“Does everybody know what time it is?” asks a familiar voice: Pamela Anderson as Lisa on Tim Allen’s Home Improvement. Enveloping the question, Star Trek’s “The Final Countdown,” layered with a bass-drum pounding off quarter-notes, loops on Scott Potter‘s PC laptop. Potter, the bearded alumnus known to the DeKalb music scene as mash-up artist Hell Yeah Party Time, uses his MIDI controller to play the answer.

“Hell” preaches the Simpson’s Reverend Lovejoy.

“Yeah,” croons Usher.

“Party,” growls Ke$ha.

“Time” chants — well, Potter couldn‘t tell you who chants “time.”

And with good reason. Hell Yeah Party Time, playing Friday at Otto’s, 118 E. Lincoln Highway, composes his tunes of up to 70 cut-and-pasted slices from songs ranging from The Black Eyed Pea‘s “My Humps,” to Gun’s and Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine”; from Hall and Oats to The Flaming Lips. After running these slices through the software Adobe Audition and AudioMulch, Potter edits them again live with his MIDI controller.

“I always thought that sampling was super super easy, and I kind of ragged on mash-up artists and DJ’s,” said Potter. “It’s not just like hitting play: that’s what I thought it was before I got into it. I have a MIDI controller that triggers my loops and I can mix and match stuff on the fly; I can change the tempo as I go — I can change the tone. I’m constantly remixing my remixes live.”

Aesthetically, Hell Yeah Party Time’s full-length release, His Great Device Makes Him Famous, sounds a lot like Girl Talk and Dangermouse: it’s heavily rhythmic and texturally complex. Beyond the project’s staple as a work of extreme danceability, listening to His Great Device is a lot like watching Family Guy; while it’s a musically sound record, the biggest thrills come from recognizing each re-contextualized pop-culture allusion. Listeners will laugh at the sheer balls with which Potter layers Miley Cyrus and Kanye West.

But Potter said he’s not completely mocking the artists he samples. It’s more of an irreverent tribute to the interchangeability of pop music. While he may be poking fun at the 1970’s soft-rock of Seals and Croft, Potter said he only samples what sounds good. But the inherent irreverence, Potter says, makes his project something of a new punk rock.

“People will see me bring the computer up on stage, and they’ll think I’m either going to play crazy house stuff — that I don’t personally even like — or that I’m doing weird stuff that’s going to be too out-there,” Potter said. “A lot of people leave; the people that stick around realize that it fits into the whole punk rock scene. It’s not techno. That’s kind of like saying to someone with an electric guitar, ‘What’s separating you from Megadeth?’ It’s like ‘Yeah, you could play Megadeth on that electric guitar you’re playing, but you’re playing the Ramones.'”

With his reliance on a laptop and a reservoir of pre-recorded loops, Potter is often mistakenly labeled a DJ. While it’s tempting to apply the label to anything you can dance to, Potter isn’t a DJ. His set-up is too cheap: he shelled out less than 50 bucks on his MIDI controller and borrows a table to set it on. His performance is too active: he can’t walk away for a moment or the same 10 seconds will be on repeat. More importantly, Potter hates dubstep with a passion.

“It’s weird because I don’t fit into it, but I keep getting lumped in on DJ night or I’m the post-show DJ,” Potter said. “I’ll take those shows, but it’s not what I do. It would be like an old-school Run DMC rapper and being booked with nu metal rap. [DJ’s] are cool. They can do their thing. That’s awesome. I just have never liked DJing — which will probably get me hated by a lot of people for saying that.”

Already an odd-man out in the dance music scene, Potter said his looks don’t help. A pale white 27-year-old, whose age is only apparent in the full-beard he wears with pride, Potter doesn’t fit the profile of a man with a passion for old-school gangster rap.

“Usually people are kind of shocked that I’m doing this,” Potter said. “‘Here’s some white guy with a beard coming up and firing off old Public Enemy or like Wu-Tang Clan?’ I’m some white kid up there doing this and they’re like, ‘How does this work?” I use uncensored gangster lyrics so there are N-words. My biggest fear is that somebody is going to take offence to it when that’s not who I am at all — It would be silly for somebody who’s out to be racist sampling great black rappers.”

While it should go without saying that if you go see Hell Yeah Party Time, you should be ready to party, to Potter, it’s worth reiterating. Potter said the worst thing someone can say to him after he’s been doing handstands and whipping his head around all night is that they wanted to dance but didn’t.

“I brought silly string to my last show,” Potter said. “I have confetti shooters. I just want it to be like a party, and not something that people go and sit and watch. I want people dancing.”