Tip toe down the basement of the one they call Dsico and you may find yourself clutching onto the rails, squirming in disbelief. Peer around the corner and you can see him. He’s cutting up Britney Spears and rearranging the pieces. Clearly enjoying this perverted act, he’s now playing around with Missy Elliot’s bits, mashing it together with Blondie’s parts before moving on to Justin Timberlake … How disturbing. How unorthodox. How deliciously ingenious.

You’re probably thinking Dsico is a sicko. Well, you’d be wrong in that assumption. He’s an artist. And I don’t mean artist in a Charles Manson way but more on the 2 many DJs or perhaps The Soft Pink Truth tip. Given this, I will confess the little chamber of horrors is nothing more than a studio, and his victims are only musical ingredients. However the shock factor is still very much present. Imagine yourself on the dance floor shaking and side stepping to the voice of Missy Elliot telling you to work it, only to hear a very familiar beat come in ‘Oh My God! It’s Heart of Glass!’ Clearly it’s no secret that Dsico likes to shock. Whether you giggle or gasp, a reaction is all he asks.

Perhaps it should also be noted that his full title is Dsico That No Talent Hack, much in the same way as DJ Spooky That Subliminal kid. However a no talent hack he certainly is not. Whether it’s composing cunning bootlegs, mash ups, synthpop, glitch electro, pop kitsch or just mind boggling noise, Dsico seems to be onto something good. When asked to describe his musical styles, Dsico explains “I suppose I like to play with pop and celebrity, or say ‘Bastard Pop’. Lately I’ve been doing more cover versions and remixes but initially I got into the Whole Bastard Pop Scene doing mash-ups, the straight-up vocal track mixed with oddity backing tracks. The first few being stuff like Joy Division mixed with Missy Elliot vocals or the Chemical brothers Destiny’s child mix and more lately, Britney Spears with Chic.”

Nevertheless before all the clever musical mutations and mash ups, Dsico was still very much immersed in a world of music, He reminisces. “Growing up I played a bit of guitar as a kid and was in a band in high school, but we just played around in a friend’s garage doing bad cover versions of Oz Rock and punk stuff. Years later while I was at Uni I started to get into the electronic music scene in Sydney. I think I played my first ‘gig’ in about 97 at The Landsdowne at a regular night called Memory Loss. Last few years I’ve been writing music and performing with Nigel Kersten as Cindii. – We had a few tracks on local compilations like the Beat n Squelch series and one of the Freaky Loops Comps.”

Funnily enough Dsico admits that the cut-up fascination was a result of listening to too much Squarepusher, Autechre, Kid 606, Funkstorung and fiddling around with programs like Reaktor. The mash ups however, began as a joke. “I started doing the mash-up bootleg/remixes as a bit of a joke. – I thought that freelance hell raiser track was really quite cool and it would be pretty easy to do. So I started doing a few. For some reason I can’t seem to stop.”

Still refusing to slam on the breaks, Dsico’s mash ups have been turning heads all over the globe attracting major record label interest and receiving positive reviews. He’s been signed to Spasticated records with a track out on the next compilation ‘Ministry of shit’. Along with this Dsico has also landed a tour overseas. Despite all this he still conveys a very relaxed attitude towards producing music which is rather refreshing. “Yeah, generally I guess I treat it pretty casually. Well there is certain playfulness in a lot of the remixes I do, but I do try and have sincerity in it at times. Well its not always fun and games I suppose.”

Sounds interesting? You’d like to give it a go but don’t really know how? Dsico shares what sort of equipment he uses. “I usually just put it all together using software. – This sort of stuff would be so hard using a sampler I think. It’s all these big chunks of audio. Geez, I can’t even imagine trying to do it all on a sampler with little knobs and no wave-form display, arrgghh that would be hell. Now with computers being all super-fast it’s so easy to do it all without any hardware. I use Soundforge, Cubase and Reaktor mostly and a few other plugins and oddities. A lot of people seem to use Acid for bootlegs it seems to have some nice funcitons for it. Some Beatmatcher I think.”

Admittedly with all the right equipment, not everyone will be able to do what Dscio does. He’s a talented hack with a knack for spotting musical elements which work so well together on different levels. However Dscio explains it’s all about intuition and messing about, even if it gets messy. “You can never really tell what is going to work. I usually just listen to heaps of stuff looking for good backing tracks. – trying to find something with enough vocal free parts and some pop sensibility. – Usually more retro as well. But you can’t really tell if it will work until you try. – Then I just dump it all onto the computer and start playing around with it.”

To witness the musical slaughtering of Dsico, check out his website here . ‘Ministry of shit’ is also out now through Spasticated Records.