Artist: TRV$DJAM
Album: Fix Your Face Vol. 2
Genre: DJ
Label: NONE

Travis Barker and DJ AM have spent the better part of this year and the tail end of 08 carving their new musical project TRV$DJAM into the music world. It’s an interesting concept involving DJ AM spinning records while Barker does what he’s known for – playing drums better than anyone else alive today. Their first mixtape had some hit and miss moments as most first releases do, but the brand new [and free] second volume, taken from the group’s performance at Coachella 2009, shows the dynamic become a tight musical unit that demands and deserves attention.

It’s hard to really review something like this as 1. it’s a mixtape and 2. it’s not really original material, but more like a megamix. However, there are comments to be made nonetheless. For starters, the sound quality is tremendous, especially compared to vol. 2. The song choice is ridiculous, blending Guns n’ Roses with The Beatles and many other random classical acts. The music selection seems to give a fair representation for nearly every genre of music with no preference for seemingly anything other than classic hip hop like Warren g., Notorious B.I.G., and Jay-Z.

Where the first mixtape seemed to focus on the creativity of Travis Barker, I think it’s DJAM who comes across the strongest here. Not only his song selection, but the follow through of blending them together near seamlessly will never cease to impress you. It’s as if he has some magical cheat sheet that allows him to find such obscure song similarities and bring them together.

All in all, I think what’s key here is replay factor and longevity. I mean, with this genre, you’re either continuously amusing or quickly redundant and I can say, after about 10 entire listens today alone, there is no redundancy to be found here. Barker has Blink-182 going this summer as well as his various other hip hop based one offs, but you can bet this isn’t the last or probably even the greatest we’ll hear from TRV$DJAM.

Score: 9/10

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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