tremendousness of everyone’s favorite songs in the best possible way. Energetic combinations, like Jay-Z and Flux Pavilion/ Eminem and Gramatik, are combined in a keenly simplistic manner. He can get a party going anywhere and makes the kind of mashups you can easily recognize and sing a long to. He has been very productive lately, putting out a lot of of songs on his soundcloud. Also available there are higher quality versions of the songs for anyone who wants to really blast them. Make sure to see what he has to say on twitter - he’s a funny guy as well as a great DJ!
 
I also I caught up with Mr. Weston last week to see what he had to say about being a DJ:

Dastardly: How’d you start djing? What was the beginning like for you?

DJ Hazmat: It’s kind of funny, I didn’t even listen to electronic music before college, or mainstream hip hop, or anything I play now, I was a dispatch bro, bro. But DJing was always something I was interested in but never really had the facilities to try. I got my first piece of equipment, a numark mixdeck in like november of my freshman year and taught myself on the free trial of virtual dj until actually manning up…and stealing it from the internet. I did my first legit gig in January at a fraternity party where my laptop was promptly murdered halfway through by a beer. Even with that, it was still incredible to control a party like I did, so I started taking it more seriously, upgraded my equipment and music library and have been trying to take it as far as I can since. its crazy to look back and see myself doing a party with just a laptop and a dance library of like 100 songs, probably 40 of which were deadmau5, I was nervous as f*ck too, can’t even remember how many requests I had to shoot down, but minus the whole laptop dying, it was amazing and I knew I wanted to do this for a while.

Dastardly: Why mashups? They are often really tricky to make well and it takes a creative guy to see which songs would fit well together. How’d you get into it?

DJ Hazmat:  I chose mashups to kind of bridge the gap between house and mainstream music. You can only listen to instrumental electronic music for so long before your head pops, but if it has a well known song or songs in it, it definitely gets and keeps peoples attention for a longer time. That’s ultimately what I’m trying to do at any performance, make sure the audience is interested so regardless if I’m playing my stuff or someone else’s, it’s always nice to expand the target audience to people who were like me and didn’t really listen to electronic music, and mashups do a great job of that. But also, I mean what drunk girl doesn’t want to hear LMFAO dubbed over…well over anything really? Yeah they can be tricky, but it’s also that much more rewarding when I put a song up and get someone telling me something like “they sound so good together, I would have never thought of that!” or something along those lines. It’s kind of cool to try and merge two or more things that originally were never thought to be similar and see the product work out. (i.e. midnight rizzo, can’t imagine HOV was thinking about flux pavillion when he wrote izzo.

Dastardly: What are your top 3 most played songs on your iTunes?

DJ Hazmat: Hmm currently, 1. Sweet Disposition (Axwell and Dirty South Remix) 2. Levels (Skrillex Remix) 3. Kick Out the Epic Motherfucker by Dada Life. but with all the new music I try to find, that list changes all the time.

Dastardly: What are we gonna see out of DJ Hazmat in the future?

DJ Hazmat: Alot! lots of talk about gigs in several locations, both east and west coast. I’m getting into actual electronic production so in addition to mashups there will some DJ Hazmat originals coming out in the near future. Things are looking good, but I’m not one to try and Jinx em’ so we’ll see. Hopefully everything works out because this is something i could see myself doing for a long long time.

DJ Hazmat – Never Take Me Alive (Emenim vs. Gramatik)

DJ Hazmat – Midnight Rizzo (Example and Flux Pavillion vs. Jay-Z)