Monday Mixtapes

How Shall We Leave This Dead-Dog Town? With The Volume Up And The Windows Down

2010-06-09T11:42:00.000-04:00

As a wise man once said "This is the end, my only friend, the end...". Monday Mixtapes held up for a pretty decent fifteen months - churning out sixty or so of the bad boys, totting up to around eighty hours of music (give or take a few doubles and best-ofs here and there). But (the inevitable "but") the time has come to close the doors and seek pastures greener, as putting these babies together each week has become less fun and more work with changes in schedules/lifestyle/habits etc. Still, there may be an mp3 blog at some later date or possibly a return to mixtapes with another change in circumstances.

For now, though - enjoy our favourites from the vault:
Between You And I, I Know She Could Tear Me Apart
Under A Different Light
The Hungry Robot Mixtape
The King Is Dead, Long Live The King
Emotional Landscapes
Please Remember Me Fondly
Pools Of Sorrow, Waves Of Joy

Much love and kisses.

24/05/10: Eh, This'll Do...

2010-05-24T09:33:00.000-04:00

Chris fills in for my lazy self this week, read all about it:

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100524

Odds and sods again.

Iron Maiden And Winston Churchill - Aces High: One of the greatest speeches by one of the worlds best leaders was used by Iron Maiden to open their concerts in the mid 80s. Someone has gone and cut the two together into one MP3. The result is awesome.

High On Fire - Snakes For The Devine: There's an almost celtic feel to this song, which opens their latest album of same name. It's rather nifty.

Four Tet - As Serious As Your Life: A nice guitar riff mixes well with electronic stuff in this tune, from the 2003 album Rounds.

Machine Head - Hallowed Be Thy Name: A sneaky way to get two Iron Maiden songs into one mixtape? No, for this cover is actually surprisingly well done and well worth a listen.

I Am Jen - Broken in All the Right Places: Nice mellow electronic music. Not much more to say about it.

Depeche Mode - A Pain That I'm Used To: Horribly emo title, but there's a nice industrial feel to this one.

Tom Waits - Alice: The title track from a 2004 album, this features a more mellow sounding Tom than most people will be familiar with. The album's actually the soundtrack to a play about Alice In Wonderland.

Geto Boys - Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta: What? A rap song? Yes! This is a fun little tune that I first heard in the movie Office Space. Ridiculously relaxing.

Glen Campbell - Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life): A countrified cover of the Green Day hit works surprisingly well. Just as uplifting as it always was.

Sun Kil Moon - Heron Blue: Followed by a song that borders on heartbreaking. Enjoy!

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Rather Lovely Thing: From the Soundtrack to The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Sets the tone of the movie wonderfully.

Anais Mitchell - Why We Build the Wall: From the 2010 album Hadestown, which is a retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice set in a post apocalytpic/depression era America. This track features Hades (voiced by Greg Brown) indoctrinating his followers. Wonderful call and response stuff.

Nightwish - Ghost Love Score: From the 2004 album Once, this lengthy tune is all kinds of Epic.

Dio - Holy Diver: I know it's probably already clichéd as fuck, but given the events of last week, how could I not include one of his tunes? If you haven't heard Holy Diver and it's wonderfully nonsensical lyrics ('Ride the Tiger, you can see his stripes but you know he's clean, oh don't you see what I mean?' Um... not really Ronnie, but you're awesome anyway) you need to. Now.

17/05/10: Pretty Much Amazing

2010-05-17T19:03:00.000-04:00

I'm super busy so you guys are gonna have to pretend like I described all this shit to you already and told you it was all awesome, okay? Okay.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100517

Chiddy Bang - Kids
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Graceland
Sophie Madeleine - The Knitting Song
Brigthon Port Authority - Spade (Feat. Martha Wainwright)
65daysofstatic - Weak4
N.A.S.A. - Way Down (Feat. RZA, Barbie And John Frusciante)
Kazey & Bulldog - Gunshot Versus Terror Squad
Jem - They
The Ravonettes - Attack Of The Ghost Riders
Plan B - She Said
Bon Iver - Come Talk To Me
Chihei Hatakeyama - Confession
Lisa Hannigan - I Don't Know
Jesse Malin - Broken Radio (Feat. Bruce Springsteen)
The Barr Brothers - Beggar In The Morning
Simon Dupree & The Big Sound - Kites
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Aya
The Band - The Weight
Box Car Racer - There Is

10/05/10: How You Like Me Now?

2010-05-10T12:53:00.000-04:00

This week's another mixed bag of alternate takes on things. You want mashups? We've got the simple (but well-done) meeting of Gorillaz and Motörhead all the way up to Lady Gaga meets The Black Eyed Peas meets T.I. meets Katy Perry meets kanYe West meets... in a clusterfuck of a mashup.

Then there's a house remix of Bon Iver that works oddly well, some note-for-note covers (Angel is so nigh-on identical, it's kinda scary) and some less orthodox ones, like Diamanda Galás' careering rendition of a country classic and Marilyn Manson's slowed-down and creeped-out take on the Eurythmics. And then there's Florence + The Machine's live cover cum mashup with Dizzee Rascal, which ticks just about every box the rest of the songs on here check.

Anyhow, get downloading:

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100510

Dead Prez - Two Weeks Of Hip-Hop (Feat. Grizzly Bear)
The Heavy - How You Like Me Now? (Joker Radio Edit)
Bon Iver - Re: Stacks (Tomas Barfod Remix)
DJ Earworm - United States Of Pop 2009 (Blame It On The Pop)
White Town - Your Woman
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Angel
Foo Fighters - Baker Street
DJ Morgoth - Ace Of Spades Feels Good
Plan B - Missing Links
Marilyn Manson - Sweet Dreams
Diamanda Galás - 8 Men And 4 Women
Kelly Hogan - Papa Was A Rodeo
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Good Golly Miss Molly
Florence + The Machine - You Got The Dirtee Love (With Dizzee Rascal)
Rodrigo Y Gabriela - One
Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane
Iron & Wine - Such Great Heights

03/05/10: The Kids Aren't Alright

2010-05-03T12:25:00.000-04:00

A little digging through a folder of odds and ends brought this mixtape together after I rediscovered a load of Nu-Metal/early Emo/Punk stuff that transported me back 8-10 years in an instant. So I thought I'd share it with you cats.

You lucky, lucky people.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100503

Biffy Clyro - 57
Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American
Nickelback - Never Again
Korn - Blind
Limp Bizkit - Break Stuff
Saves The Day - At Your Funeral
The Offspring - The Kids Aren't Alright
Lostprophets - Shinobi Vs. Dragon Ninja
System Of A Down - Chop Suey
Flogging Molly - Drunken Lullabies
Papa Roach - Last Resort
Slipknot - Wait & Bleed (Video Version)
Violent Delight - I Wish I Was A Girl
Machine Head - From This Day
Disturbed - Down With The Sickness (Single Edit)
Ill Niño - God Save Us
Mudvayne - Dig
Deftones - Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)
Finch - Letters To You
Bad Religion - American Jesus
Killswitch Engage - Rose Of Sharyn
American Hi-Hi - Flavor Of The Weak
Biffy Clyro - 27

26/04/10: Found Sound 4 - 1158 Mixology #1

2010-04-26T17:05:00.002-04:00

I found an ace mixtape this week, so here it is in its entirety.If anyone has any clue on the instrumental I can't place ~~or the song which I can't find anything on despite a load of lyrics googling~~ (Cheers, Cathal) then any information would be greatly appreciated.

Otherwise just enjoy this one, there's some great shit on it: Fatboy Slim's Right Here, Right Now is an awesome opener and the slowed-down cover of Lil Wayne's Lollipop is an awesome closer, everything in between is just about as good as well. Hearing Buck 65 totally reminded me of just how damned good he is, so it was a nice find in that regard too.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100426

Fatboy Slim - Right Here, Right Now
Crazy P - Lady T
Massive Attack - Rush Minute
Unknown Artist - Unknown Title
Obadiah Parker - Hey Ya!
Loveage - Stroker Ace
Metric - Collect Call
Mt. Eden - Sierra Leone
Sixtoo - Sultry
Buck 65 - Blood Of A Young Wolf
Muse - Uprising
Steppenwolf - Magic Carpet Ride (Phillip Weir Remix)
Local H - Hands On The Bible
La Roux - In For The Kill (Skream's Let's Get Ravey Remix)
Right Side Of The Tree - Vanilla Lollipop

19/04/10: Behold The Sound Of Revolution

2010-04-19T10:00:00.001-04:00

Another bookended mixtape! Classic - fucking classic - tunes ~~completely ruined~~ reinterpreted by modern artists (I enjoy 'em both, actually, they're just neither a patch on the originals) start and end this baby. Then thrown in the middle of it there're a couple of neat remixes, one stripping Lily Allen of all the nonsense and laying a nice piano part behind her, the other comparing Bush to Hitler. Which is nice.

Die Antwoord's is Enter The Ninja is some of the best rap I've heard in a while, and the first South African rap I've ever heard I think. There's more of the new Frightened Rabbit album since it's bloody astounding, and some amazingly catchy goodness from Mumford And Sons. Add some super-super-funky Parliament, a lovely instrumental break for a couple of songs and some slow, melancholy ones to close out and bam - there it is.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100419

Me First And The Gimme Gimmes - Blowin' In The Wind
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Mercy
Mumford And Sons - Little Lion Man
Frightened Rabbit - Skip The Youth
Lily Allen - The Fear (Doctor Rosen Remix)
Die Antwoord - Enter The Ninja
Ikonika - Please
Parliament - Flash Light
Thomas Chase, Steve Rucker & James L. Venable - Gangreen Gange
Balmorhea - Bowsprit
Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate - Doudou
Toe - メトロノーム (Metronome)
Gay For Johnny Depp - Shh, Put The Shiv To My Throat (Blacksmoke Remix)
Eamon - Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)
Oasis - Lyla
Malcolm Middleton - Stay Close, Sit Tight
Jet - Look What You've Done
Pilate - Out On My Feet
The Low Anthem - Her Majesty

12/04/10: Don't Let Them Tell You What You Think Is Cool

2010-04-12T11:40:00.000-04:00

Bam! Just listen to this one, no wordiness, no nonsense just awesome sounds and shit. Yeah!

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100412

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Ain't No Easy Way
The Tallest Man On Earth - Into The Stream
Anaïs Mitchell - Songbird Intro/Hey, Little Songbird (Feat. Greg Brown)
Florence + The Machine - My Boy Builds Coffins
Aretha Franklin - Nessun Dorma
Hercules & Love Affair - Blind
Frightened Rabbit - Swim Until You Can't See Land
Hot Chip - I Feel Better
PF Project - Choose Life
P.O.S. - Goodbye
Gorillaz - Fire Coming Out Of A Monkey's Head (Feat. Dennis Hopper)
Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang - Stagger Lee
Deftones - Knife Prty
Hail Social - Get In The Car
Tori Amos - Welcome To England
Thelonious Monster - Weakness In Me
Portishead - Glory Box
U2 - One
The Kleptones - Final Word

05/04/10: Slacking Off (Part II)

2010-04-05T17:28:00.001-04:00

Ok, so I'm taking a week off to sit back and digest some of the music I've been voraciously consuming recently, so I'm going to put you all in the very capable hands of some lovely cats out there.

Have a lookit at Mixtape Mondays and check out some stuff from a lass who's taking a very similar idea in a different direction to the way I am.

And CPI's got a new mix out, full of lovable indie goodness: download ineedaghostship here.

Until next week, my sweets.

29/03/10: And A One, And A Two...

2010-03-29T12:08:00.000-04:00

You know those pairs of songs that just don't sound right when they're isolated? Like that spectacular double A-side that Muse released a few years ago? Yeah, that's what this mixtape is made up of: pairs of songs that may well be good individually but hat don't really come into their own until they're presented alongside their sister piece.

Some of these are astoundingly good album openers, a solid one-two hit that just grabs you and won't let go as it drags you into the album: the hugely controversial openers to N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton album, the two songs that kicked off Radiohead's Hail To The Thief. with a solid kick in the teeth and the beastly good instrumental double-act that serves as starters to And So I Watch You From Afar's self-titled début.

Some of them are the only song songs worth listening to on an otherwise totally disappointing Tool album (naming no names, of course).

Some of them are the first two songs I heard from one of my favourite punk bands; the very two Creeps tunes that tided me over while I waited for Gamma Gamma Ray to cross the Atlantic and arrive in the post.

And then there's one of the most amazing bookending song(s) that's ever been done. Not that the middle of Wish You Were Here is at all bad or dull or not worth listening to - quite the contrary, in fact - merely that the nine parts of Shine On You Crazy Diamond are such a spectacular opening/closing pair that I couldn't one-two them in the same way as the others on this mixtape, but they're still very much in the same vein. Anyhow, stop reading this nonsense and start listening to the mixtape already.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100329

Pink Floyd - Shine In You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)
And So I Watch You From Afar - Set Guitars To Kill/A Little Bit Of Solidarity Goes A Long Way
Muse - Dead Star/In Your World
Radiohead - 2+2=5/Sit Down, Stand Up.
Tool - Vicarious/Jambi
The Creeps - Codename: Farflight/In The Graveyard (They're Coming To Get Me)
N.W.A. - Straight Outta Compton/Fuck Tha Police
Pink Floyd - Shine In You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX)

22/03/10: Music From And Inspired By The Original Video Game

2010-03-22T08:52:00.000-04:00

Bookended by two Final Fantasy epics this week's mixtape is all about music from videogames - be it the original soundtrack, a fully-orchestrated re-working, a chiptune cover or a dubstep remix. Videogame music has come a long way from being a catchy four-note, one-tone tune that accompanies the most basic of games (Tetris, anyone?) to an integral part of modern games, as much a part as a good film score is but with the added requirement of needing to be sustainable for longer than 2 hours as it's repeated over and over through a game that might take 100+ hours to get through fully (as is the case with pretty much any of the Final Fantasy games).

Each song in this mixtape is kind of awesome in its own right: from the huge feel of One-Winged Angel's orchestra and dramatic choir to the simple mashup of Tomb Raider's oboe-led main theme with the acapella to Timbaland's The Way I Are. The last half of the mixtape is filled with two twenty-minute beasts: one piano suite inspired by the the Secret Of Mana games and a fully-orchestrated take on Nobuo Uematsu's opera piece from Final Fantasy VI. It's kinda beastly - go enjoy.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090719

Nobuo Uematsu - One-Winged Angel (Orchestrated Version) [Final Fantasy VII]
Martin O'Donnell & Michael Salatori - Halo [Halo]
The Black Mages - Grand Cross [Final Fantasy IX]
Rusko - SNES Dub
Zomby - U Are My Fantasy (Street Fighter II Theme Remix) [Street Fighter II]
Dub Fiend - Tetris Dubstep Remix [Tetris]
Virt - Thriller
Norwegian Recycling - Timb Raider [Tomb Raider]
Firebrand Boy - Three Mile Wish
Rexy - Reign Of The Mana Sword [Secret Of Mana/Seiken Densetsu II]
Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra - The Dream Oath ~ Maria & Draco [Final Fantasy VI]

15/03/10: And Everything Is Going To The Beat

2010-03-15T18:38:00.000-04:00

As always there's a load of tasty interpretations of classic (and not quite so classic) originals this week: from the piano-led takes on the Black Eyed Peas' My Humps and Knockin' On Heaven's Door to the unstable and violently angry rant at Jolene.

Aside from that, though, there's a major question needing answered this week: what do you class seminal instrumental music without simply throwing it in the Post-Rock box that everything with guitars but without vocals gets lumped into? Post Harbor might just be classifiable as Post Rock but And So I Watch You From Afar certainly don't' seem to slot neatly in there. Any suggestions?

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090719

MGMT - Kids
Passion Pit - Sleepyhead (Starsmith Remix) (Feat. Ellie Goulding)
John 5 - Sugarfoot Rag
My Bloody Valentine - We Have All The Time In The World
And So I Watch You From Afar - I Capture Castles
The Housemartins - Caravan Of Love
Ryan Adams - I Want It That Way
Alanis Morissette - My Humps
Neko Case - A Widow's Toast
Portishead - Sour Times
Queen Adreena - Jolene
In The Pines - Dress On Fire
Valgeir Sigurdsson - Helter Smelter
Post Harbor - Cities Of The Interior
Placebo - Haemoglobin
Anaïs Mitchell - If It's True (Feat. Justin Vernon)
Burial - Forgive
Peter Gabriel - Flume
Antony & The Johnsons - Knockin' On Heaven's Door

08/03/10: Bag Of Mixed Apes (Guest Mix)

2010-03-08T20:04:00.001-05:00

We have a guest mixer this week, you may remember him from a while back:

A little non-linear mix of old and new musics spanning from the 1980's to some things i put together last month. Like any respectable "par-tay" this mix starts off with vintage toe-tappers and proceeds to chill out over the course of the evening. It consists mostly of obscure hip-hop, though you will also find left-field additions such as Bjork or 'odd man out' '80 band Japan. The blends are exclusive to this mix and will not be found elsewhere on the internets, catch them while you can.
Also : A note of caution for young minds : This Mix Contains Swears Throughout.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100308

Do The James (Dub) - Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud
This Dub's For You - Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud
Bullit (Sparo's Old School Mix) - Virgil (Sparo) Howe
Rakim + Bullion - Guess Who's Back Bones (Exclusive Blend)
Say What You Wanna Say - Lovebug Starski
Phat Kat + Paul White - Coming With The White (Exclusive Blend)
Samedi (De La Soul - Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays Cover) - Rouge A Levres
I Can Do This (Uptown Mix) - Monie Love
Daybreaker (Roots Manuva Remix) - Beth Orton feat. Roots Manuva
Bonita Applebum (Instrumental) - A Tribe Called Quest
Redman + K-Solo + Slumgullion - It's Like That Favela (Exclusive Blend)
Listen Up - Erule
Pass The Bone (Instrumental) - Genius (Later known as GZA)
Methodman + Redman + Beastie Boys - How High Is Jimmy James? (Exclusive Blend)
C'est Grems & Le 4 Romain (Instrumental) - Rouge A Levres
Erase Rascism - Biz Markie (Feat. Kool G Rap & Big Daddy Kane)
Live Life A Better Way - Skitz (a.k.a Drilla)
I Miss You (Dobie Remix Part 1) - Bjork (Feat. Rodney P)
My New Career - Japan
Purple (A Tribe Called Quest Edit) - Crustation
Nas + a filial - Charme The World (Exclusive Blend)

01/03/10: I Put My Soul In What I Do

2010-03-01T14:53:00.001-05:00

There're a fair few out of character songs in this week's mixtape: Tool using up-front, spelled-out lyrics to tell a story; Ice Cube rapping about how everything's pretty much alright; R.E.M. hosting a guest rapper and Blink-182 being serious and inviting Robert Smith to join them. Of course there's also a lot of true-to-form goodness there as well: Radiohead being weird as fuck (but still awesome) and The Stone Roses going just a teeny bit OTT. It's all good, though.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100301

Bad Sector - Radial Body 2
Ice Cube - It Was A Good Day
Common Sense - I Used To Love H.E.R.
Tool - Ænema
Fever Ray - When I Grow Up (Lissvik Remix)
Radiohead - Pulk/Pull Revolving Door
Blink-182 - Easy Target/All Of This (With Robert Smith)
Common Market - Back Home (The Return)
Hell Is For Heroes - Disconnector
Chikinki - Assassinator 13
Ian Brown - Sister Rose (Various Production Remix)
How To Grow A Band - The Beekeeper
R.E.M. - The Outsiders (Feat. Q-Tip)
Bob Marley - Concrete Jungle (Rakim Remix)
The Stone Roses - I Am The Resurrection
The Verve - History

22/02/10: It's Just A Ride

2010-02-22T20:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, lots of spoken word this week and some classic covers (for a change): Roberta Flack's take on Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? is equal parts gorgeous and heartbreaking while Peter Gabriel's Scratch My Back project has yielded some amazing results in his version of Bowie's "Heroes" as well as some other wonders (like him covering Bon Iver and The Arcade Fire) I highly recommend you check out.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100222

Joss Stone - Fell In Love With A Boy
The Ravonettes - Attack Of The Ghost Riders
Massive Attack - Teardrop
DJ Shadow - What Does Your Soul Look Like?, Pt. 4
Dropkick Murphys - I'm Shipping Up To Boston
Bob Dylan - Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
Peter Gabriel - "Heroes" (Wildebeest Mix)
At The Drive-In - One-Armed Scissor
Virt - Thriller
Korn - Blind
Limp Bizkit - Faith
Metallica - Fade To Black
Lazyboy - Underwear Goes Inside The Pants
Roberta Flack - Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
Azure Ray - November
The Kleptones - Last Words (A Tribute)
William S. Burroughs & Kurt Cobain - The Priest They Called Him

15/02/10: Kill Me Again, With Love

2010-02-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

I love the way that the vocals meld with the oboe on the cover of Lucky that starts off this week's mixtape, and I've not been able to stop listen to Tegan & Sara's work with Tiësto on Feel It In My Bones for the past few days - check out the rest of Kaleidoscope, his new album, because it's bloody stellar as well. Also noteworthy is the ultra-laid back reworking of Ghost Town that Spaceape lends his spectacular drawl to - it doesn't sound too amazing until you really crank the volume up and let the bass rattle you a bit. Jenny Lewis seems to have borrowed the first half of A Whiter Shade Of Pale's melody for Godspeed, but I'll forgive her because she turned out a cracking tune from it. I was amazed to see I had used Skinny Love yet, so that's finally making an appearance but - to be fair - if you don't own For Emma, Forever Ago yet then there's something you've missed along the wya because it's nigh-on essential. Wrapping up is a cover of Her Majesty from The Low Anthem, not the best work they've ever done but a fun take on the little ditty nonetheless.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100215

My Brightest Diamond - Lucky
Name Taken - Drive, Drive, Drive
Deftones - Change (In The House Of Flies)
Tiësto - Feel It In My Bones (Feat. Tegan & Sara)
Four Tet - You Could Ruin My Day
John Frusciante - Second Walk
Jenny Lewis - Godspeed
Kode9 & The Spaceape - Ghost Town
Artful Dodger - ReRewind (Feat. Craig David) (HavocNdeeD Remix)
The Rock Of Travolta - Luke Warm Skywater
Brighton Port Authority - Superman (Feat. Simon Thornton)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Fuckin' Up
The Creeps - Two Spies
Natasha Bedingfield - Chasing Cars
The Kinks - Waterloo Sunset
Bon Iver - Skinny Love
Sun Kil Moon - Tonight The Sky
The Low Anthem - Her Majesty

08/02/10: I'll Be The Virus If You'll Be The Host

2010-02-08T18:52:00.002-05:00

Apologies for lateness, my lovies - problems with my uploader, but it seems to be sorted now.

There's a few noteworthy performances to watch out for this week, starting off with the opener: if Ellie Goulding keeps up what she's doing her début album is going to be immense, perfect pop hooks and a wonderfully restrained use of autotune make Under The Sheets catchy as fuck without being annoyingly so.
Then - as always - there's the reinterpretations: Amy Millan's bluegrass-tinged reworking of I Will Follow You Into The Dark is about the only thing that keeps me sane when I hear the original on my work's radio for the millionth time. The Twilight Sad's reworking of their own song into a grinding organ-led piece is interesting, to say the least, but actually suits the vocal performance perfectly. Tek-One's remix of the terrible Sleep With One Eye Open by the equally terrible Bring Me The Horizon is a stroke of genius: dubstep needs to meet metalcore more often. And finally, Marilyn Manson's cover of I Put A Spell On You wasn't on my potentials list until Friday night, when it suddenly made the mixtape cut after I saw a stripper tear up the floor (and the pole) to it. Fond memories, indeed.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100208

Ellie Goulding - Under The Sheets
Garbage - As Heaven Is Wide
The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up
Biology - Programming The Populous
The Weakerthans - Civil Twilight
Oasis - Little By Little
Owen - In The Morning, Before Work
Amy Millan - I Will Follow You Into The Dark
The Twilight Sad - Cold Days From The Birdhouse
Roy Orbison - I Drove All Night
Tori Amos - Professional Widow (Star Trunk Funkin' Radio Edit)
Bring Me The Horizon - Sleep With One Eye Open (Tek-One Remix)
Marilyn Manson - I Put A Spell On You
Otis Redding - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
The Morning Benders - Dreams
This Will Destroy You -Threads
Ours - Broken
Ryan Adams - Starlite Diner

01/02/10: I'll Love You The Best Way I Know How

2010-02-01T01:55:00.000-05:00

It's a bit of an odds-n-sods mixtape this week, a fair few songs I've been meaning to highlight for a while (old school Tool and catchy-as-hell Alkaline Trio stuff, for example) as well as some brand new stuff (Frightened Rabbit's take on Walking In The Air and the fantastic remix/mashup work pairing J.Period & K'Naan with Bob Dylan and the Wu-Tang Clan with The Beatles). In the middle we've also got some neat bits and pieces I've picked up here and there. All in all I think it sounds pretty shit hot.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100102

Arms - Kids Aflame
Azeda Booth - Well (Refilled And Set In Sand)
Rae Spoon & Alex Decoupigny - U Bahn
Tori Amos - Me And A Gun
Alkaline Trio - Back To Hell
Tool - Bottom (Feat. Henry Rollins)
Tom Caruana - (You Never) Got Your Money
Acid Girls - The Numbers Songs
Elliott Brood - Write It All Down For You
Au Revoir Simone - Shadows
Steely Dan - Aja
Placebo - Meds (Feat. VV)
J.Period & K'Naan - Don't Think Twice (The Messengers Remix)
Broken Note - Crux
Bassnectar - Cozza Frenzy (Feat. Seasunz)
Air France - Collapsing At Your Doorstep
Bat For Lashes - Siren Song
Frightened Rabbit - Walking In The Air

25/01/10: Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing

2010-01-26T10:09:00.001-05:00

This week's mixtape is dedicated to all things fucking heavy. It might start out seeming innocuous (key word there being "seeming") but it soon kicks you right in the teeth.

And now for a roundup of this week's highlights: Strapping Young Lad's Home Nucleonics comes from their City album, which was hailed as the heaviest thing in existence when it was first released. Pantera's Walk is about as brutal as it comes: music for methodical violence in the extreme. 108, while being a weird combination of devout Hare Krishnas and insane hardcore freaks, actually make som astoundingly good music - that and Bibles Plus Guns Equals The American Dream is one of the best song titles I've ever heard. Pig Destroyer might blast past you before you even really get a chance to register it but, man... they're fucking crazy. And finally Khanate wrap things up with another kind of heavy altogether - Dead is really just something else and knowing that it's "extreme doom metal" doesn't quite prepare you for that.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100125

Tori Amos - Raining Blood
Strapping Young Lad - Home Nucleonics
Gallows - The Riverbed
108 - Bibles Plus Guns Equals The American Dream
Kittie - Spit
Pig Destroyer - Cheerleader Corpses
Mudvayne - Dig
Slipknot - (sic)
I-Def-I - When Venus Sends A Black Rose
Limp Bizkit - Break Stuff
Pantera - Walk
Jesu - Friends Are Evil
High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings
Bullet For My Valentine - Sanitarium (Welcome Home)
From Autumn To Ashes - The Switch
Slayer - Raining Blood
Khanate - Dead

18/01/10: Spirals Of Golden Haze

2010-01-18T20:53:00.001-05:00

This week's mixtape has turned into somewhat of a laid-back, spacey, chill-out affair. Nothing wrong with that, of course, just a heads up.

Worth keeping and ear out for this week are the rumbling, jammy Had To Cry Today from Blind Faith, Clapton's post-Cream supergroup who were arguably better than Cream; Bob Dylan's Dreamin' Of You, showing that he still has it as an offcut that ended up on his recent Bootleg Series album is still far better than the best output of many others these days, let alone his few remaining contemporaries; and, finally, Simon & Garfunkel's The Boxer, which is easily one of their finest moments. Interesting fact on that last one: the huge drum sound that cuts through the songs occasionally is actually someone swinging a chain against a concrete floor, recorded from some distance away. So there.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100118

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Pretend
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Mogwai - Acid Food
Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer
Steve Gurley - Hotboys (Dub)
Starsailor - Silence Is Easy
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
The Verve - Lucky Man
Owen - Bad News
Blind Faith - Had To Cry Today
System Of A Down - Spiders
Bob Dylan - Dreamin' Of You
The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
The Very Best - Dinosaur On The Ark
Tiësto - Kaleidoscope (Feat. Jónsi)

11/01/10: A God-Awful Small Affair

2010-01-11T10:02:00.000-05:00

On time for a change! Well, the music is here at the very least. The rest will follow, I promise. For now, though, just enjoy the tunes.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100111

65daysofstatic - Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here
Rage Against The Machine - Guerilla Radio
Beth Orton - She Cries Your Name
Amy Winehouse - In My Bed
Ellen Allien & Apparat - Bubbles
Neko Case - Margaret Vs. Pauline
Seu George - Life On Mars?
The Traveling Wilburys - Handle With Care
Malcolm Middleton - Fuck It, I Love You
Wolfman - For Lovers (Feat. Pete Doherty)
The Bittersweets - Bag Of Bones
Ryan Adams - Last Nite
Jim Croce - I Got A Name
Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight
Biffy Clyro - 27
Blink-182 - I'm Lost Without You
A Silver Mt. Zion - Blown-Out Joy From Heaven's Mercied Hole

04/01/10: With You I'll Always Share

2010-01-05T08:25:00.004-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting (again) - computers, firewalls and the fates seem to be conspiring against me actually posting a mixtape on or before a Monday each week these days. I shall return with more info on this one later, for now just enjoy the music.

Ok, it's taken me long enough but here we go: this week's mixtape is another celebration of how much you can change a song with a cover, remix, reinterpretation or even just by coming at it from a different angle live. These songs are not always better than the original but they're - at the very least - an interesting different look at the source material.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20100104

Marvin Gaye & Tammy Terrel - Ain't No Mountain High Enough (Mikey Mic Remix): Significantly better than a lot of the official remixes commissioned for the Motown Remixed series this take on Ain't No Mountain has wonderful, restrained, used of auto-tune and some nice vocal cutting to give the whole thing a new flavour.

Donovan Done - 99 Problems (Bossa Nova Remix): I think 99 Problems may be one of the most mashed-up songs out there - partly due to Jay-Z's release of The Black Album acapellas - but this one stands out as one of the most fun, even if it's not one of the bets done one. Looks out for the amazing instrumental break midway though.

Amy Millan - I Will Follow You Into The Dark: Amy Millan, known for her work in Stars and Broken Social Scene, has just released her second solo album. I've yet to hear it but if the rest of it is anywhere near as good as this bluegrass-tinged cover of Death Cab For Cutie then line me up for a copy.

Napalm Death - Nazi Punks Fuck Off: Napalm Death - extreme metal gods - doing as straight-up a cover as they can of the Dead Kennedys' Nazi Punks Fuck Off. It's something special.

Louis Armstrong - Cheesecake (DJ Yoda Remix): Not one of Louis "What A Wonderful World" Armstrong's most thought-provokingly memorable songs, this is and incredibly fun and catchy tune made even moreso (on both counts) by DJ Yoda's work as part of his How To Cut & Paste: The Thirties Edition work.

Bat For Lashes - Pearl's Dream (Skream's Pour Another Glass Of Champers Remix): Bat For Lashes' gorgeous, haunting vocals over Skream's insanely good drumwork - with just a touch of synth and sampled lines from the original to serve as an aide-memoir - make this a bloody fantastic remix.

Johnny Cash - Hurt: I can't believe I've not posted this before. Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails' drug-ballad, with a twist to turn it more into a look back over an old man's life. The video is... something else. Poignant doesn't even begun to describe it.

Eminem - Stan (Feat. Dido): While maybe not Eminem's most well-known song (though it must be up there) it's certainly his most well-respected. The use of the sample from Dido's Thank You - a song I'm not really a fan of outside of this context - is inspired and properly launched her career after Faithless had helped give her a leg-up to that point.

Puff Daddy & The Family - Victory (Trent Reznor Mix): As with a lot of Trent Reznor's remixes it's hard to put your finger on exactly what he changed about this song - there are some heavier guitars, but that's not all: somehow the song takes on a much harsher feel, reinforcing the Mafioso-styled lyrics. Not the expected remix for a Puff Daddy song, but ace nonetheless.

Arctic Monkeys - Diamonds Are Forever (Live At Glastonbury): Shirley Bassey's classic get the Arctic Monkeys treatment: pure fun and nothing else.

Manic Street Preachers - Umbrella: The Manic Street Preachers take one of the biggest, most recognisable songs of the past few years and basically make it their own here. The spacey, effects-laden guitars combined with the inimitable vocals of James Dean Bradfield completely remove all thought of Rihanna from your head when you hear this. It's pretty impressive.

Ben Gibbard - Jóga: Ben Gibbard has a knack for really paring down well-known songs (see also his cover of Thriller) and giving them a bare-bones acoustic rendition that, while it doesn't completely change the feel of the song, at least introduces an oddly vulnerable aspect that his vocals tend to give anything he lends them to.

The Smashing Pumpkins - Disarm (Randy Boyer Mix): The first of two remixes like this: trance taking on nineties rock isn't something hear all too often. The integration of Disarm into the remix is impressively well done, it's not one of the overbearingly dance-leaning ones where only a line or two from the "remixed" song feature over an otherwise unrecognisable electronica mix.

Jesse Malin - Yoshimi: Most of Jesse Malin's On Your Sleeve album was unremarkable: his nasal voice doesn't lend itself too well to many songs, let alone well-known ones like Do You Remember Rock N' Roll Radio?. The bonus song, though, is a cover of The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and it works bizarrely well with just piano, a touch of tambourine and his whiny voice.

Portishead - Wandering Star (Live At ATP): Slowed down and drawn out, always on the brink of kicking off to return to the original's tempo and full instrumentation, this version of Wandering Star tugs and pulls at you constantly, wanting you to second-guess it. The ghostly theremin-like backing vocals are a wonderful, creepy touch.

Radiohead - Street Spirit (Tiësto Remix): And the second rock song to undergo the trance treatment: Radiohead's Street Spirit (Fade Out) was remixed by Tiësto in 2003 and leaked to the internet in 2004. Similarly the the Disarm remix the remixed song features heavily in the final mix, the main guitar line repeating over and over again while the bass rumbles along beneath it and the synths build. It takes nearly five minutes before the vocals are sampled, but the build-up to that point is worth it. This is a fucking gorgeous mix.

65daysofstatic - Another Code Against The Gone (War Of The Worlds Remix): This ins just a teaser for the full The Fall Of The Worlds album, a mashup of 65daysofstatic's The Fall Of Math and spoken-word parts of Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds musical. It's an interesting concept that - barring some minor volume-level production issues - makes for a bloody cracking listen.

28/12/09: Pools Of Sorrow, Waves Of Joy

2009-12-29T14:08:00.001-05:00

And here we go, last one of the year - my pick of Graeme's favourite songs that we posted over the past twelve months. I'm in a rush so I'll leave it at that but we'll be back in the New Year for sure.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20091228

Elbow - One Day Like This
Stars - Division
Portishead - Wandering Star
Dntel - Roll On (Feat. Jenny Lewis)
Rjd2 - True Confessions
Burial - Archangel
Fiona Apple - Across The Universe
Jesu - Silver
Wolfram Huschke - Praise
Le Meu Le Purr - Pop Rocks & Soda
Franklin For Short - Bishops Hat Cactus
Malcolm Middleton - Devil And The Angel
65daysofstatic - The Major Cities Of The World Are Being Destroyed One By One By The Monsters
Doves - The Cedar Room
Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm

21/12/09: Please Remember Me Fondly

2009-12-22T09:47:00.001-05:00

Here we go with the best of the best: in trying to avoid favouritism we've gone for Graeme's picks of my favourites of everything we posted all year (mine of his next time, kids). You can dig back to find out what we thought of each song - it's the holidays and we're busy and being lazy - for now though just give 'em a download and enjoy, if you like what you hear and don't know the rest of the mix it's on give that a download too.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20091221

A. R. Rahman - O Saya (Feat. M.I.A.)
John Mayer - Kid A
The Low Anthem - Ticket Taker
Odadiah Parker - Idioteque
The Tallest Man On Earth - I Won't Be Found
Noon & DJ Twister - Vision
Iron & Wine - Trapeze Swinger
Camera Obscura - Super Trouper
The Jackson 5 - I Want You Back (Z-Trip Remix)
Oasis - Fuckin' In The Bushes
Maxïmo Park - Books From Boxes
Metallica - Mama Said
Adele - Hometown Glory
Primal Scream - Space Blues #2
Pink Floyd - Great Gig In The Sky
Simon & Garfunkel - The Only Living Boy In New York
Damien Rice - Delicate
Tom Waits - Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)

07/12/09: Best 2009 Releases

2009-12-07T12:46:00.001-05:00

Simply because everyone else is doing it (peer pressure is a bitch, isn't it?) here's my take of 2009's best releases. Personally, not much released in 2009 really grabbed me but then it normally takes me 2/3 years to fully digest the output of any given year and to report on it fully. Look out for the best of 2006 any day now!

Download: Monday Mixtape 20091207

Phoenix - Lisztomania: Phoenix are great, poppy fun and their 2009 album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, is no exception. What makes this song so awesome is a wonderful fan-made video that mashes up classic eighties movies to the song. The band apparently love this video more than their fancy, expensive one and have as good as disowned the official one.

Brother Ali - Brother And Sisters/The Preacher: Powerful, well-written and spectacularly produced: this is what hip-hop should be. Brother Ali hits a few bum notes on his album, Us, but for the most part it's stellar.

Franz Ferdinand - Katherine Hit Me: Franz Ferdinand's Tonight: Franz Ferdinand was a good album, a well-blended mix of classic jaunty and angular Franz Ferdinand with a refreshing bit of experimentation. Blood: Franz Ferdinand, however, is something else entirely - an album of bizarre and amazing dub remixes of the Tonight album. One hell of a sister-piece.

The Prodigy - Omen: The Prodigy are back and bloody astounding again: Invaders Must Die might just be their best album yet and live? Jesus... they're out of this world. Crank this one up loud as FUCK.

65daysofstatic - A Failsafe: Talking of bands that blow you away live... 65daysofstatic recorded a live album last year, hitting two venues in one night (opening at Madison Square Gardens for The Cure then hopping to Radio City Music Hall where God Fires Man warmed up for them, fucking hell...) and mashing together recording from both to produce Escape From New York. This searing burst of goodness closes the album.

Elbow & The BBC Concert Orchestra - The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver: As if The Seldom Seen Kid wasn't good enough as it was, Elbow went and re-recorded it in its entirety with the BBC Concert Orchestra & Choir. Some songs benefited a lot (like this and One Day Like This), others less so (Friend Of Ours worked better when it was more sparse). The swell of the choir and strings about 3.40 in sends a chill up my spine. Every. Single. Time.

Martyn - Vancouver: There was a lot of hype awaiting Martyn's début album - Great Lengths - which, thankfully, I wasn't aware of. I just listened to it as it stood and was blown away, no hype necessary. Once again, someone you need to go and see live - the difference between his warm-up acts (who made me wonder if the concept of good mixing was something I'd just deluded myself into believing existed) and him showed just how talented with the decks as well as in production he really is.

King Cannibal - Dirt (Feat. Daddy Freddy): More dubstep out the blue for me - I got King Cannibal's Let The Night Roar on an off-hand remark about different sub-genres in dubstep. King Cannibal was described as "heavy" which is an understatement, to say the least. This shit is fucking brutal, no bones about it, but it's some of the best dubstep I've heard.

Gallows - Death Voices: Imagine the Sex Pistols in they recorded Never Mind The Bollocks today after an education in music theory and a youth spent listening to hardcore. Now make them more pissed off. Gallows' Grey Britain is the album they would record.

Frightened Rabbit - The Modern Leper: I was gutted when I realised that Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight was a 2008 release, since it's basically been my soundtrack to the year - barely ever out the kitchen CD player. Thankfully, though, the band were kind enough to record a mostly-acoustic run-through of the album at Glasgow's Captain's Rest and release it as Quietly Now!. So you lovely cats can now be treated to a rendition of the opener, The Modern Leper.

Antony & The Johnsons - Aeon: Antony & The Johnsons most recent release, The Crying Light, isn't their best work but it's still great stuff. Aeon is possibly the best cut from the album but, as always with Antony's voice, a recording really doesn't do it justice. See 'em live if you ever get the chance.

Burial & Four Tet - Moth: News dropped earlier in the year that dubstep's most secretive man would be releasing a split 12" with Four Tet and the music press went spare for it. Other than the track titles nothing was released about it. The first side is a bit too Four Tet-heavy for my liking, Burial's influence only appears once the song's established and it seems a little tacked on. The second side, Moth, is much more like it: a solid, slow Burial beat, pitched vocals wavering in and out but a different feel to the whole ambiance from Four Tet's influence.

Volcano Choir - Still: If Bon Iver's Blood Bank EP didn't grab you immediately as a worth sequel to For Emma, Forever Ago (which it wasn't meant to be and never could have been anyway) then maybe you should have a look into Volcano Choir's Unmap album. A collaboration between Bon Iver and Collections Of Colonies Of Bees the album serves to flesh out the sound around Justin Vernon's falsetto, rather than forcing it to take centre stage. Still is a reworking of the Blood Bank song Woods, taking the autotuned vocal line part that carried the original song and turning it into just another element of a brilliant piece.

Radiohead - Harry Patch (In Memory Of): Half of Radiohead's output this year (These Are My Twisted Words really didn't make much of an impact on me) Harry Patch (In Memory Of) is haunting, terrifying and touching in equal measure. Jonny Greenwood's talent in writing for, arranging for and conducting an orchestra really shine though and Thom Yorke's falsetto hasn't sounded as pretty ever, I don't think.. I've not included it here because it's a one-off charity download. Get it here: http://download.waste.uk.com/Store/did.html and pass on a quid to the British Legion.

British Sea Power - No Man Is An Archipelago: Quite the change from British Sea Power's usual powerful, swelling pop sound Man Of Aran sounds very much like the movie soundtrack it was designed to be. The sound drifts in and out, never fully taking charge and dragging you anywhere but still showing signs of the potential BSP have exercised fully before. Turn the volume down on this one a bit and curl up with a book to it - this is winter music.

30/11/09: Let Me Steal This Moment From You Now

2009-11-29T11:27:00.002-05:00

There're a surprising number of covers this week - not really by design - but oh well. Worse things in life, I suppose. This'll probably be the last regular update of the year - start getting ready for the oh-so-original Best Of The Year lists starting next week!

Kisses.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20091130

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Shuffle Your Feet: Still BRMCs best album, in my mind, Howl was a radical change in sound from their straight-up rock 'n' roll to experiment in a country-fuelled bluegrass sound. This foot-stomping opener is simply astounding.

Great Big Sea - End Of The World: A tightened up, to-the-point take on R.E.M.'s It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). This is just a three-minute burst of pure fun energy.

Manic Street Preachers - Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart: The Manic Street Preachers back when they were bitter but before they were jaded, Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart is them at their most biting and acidic - as if the title didn't tell you that already.

Linkin Park - Faint: I've recently rediscovered that I actually quite enjoy Linkin Park, especially the Meteora-era stuff - lush with strings but held taught with tight drums and vocals with tiny, nicely executed glitches. Faint beat out Numb for this mixtape, but it was close.

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Always On My Mind: After the Pet Shop Boys' version turned Elvis' sorrowful plea of a song into a remorseless "I'm such a cad, but you can't help loving me" jaunt it's nice to hear a more earnest - if a little melancholy - country take on it.

Placebo - Running Up That Hill: Placebo have done some amazing covers (Daddy Cool and Where Is My Mind? jump to me immediately) but this one, staying pretty true to the original but with enough of a subtle change in sound (most obvious in Brian Molko's distinctive whine), tops them.

65daysofstatic - Welcome To The Times: It's difficult to lift songs out from the middle of 65daysofstatic's One Time for All Time album, since it runs as a single, coherent (not to mention amazing) piece for the most part, but this is one of the few that can survive stood up on its own. Full of harmonic-heavy lines with drums pushing and pulling it like a heavy-breathing chest this is one of the aforementioned spectacular album's main driving pieces.

Popchop - Money Ain't A Thing: Instrumental pop music + Rap acapella = Mashup is a pretty heavily-used formula now, some might say over-used, but it works so well - as Christina Milian + Jermaine Dupri show here - that it's difficult to argue with.

Shanks & Bigfoot - Sweet Like Chocolate: 2-step's one and only foray into the mainstream charts was massive at the time, topping the UK Top 40 and changing hands for up to £80 a copy before the main release. Sadly this wasn't translated into lasting success for Shanks & Bigfoot (who died away quietly over the next few months) nor for 2-step as a whole. Still, it was a nice moment and it still sounds bloody great.

Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass - Bittersweet Samba (Mocean Worker Remix): One of the best pieces from the Whipped Cream And Other Delights: Re-Whipped remix album, this one combines modern production and class horn lines to give a wonderfully fresh-sound, helped along by some Alpert lines recorded especially for this project.

Fires - Redefine: Before their name-change God Fires Man flirted with the name Fires, it was nice they changed it since they were basically ungoogleable before. This is a cut from a Gravity Dip sampler of a bloody fantastic song that never wound up anywhere else but deserves far more airtime than it ever got.

My Chemical Romance - Mama (Feat. Liza Minelli): My Chemical Romance. Doing a polka. With Liza Minelli.

Oasis - Acquiesce: Opening Oasis's B-Sides album, The Masterplan, Acquiesce is one of those songs that makes you wonder how it got passed over for regular album inclusion - or even a one-off single - because of just how good it is.

Hell Is For Heroes - Changes: Recorded in the back of the Hell Is For Heroes tour bus "somewhere outside Birmingham" this is about as bare-bones a cover as you can get. Heard like this - with the acoustic guitar and close vocal harmonies - it's really hard to get your head around why Black Sabbath recorded it the way they did originally.

Elvis Presley - In The Ghetto: Stark and raw lyrically, part of the impact of this song is lost to the fancy Elvis production and gospel backing. The King's vocal gravitas helps to keep it feeling real and honest, though.

Sam Cooke - Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen: An old Negro Spiritual got a soulful makeover with Same Cooke's take on it, his crooning voice lifting and wavering to carry the tune at a slightly slower pace than most know it from the slightly-too-happy-sounding-for-its-subject-material Louis Armstrong version.

Glasvegas - Fuck You It's Over: Glasvegas have really grabbed me recently, both in their self-titled debut album and in their Christmas EP: A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like A Kiss). This is taken from the latter and is about the most to-the-point break-up song you can get, and one of the best too - sitting up there with The Smiths' I Know It's Over.

Slipknot - Iowa: Visceral, churning and down-right terrifying: Iowa isn't for the light-hearted. Turning away from general misanthropic themes this one instead focusses entirely on one person, specifically in the complete ownership, possession and control of them. Scary shit.

23/11/09: A Sound That Can't Be Still

2009-11-23T18:31:00.001-05:00

Apologies for lateness this week, no promises it won't happen again next week. Kisses.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20091123

Jeff Buckley - Just Like A Woman: Buckley's voice & Dylan's lyrics: a very, very good combination indeed. Strange starter, but I like the way it eases itself into being.

Johnny Cash - Thirteen: Written for him specifically by Danzig for Cash's re-invention album (American Recordings) Thirteen is almost as Cash as it gets, harking back to his old prison songs. This rivals Hurt for the best work of Cash's later years.

The Tallest Man On Earth - Where Do My Bluebirds Fly?: It's hard to argue against the idea that this is what Dylan would have sounded like had he taken a more country/folk approach rather than plugging in and going electric. The Tallest Man On Earth has some amazing finger-picked lines and a wonderful whine to his voice on this one.

The Devastations - Rosa: The languid, drawn-out vocals and heavy feedback on this actually remind me a touch of drone, only with an indie-rock feel: an odd combination. The build in this song is amazing and the use of feedback throughout - from integral parts of riffs to the stuttering, choked outro - is inspired.

Tool - Lateralus: Musical wankery at its best: integrating the Fibonacci sequence into the syllables enunciated in the verses (read more here). This could've easily been a cheap trick, but there's some nice back-up to this in the use of spirals and spiralling in the later lyrics, tying it all together.

Bad Religion - American Jesus: Nice riff, good tune, etc. A little lack of musical integrity in return for a catchy song never hurt anyone.

John Frusciante - The Will To Death: The title track from Frusciante's first album of his six-in-six months release schedule a few years ago is absolutely gorgeous. The split dividing the vocals to one speaker and the instrumentation to the rest helps highlight them both.

Ryan Adams - Night Birds: Just when you think you've hit a boring, standard Ryan Adams song, he goes and pulls a trick like the one halfway through this song. On any other song it'd be lost, but it works so incredibly well because of the sparseness of this.

Snow Patrol - Run: I listened to this song on repeat for about an hour when I first heard it, not something I do often. It's lost some of that initial appeal, but it's still easily the bets thing Snow Patrol have ever done in my mind. The slightly breathy vocals are just... man, they're just so pretty.

Jesu - Silver: Jesu, dron/doom/post-metal/ambient vehicle of Justin Broadrick, went pop for the Silver EP. This is the title track and while, at near seven minutes and full of heavy fuzz, it's not quite shiny pop it's still wonderfully accessible.

Bat For Lashes - Peace Of Mind: Bat For Lashes's beautiful voice falls somewhere between Feist and Annie Lennox and her song-writing is as good as either of theirs. Her Two Suns album (one of the few Pitchfork-loved albums that I didn't find horribly twee or simply pish this year) is full of great lush & layered songs like this one.

Cyann & Ben - Sparks Of Love: A nice wee slow, semi-ambient song here with loads of subtle little effects which you can miss all-too-easily. Then it goes nicely mental.

The Weakerthans - The Reasons: Nice driving guitar throughout, just carrying the song along. The vocals, as well as having a great sound, tell a wonderfully self-pitying tale of spurned romance.

Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes: The guitar on this one makes funny little noises in my right speaker, which I only just noticed there. It's pretty catchy, actually, as is the whole song.

Simon & Garfunkel - The Only Living Boy In New York: One of the first hints of a crack in Simon & Garfunkel's relationship this song is a pretty blatant dig at Garfunkel's ditching of recording sessions to go and film movies. And we all know how well that worked out for him.

Rival Schools - Used For Glue: A somewhat standard fairly heavy rock song, but I stil love it for some unknown reason. The drumming's quite good, as is the riff throughout, and the weird feedbacky guitar mini-solo 2:30-ish in.

Seafood - Cloaking: Nice bassline to start us off here, followed by a minute of slow building towards the second half, a crescendo worthy of ending this mixtape.

16/11/09: I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right

2009-11-16T13:04:00.002-05:00

Download: Monday Mixtape 20091116

Popchop - Gettin Jiggy Wit It:Will Smith is actually a decent rapper, which is all too easy to forget. Pop him mover some No Doubt or even over Billie Jean (that's a great mashup, well worth digging around for) and you end up with something great like this.

Public Image Ltd. - Rise: John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon's post-Sex Pistols project: simply fantastic stuff.

The Puppini Sisters - Crazy In Love: The Beyoncé song done in 40's close-harmony style. The Puppini Sisters have an album worth of this goodness available on The Rise And Fall Of Ruby Woo.

Tinie Tempah - Supernova: Dizzee Rascal-style grimey rap with a bizarrely everyday feel about it. Musically sound with some fantastic, subtle background samples used to great effect.

The Black Keys - I Got Mine: Massive riff, bluesy swing, gruff vocals and a lazy bassline to drag this along: The Black Keys can do no wrong here. If only that Ike Turner collaboration had been finished before he died...

Battle Of Mice - Sleep & Dream (Edit): Production can make a big difference sometimes: between this early release and the musically near-identical album release a few months later something important was lost. As it stands here, however, it's something wonderful.

Lucie Silvas - Nothing Else Matters: Lush strings, light piano touches and a strong vocal don't change the message of the song at all as much as they paint it in a new light - this really doesn't sound like it could've been a Metallica song at all.

Joy Division - Atmosphere: I've never been a big Joy Division fan, but this is second only to Love Will Tear Us Apart for me.

Glen Campbell - Sing: Meet Glen Campbell is an amazing reinvention album, full of covers of contemporary pop and rock songs with loads of added banjo, uplifting strings and massive, far-too-happy vocals. Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) would've been the highlight of the album if not for this one.

65daysofstatic - Asphalt & Trouble: Sampling the much-lauded 1995 Lucasarts game Full Throttle 65daysofstaic first showed the signs of what'd later come with their soundtracking a radio adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.

Neil Diamond - If I Don't See You Again: Rick Rubin gives Neil Diamond a taste of the Midas touch he used to re-invent Johnny Cash in the mid-nineties here. This is the spectacular opener to the equally spectacular Home Before Dark album, stripping all the nonsense away to leave Diamond as just a very, very talented songwriter with minimal backing to cover that fact up.

Decibully - On The Way To Your Hotel: Decibully have the wonderful ability to successfully nab bits & pieces from genre to genre, from indie songwriting to pop sensibilities with country-tinged backing and gospel-flavoured vocals. This is one of the best combinations of that lot they've ever pulled off.

Tattle Tale - Glass Vase, Cello Case: Part of the But I'm A Cheerleader OST thing song provided the backdrop to a gorgeous make-out scene featuring Clea DuVall. What's not to like about it?

Frank Turner - I Really Don't Care What You Did On Your Gap Year: Post-Million Dead Frank Turned calmed down a little and started to be a little less angry and a little more introspective. Barring a few of the awkward lines and rhymes this is a great tale of a night gone wrong.

DeYarmond Edison - First Impression: Justin Vernon's pre-Bon Iver band, showing that he still has a gorgeous voice (albeit in a very different way) when he's not singing falsetto. The delivery of the "baseball mitt" line gets me every time for some reason.

1 Mile North - In 1983 He Loved To Fly: Beautiful ambient piece from the short-lived group, making wonderful use of a spoken-word sample about half-way in. Unfortunately about the only worthwhile thing they did.

09/11/09: If I Can Play My Part, Well, I'll Feel No Remorse For What I Did

2009-11-06T13:00:00.003-05:00

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090719

Glasvegas - Flowers & Football Tops: The accent's laid on a little thick, but his heart's in the right place on this one, about the racially-charged murder of fifteen year-old Kris Donald in Glasgow a few years ago. The rendition of You Are My Sunshine over the wave of feedback in the outro provides a spectacular ending.

Junior Boys - Count Souvenirs: Subdued pop blips and beats with a more honest downbeat feel gives a more accurate, less rose-tinted look back on a failed relationship than the Postal Service ever managed. Not that this is better than the Postal Service - it still lacks the je ne sais quoi that made the Postal service's album so lovely - it's just a bit more up-front.

Alio Die & Aglaia - Perlucidus: Does anyone else hear the singing bowl-like sounds in this taking on The Star Spangled Banner?

Dizzee Rascal - Sirens: Dizzee Rascal on top-form: pissed-off and spitting spectacularly. Sirens is Fuck Tha Police for the modern day.

Brother Ali - Breakin' Dawn: The two of us recently came across Brother Ali's Us album at almost exactly the same time, from different sources, which was interesting. The raps are top-notch but it's the production on the album, courtesy of Atmosphere's Ant, that really shines through.

Aphrodite - Crazy Diamond: A two-step remix of Pink Floyd's seminal Shine On You Crazy Diamond that isn't terrible, repetitive or gimmicky. How the hell Aphrodite did it this well I have no idea.

!!! - Myth Takes: Happy, bouncy, feel-good modern pop - who'da thunk anyone was still making it? This is so much fun to dance around your bedroom/kitchen/street to. !!!, I salute you.

Social Distortion - Tainted Love: Perhaps one of the less heart-rendering versions of Gloria Jones' original, Social Distortion's take does pack quite the punch in the beastly bassline and rattling, jumpy drums. Good if you're pissed off at an ex, I suppose.

Arthur Russell - What It's Like: Better known for his experimental disco and post-disco work (and even then only a decade after his death) this is taken from the most recent posthumous release of Arthur Russell's work, and it's a bizarrely ace country album. This song has a bit of an old school Son Of A Preacher Man feel to it but damn... why does success come only after death so often?

Jim Croce - Ball Of Kerrymuir: The story about the writing of this song is horse-shit, Burns had nothing to do with it, but it's a fun enough tale about a filthy, filthy old Scots folk song. I've known of Jim Croce since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, listening to his melancholy country songs from the back seat of my parents car on trips, but until recently I never knew that he had such great banter behind him. Apparently he had over 3000 songs in his repertoire at one point from touring continually and playing dives across the States for years on end. Sadly, once again, the good die young.

Thelonious Monster - Adios Lounge (With Tom Waits): This song is a testament to what a good producer can do for a song: somehow the thin, whiny voice of Bob Forrest isn't just audible, it's actually about equal to Tom fucking Waits in a duet. Now that's impressive.

William Elliot Whitmore - Sometimes Our Dreams Float Like Anchors: William Elliot Whitmore isn't your usual country singer: his stripped-down, bare-bones set is usually performed in the warm-up slot for ultra-hardcore bands like Converge (where I first saw him). At first it's a bit odd, but after a song or two like this one you realise that proper bare-bones country can be just as brutal, raw and cutting as what's about to follow.

Converge - Jane Doe: Brutal, huge and epic - this is Converge at their best. The ender of the Jane Doe album this song is the album's centrepiece, with all the bile of the break-up it's written about distilled down into one powerfully cathartic eleven-minute blast.

02/11/09: Time Was Never On My Side

2009-11-01T10:12:00.002-05:00

Country-tinged jams are the order of the day: from slightly cutting loose in the studio to really letting it all hang free live jams are a great rhythmic experience. Head-nodding and foot-tapping are not only condoned but actively encouraged: go for it.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20091102

Metallica - The Outlaw Torn (Extended Version): The closer to Metallica's Load was cut short because the album would run over (or at least very close to) the length limit imposed on CDs, so this "Unencumbered By Manufacturing Restrictions" version was made available as a B-Side later. The country-tinged jam on this isn't the loosest or most free-flowing thing on the planet, but it's a nice change from Metallica's usual uber-tight metal stylings.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Like A Hurricane: It's Neil fucking Young drawing-out Like A Hurricane, what's not to like?

The Allman Brothers Band - Whipping Post: This is The Jam, according to some: originally taking up a full side of At Fillmore East this twenty-three minute beast is a cut-down version of the original recording which carried on for another thirty-three minutes after it ran into Mountain Jam. 11/4 bass into, impassioned vocal cries and a long, low rumble driving it on - well worth the time investment.

Ryan Adams - Cold Roses/New York, New York: Ryan Adams was astounding for a while, before he actually started to record as part of his later-era Cardinals band opposed to just using them as backing. Still, there's a wealth of astounding live recordings from his early- to mid-era that's well worth checking out here. Check out the live "best-of" albums, the Bedhead series (I-IV are the ones really worth a dig though, V is alright and VI was a bit lame).

Joe Cocker - With A Little Help From My Friends: Joe Cocker's performance of this Beatles *ahem* "classic" at Woodstock isn't the best vocal performance ever (Cocker sort of forgets the words at a few points and stumbles bravely on) but damn if it doesn't redeem itself on passion and vigour: Cocker really throws himself at this and (watch it, because it's amazing to see) basically invents air guitar during the performance.

19/10/09: Short

2009-10-19T10:35:00.001-04:00

Short, sharp, to-the-point. 114 songs of it, most under a minute, some under 10 seconds. From instrumental segues to spectacular 20 second long ideas that would just be diluted if stretched out, experimental noisemaking to silences designed to better the flow of an album - this is them.

Download: Monday Mixtape 200910119

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Up From Redemption
A Silver Mt. Zion - Long March Rocket Or Doomed Airliner
Achilles - In These Stark Halls
Ryan Adams - Yo Kill Myself
Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Ten Fucking Steps
Christina Aguilera - 30 Seconds Of Pure Heaven
Tori Amos - Mr. Zebra
Architecture In Helsinki - One Heavy February
The Beach Boys - Unreleased Backgrounds
The Beatles - Her Majesty
George Benson - Because
The Bicycle Thief - Rhonda And The Birdman
Blur - We've Got A File On You
Box Car Racer - My First Punk Song
Burial - Feral Witchchild
Calexico - Navy Cut
Caural - Interlude
Cinematic Orchestra, The - The Projectionist
Coldplay - Parachutes
Converge - Phoenix In Flames
The Creeps - These Walls
Cypress Hill - Legalize It
Dead Kennedys - Nazi Punks Fuck Off
Deerhunter - Ghost Outfit
Deftones - ...
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Crutch Field Tongs
Discount - Portrait Of A Cigarette
DJ Scotch Egg - Scotch Grind
DJ Shadow - -- Transmission 1
Doleful Lions - Heinz Baked Beans
dredg - Brushstroke: Dcbtgoabaaposba
Eminem - Bitch
The Finger - Vendetta
Flying Lotus - Orbit 405
Fort Knox Five - RFDC: Calling All Stations
Franklin For Short - Hours Grow Late
Frightened Rabbit - The Final Incident
From Autumn To Ashes - Mercury Rising
From First To Last - Solioquy
John Frusciante - Untitled #10
Gay For Johnny Depp - Hey Sailor!
Marvin Gaye - I Want You (Intro Jam)
Gomez - The Comeback
Green Day - Take Back
Grooverider - Rainbows Of Colour (Heaven's Breath)
Hark! It's A Crawling Tar-Tar - Tular Tularkan Tar-Tar Alias Spreading The Disease
George Harrison - It's Johnny's Birthday
Imogen Heap - I'm A Lonely Little Petunia (In An Onion Patch)
Hell Is For Heroes - Untitled 2
Kelly Hogan - I Am Getting Better
The Inbreds - Dale Says
Iron & Wine - Stolen Houses (Die)
Isis - SGNL>03
Samuel L. Jackson - Ezekiel 25:17
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Moon, Turn The Tides... Gently Gently Away
The Jody Grind - The Governor Of Hong Kong
Kasabian - Orange (Interlude)
kid606 - Site Specific Sound Installation
Korn - Am I Going Crazy?
The Magnetic Fields - Experimental Music Love
Marilyn Manson - Dancing With The One-Legged...
Mercury Rev - Untitled
Meshuggah - Re-Inanimate
Malcolm Middleton, Malcolm - Bring Down (Preprise)
Migra Violenta - Que Hay Detras?
Moby - 7
Aidan John Moffat - 4Sex Message 2
Nine Inch Nails - Pinion
NOFX - See Her Pee
Oasis - The Swamp Song (Excerpt 2)
Oceano - Descent
Martin O'Donnell & Michael Salvatori - Shadows
Of Montreal - Our Spring Is Sweet Not Fleeting
Pearl Jam - Pry, To
Pig Destroyer - Evacuating Heaven
Pink Floyd - Stop
Prelapse - Coda
Public Enemy - Meet The G That Killed Me
Puscifer - PSA, LOL!
Queen - Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon
Radiohead - MK2
Rjd2 - Salud
The Rock Of Travolta - The People Made Me A Star
Ronin - Declaration 02
The Roots - Dilltastic Vol Won(derful)
Arthur Russell - Tone Bone Kone
Gil Scott-Heron - Paint It Black
Secret Chiefs 3 - Pointed And Weighty Arguments
Sigur Rós - 18 Sekúndur Fyrir Sólarupprás (18 Seconds Before Sunrise)
Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends Theme (Instrumental)
Slipknot - 742617000027
Thee More Shallows - Cold Dis
Thelonious Monster - The Beginning And The End #12 N 35
Themselves - Thisboutthecitytoo
They Might Be Giants - Theme From Flood
The Tim Version - Fernando
Tool - Useful Idiot
Nobuo Uematsu - Good Night, Until Tomorrow
UNKLE - Getting Ahead In The Lucrative Field Of Artist Management
Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start - Rachel Strayer
Vernon, Justin - O're The Hills, 'kneath The Gape
The View - Typical Time
Volcano Choir - Cool Knowledge
Volcano, I'm Still Excited!! - Overture
Tom Waits - Clang Boom Steam
The Walkmen - Flamingos (For Colbert)
Wax Tailor - Ringing Score
Jeff Wayne - The Eve Of The War (Introduction) (Hybrid Remix)
Weebl - Come To Kenya
Chris Whitley - Untitled
Brian Wilson - Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine
Women - Group Transport Hall
Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies - Oh! Magic Sleeps That Judgement Lapses Knit
John Zorn - Hammerhead

05/10/09: Here's Your Song To Help Make It Last

2009-10-05T15:17:00.003-04:00

Graeme's last one for a while, since I'm an unemployed bum who has nothing better to do with his time once the job hunt's dried up each day.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20091005

CKZ - Mellow Scabies: First off, no, your speakers aren't broken, it's meant to sound like that at the start. Anyway, this song comes from the outstanding Heart EP which I stumbled upon a week or two ago and haven't been able to stop listening to since. Get it. Really interesting drum rhythms overlap with beautiful violin-y electronic sounds in this song, probably the best of a fantastic bunch.

The Beatles - Don't Let Me Down (With Billy Preston): This is probably one of my favourite Beatles song; the gorgeously fitted bassline from Paul, the organ/piano work by Billy Preston, George's guitar, John's alternately screamed and then ultra-smooth vocals - it all comes together so incredibly well that I can't explain it. Hell, even Ringo makes himself heard with the crashing symbols as "Don't let me down!" is screamed.

Chase And Status - Eastern Jam: Though terribly named, More Than Alot is a great album, said by some to be the best DnB album since Pendulum's Hold Your Colour; high praise indeed. This more dubstep-y number features a woman singing in Hindi (I think) being remixed over some fucking huge drums. A simple concept when you think about it, but there are so many places they could've gone wrong but (thankfully) didn't.

Björk - Hunter: Björk's Homogenic has been just about the only thing able to tear me from CKZ's Heart EP recently. There's something fantastic about electronica drums mixed with violins, and something even better about a massive dub bassline & some excellent use of stereo being added to that. But to add the cherry to an already glorious cake, Björk decided to show off what she can do with her voice; I always get shivers down my spine at the vocals at 1:35-2:00.

Primal Scream - Damaged: Probably the most calming come-down song ever comes from Primal Scream's magnum opus, the Mercury Prize-winning Screamadelica. I'm serious, if you're ever on edge about something, this'll bring you back to your senses. I like a lot about this song, but probably my favourite part is the guitar, which opens the song beautifully & then keeps going throughout without a note placed needlessly.

Skalpel - Together: This one opens with a great, jazzy stand-up bassline, full of half-bends and swing, and builds from there, coming in with an almost hip-hoppy drumline and then, slowly but surely, some trumpets and other instrumentation. Such is the genius of Skalpel, two Polish guys who decided to take 60s & 70s Polish jazz from all over the place & splice it all together with hip-hop beats. Can't argue with that.

John Carpenter - Assault On Precinct 65: 65daysofstatic remixed the music from Assault On Precinct 13 for one of their first projects, adding a ton of distortion and glitchiness to it, along with quotes from throughout the film. The drums throughout are great, setting the mood for the entire thing, and the quotes used fit perfectly.

Steely Dan - Reelin' In The Years: Wow, great technical guitar work which also fits in well with the music. Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, et al., I appreciate your skill on guitar, but this is how you make a real song, not a show of how little of a life you had during your teenage years. Also of note is that the solo in the song is apparently Jimmy Page's favourite guitar solo of all time, which is pretty awesome. I also love the way the music comes back after the solo, it's so simple but wonderful at the same time.

Luminous - Mera Pyre (With Mindy Kalsi-Gray) (Live Radio Session): My guitar teacher Andy features here with another song featuring two things used earlier in this mixtape; eastern vocals & good technical guitar work which isn't a big pile of wank. A looper is used to good effect to make the backbone of the song, while a laptop fills out all the drumming. Backwards guitar is also used, which I'm always wary of, but Andy uses it sparingly so it works well.

Cassettes Won't Listen - Freeze And Explode: The drumming on this song from electronic/indie multi-instrumentalist Jason Drake is really great; quite understated at points but it carries the song without being boring & standard. One thing I really like about this song is the effect used on the vocals at 2:17 as the rest of the music just falls away then comes back again as if nothing ever happened. The vocals are absolutely gorgeous as well.

Martyn - Far Away: Some more dubstep goodness, this time from Martyn. This is the only song I've heard of his, but after listening to it I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of his long-anticipated album, Great Lengths. It's sort of halfway between Burial and the rest of dubstep, with sampled vocals & swirling understated effects but also a bit of bass wobble (not part of Burial's usual arsenal) and a less ambient drumline than Burial. All in all, interesting listening to say the least.

Ryan Adams - Oh My Sweet Carolina (Feat. Emmylou Harris): This is, in my mind, one of Adams' best songs; the lyrics aren't terribly hard-hitting & the music is too sparse (during the first 3 minutes or so) to be of note, but dammit, Ryan made the great decision to bring in Emmylou Harris to complement his vocals, which she does perfectly. The best example of this is at 3:40-3:46 when they sing "I miss Kentucky, and I miss my family" together so well that it does actually make you feel what they're feeling. Also, you've got to love the chords progression played by the piano at 3:12-3:15.

Sun Kil Moon - Lost Verses: Mark Kozelek's band Sun Kil Moon does repeatedly what Iron & Wine have managed once: a 9-minute song which isn't boring. The music is cyclical, but never repetitive (that sounds weird just typing it, but if you listen you'll know what I mean) and the vocals add enough to take all the focus off the music. There's also a nice wee breakdown around 7 or 8 minutes in.

Colin Blunstone - Caroline Goodbye: Half of the seminal Zombies (best known for the legendary, and oft-covered, She's Not There) and a regular contributor to the Alan Parsons Project, Colin Blunstone also worked on a lot of solo folkish stuff. I really like the smooth vocals combined with the folky guitar & quasi-funky bassline on this one.

Adele - Hometown Glory: There's something Amy Winehouse-ish about the vocals of this song, especially at the start. Her voice fills an entire room, which is always a great quality; I also love the little wobble in her voice when she sings a prolonged syllable, like the "my" in "all the wonders of my world". Sparse piano is all the backing she needs to really show off her lungs on this one.

Regina Spektor - Love Affair: Spektor's stilted, jilting piano works bizarrely well with her husky vocals in this fairly weird sort of anti-folk song. That's about all I can do to describe it, it's pretty difficult to sum up.

Jeff Alexander - Come Wander With Me: I'm not sure who's singing this song, but she's got a very nice, clean voice (her humming is also a really nice touch). Anyway, she stays as the main focus of the song while a sparse guitar backs her up throughout. Really nice, in a sparse, cold sort of way.

28/09/09: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

2009-09-28T13:00:00.001-04:00

Re-working, re-imagining and re-recordings galore here. While they're not all improvements on the originals they take on, they are all interesting enough to warrant a listen or two to hear the possibilities wrapped up in songs that you've never heard before.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090719

DJ Sega - Dig: Mudvayne's excellent Dig gets a pretty cool makeover here as DJ Sega decides that what nu-metal really needs is fewer vocals, more screams and - above all else - more handclaps. And while I prefer the original (just slightly), I will concede that he wasn't entirely wrong.

Arctic Monkeys - You Know I'm No Good: The Arctic Monkeys decided to take on an Amy Winehouse song when they went on BBC's Live Lounge and, I must admit, they got a fairly good soul/R&B vibe to the whole thing. The almost bored-sounding vocals aren't all that great, but the music is stripped-down and solid.

Tom Ball - Another Brick In The Wall: Pink Floyd's classic anthem gets the, uh, banjo, washboard and blowing jug treatment here. Yeah... Strangely enough, though, it works really well.

Schneider TM - The Light 3000: Looking for a way to hear Morrissey's great lyrics without having to deal with the wank of Morrissey? Look no further than this ambient electro cover, recently voted by The Wire magazine as one of the best covers ever recorded.

The Very Best - Kamphopo: So Radioclit bumps into a Malawian guy who sells him a bicycle from his second-hand shop down the road from Radioclit's studio. Fast-forward nine years and they're releasing a mixtape of covers/re-imaginings of indie music's darlings and you end up with this spectacular version of Architecture In Helsinki's Heart It Races sung entirely in Chichewa. Also worth checking out are their re-workings of M.I.A. and Santigold.

kanYe West - Stronger: See last week's mixtape for my thoughts on kanYe West, but on this song West's rapping is actually pretty good. A strong chorus and some great verses makes this song of of his best, easily. The interpolation of Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger was a stroke of genius and could acually be an improvement on the original (Daft Punk think so, apparently).

Ninja High School - Nap: The words Banana Boat Song may not mean much to you, but you'll know it as soon as the vocals come in. Nothing much more to say, other than asking the question on everyone's mind: "Whose stupid, awesome, brilliant idea was this?"

David Bowie - "Helden": Bowie's classic gets re-done by, um, himself. But in German. At points. Bowie's half-screamed vocals in the middle are pretty awesome, and the fact they're in German seem to make them even better.

Junior Byles - Fever: A dub reggae version of Otis Blackwell's (better known by Peggy Lee) R&B hit. It later became virtually a pop standard, being covered by around 90 artists on the wikipedia page alone.

Chris Whitley & The Bastard Club - I Wanna Be Your Dog: This ultra-gritty version of The Stooges' tune somehow manages to wring even more filthiness out of the song than even Iggy did. One guitar basically drones along while the other does all the extra touches & soloing, etc. and Whitley does his best to sound as lo-fi & low-tech as possible, like he's singing into an empty warehouse or something.

JoJo - Times Like These: The Foo Fighters' song gets covered by ex-tweenpop queen JoJo. JoJo shows that she does, in actuality, have some pretty good lungs on her & maybe - maybe - deserves to be taken a bit more seriously. Y'know, 'cause she knows she's never gonna dethrone Miley now.

Tori Amos - '97 Bonnie And Clyde: Yes, this is indeed Tori Amos covering Eminem. And not even rapping Eminem, creepy I-kill-women Eminem. Somehow, she manages to actually out-creep Em by whispering all the vocals. Tori's a legend.

The Streets - Your Song: Better known for his spoken rants that are almost, but not quite, raps than his singing, The Streets is in unfamiliar territory with his take on Elton John's touching Your Song. However, his nigh-on complete lack of ability to sing actually adds to the sweetness of this version, since it's far more in tune with the sentiment of the lyrics.

Bob Marley & The Wailers - No Woman, No Cry: From Bob Marley's infamous "Live!" album, this extends the original song out to 7 minutes and is one of the rare instances where the live version of a song is better known than the original. Also kinda neat is the fact that Marley may or may not have written this song (or maybe just the melody): on the album writing credits were given to his friend Vincent Ford, who ran a soup kitchen in Trenchtown. Marley's (potentially) selfless act not only meant Marley avoided contractual obligations, it also ensured income for Ford and his soup kitchen.

Placebo - Protége Moi: Another reworking in the spirit of "Helden", Placebo decided to improve upon the so-so Protect Me From What I Want by translating it into French. The only other addition is the whispered "Protége moi, protége moi" over the chorus and just before the verse. Somehow, though, this small addition and the language change immeasurably improves on the original. The fact the chorus is still in English irks me just a touch, though.

Decibully - On The Way To Your Hotel (Remix): I'm not sure if this was a remix by the band, or if it was by an anonymous DJ, but either way the addition of a massive-as-fuck bass drum and turning some of the riffs from the song into sort-of-dancey synth lines works wonders and grants the already great song new life by completely changing the focus (and style) of the song.

Will Young - Hey Ya!: While I am not Will Young's biggest fan, I love this cover of Outkast's wonderful song. It takes the song in the same direction as Obadiah Parker (youtub it), but it actually goes even further, stripping it down to basically a light, jazzy piano, bass and bongos; then it takes a turn and starts to get more upbeat and jazzy, just as you think it'll build to a crescendo, it drops back to the sparseness it started with.

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole - Somewhere Over The Rainbow; What A Wonderful World: A ukelele cover of two classics to play us out. Not much can be said about this due to its emptiness, other than the vocals are gorgeous and the decision to have just a ukelele backing was a great idea; it really plays to the happy, carefree vibe to both songs.gs.

21/09/09: I'm Making This Easy For You

2009-09-21T10:23:00.002-04:00

Another mix culled from CPI's mp3 blog archives, this one distils the past four months of the blog down to one simple, easy-to-digest, insanely-experimental-weirdness-free CD-length package. Aren't we lovely to you?

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090719

The Jackson 5 - Ain't No Sunshine (SSY Remix): There've been a lot of MJ and Jacksons/Jackson 5 remixes since the King of Pop's death, but a lot of them have been hastily cobbled-together jobs that lack any real punch or depth. This one sounds like it'd been brewing for a good while, and wasn't done simply to catch the wave. A good, groovy bassline pushes and pulls, while the tiniest touch of echo on young Michael's vocals adds a nice sense of distance.

Melanie Fiona - Give It To Me Right: Falling somewhere between Duffy and Jill Barber's jazzy-side Melanie Fiona sounds like one to watch out for. The upright bass on this has a fantastic bit of play, countering her vocal swells rather nicely. The slapback guitar is a weird addition, but not a bad choice by any stretch of the imagination. Tight, indeed.

Tycho - Dictaphone's Lament: Some pretty lush IDM to start us off here. The main riff is laid down as a constant before layers of sound float in and out though the rest of the piece. Pretty gorgeous stuff.

Major Lazer - Baby (Feat. Prince Zimboo): Two words: Autotuned baby. Add some bizarre lyrics (choice cuts include "Imagine; in just a couple months that boy was in my testicle, now you are screaming and walking; great spectacle") and you've got an amazing little ditty.

kanYe West - Champion (Cousin Cole Acid Dub SLOW): Yes, we all know kanYe is an incredible tool, but he's also a spectacularly good musician, as seen in Champion where he samples - of all things - Steely Dan. Anyway, this dubstep-tinged remix cuts a lot of the rap - one of the occasionally superfluous things in kanYe's work - and leaves a solid tune behind.

M.I.A. - Paper Planes (Feat. Annie Lennox) (B. Cause Party Break): One of the few complaints levied against M.I.A.'s spectacular Paper Planes is the empty space left between a couple of the choruses. This has been used to great advantage by a couple of guesting MCs to spit their bit over a free spot for a simple remix. By just taking B. Cause's rhymes from his Party Break - one of the better remixes - and throwing a little Annie Lennox in (bear with me here...) leads to a really great, subdued mashup here.

James Blackshaw - Running To The Ghost: Wow. Just wow. Some immensely layered 12-string guitar on a weird tuning (a variant on the dropped-B tuning) combined with just-touching-on-scratchy violins and a touch of glockenspiel makes this song utterly magical.

Ellie Goulding - Black And Gold: A weirdly fun drumline carries this cover of Sam Sparro's catchy tune and Goulding's pixie-like voice is the obvious focal point. That being said, my favourite part of this song is the lovely touches the acoustic guitar adds along the way, creating a natural-sounding balance to the electronica backing.

Ramesh B. Weeratunga - Ring Of Fire: An Indian dance remix of the Johnny Cash song. I shit you not. I really like the bassline just before the chorus and the not overly-strong autotuned vocals, especially the way it twists the sound of the "burns" in "and it burns, burns, burns".

Metric - Help I'm Alive: Metric are a big things in Canada these days, and not hugely well-known outside from what I can tell. They're up for the Polaris prize, though, so keep an eye on them: the album's brilliant. The tight bursts of machine-gun drumming in this song's verses are really note-worthy while the nasal vocals have a knack for catching your ear.

Postmarks - Goodbye: I like the innocent, cutesy vocals on this song. The girl's voice seems so quiet it's a wonder it doesn't get overwhelmed by the backing, but this song strikes a good balance and keeps it throughout. Is anyone else reminded of Singing In The Rain by it at all?

Dan Deacon - Build Voice: Another song that starts off simply and just keeps adding layers, only this one keeps going and going until it reaches saturation-point and breaks down, leaving only the piano behind. Building again, briefly, is a nice twist instead of aiming for the simple fade-out.

Music Of The Central African Pygmies - Men's Elephant-Hunting Song: I can't really describe this, so it's probably easier if you just read this. A thunderstorm builds as a pygmy tribe perform their hunting music and the crack of the storm fully breaking out makes for an amazing climax to the piece. (NB: some pygmy music was used on the version of Watermelon Man that was featured on here a while back, specifically in the percussion section.)

Iron & Wine - The Trapeze Swinger: Little hints of Damien Rice in Sam Beam's voice here, which are really nice. The song is 9 minutes long but I can safely say it feels nothing like it; at the 3 minute mark it feels like no time has passed at all. Sort of makes you wonder why so many bands have gone their entire careers without even going over the 5 minute mark.

Halloween, Alaska - Champagne Downtown: This is a strange one, and oddly reminiscent of Ryan Adam's 29 and Love Is Hell period, with the jarring, torn distortion tearing through the clean, reverb-heavy guitar and the radio-filtered spoken-word parts. Then there's the drums that occasionally kick into something that sounds a lot like very slowed-down techno. Somehow it all comes together very well, though, to the point that I can't really fault it.

Frankmusic - Confusion Girl (Don Diablo Loves To Slowdance Remix): This song is great fun to sing along to, even though the lyrics make no sense due to the heavy cutting (her "Confusion girl" becoming just "D-d-do girl"). Excellent use of handclaps throughout, and some nice acoustic guitar towards the end to round this off.

14/09/09: Work Of These Mongrel Architects

2009-09-14T00:53:00.001-04:00

Graeme & I have decide to make this a bit more collaborative, working together on the composition of the mixtapes week to week rather'n trading week. Graeme's taking care of most of this week's write-up, but I imagine you'll get a good split of our inane opinions once we get into a good routine. You lucky people.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090914

OutKast - B.O.B.: Recently named by Pitchfork as the "Second Greatest Song Since You Were Born" behind only Billie Jean, this massive-sounding song has hints of just about everything from jungle/electronica to gospel, funk & soul while packing some huge drums. Turn it up loud to fully appreciate the great drumline & all the nice little touches along the way.

The Dust Brothers - This Is Your Life (Feat. Tyler Durden): A good background helps carry this song while Tyler Durden of Fight Club spouts forth his wisdom. Very effective use of these samples, but it makes you miss out on the excellence of the backing. It's almost a shame that it wasn't an instrumental, so you can appreciate it more, but oh well.

The Bug - Angry: Half dubstep, half dancehall, this song is confusing in its uniqueness. I've never quite heard anything comparable to this, but all I can say is it has a huge beat & some vocals that you'll find yourself singing along to before you realise what you're doing.

The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up: C'mon, we all know The Prodigy and what they're capable of. This is them on top form, with yet another great drumline & effective synth work. The video's ace, and MTV got into a heap of trouble for showing it because of the (invalid) claims of misogyny, sort of like the people claiming Dogma was blasphemous.

Moby - Creep (Live At Glastonbury): It's Moby covering Radiohead's Creep. That's about all that needs to be said. Enjoy.

Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love: Another Pop Idol/X Factor winner, again showing why it's sometime forgiveable. Leona Lewis's voice is bloody impressive, some of the swings between notes (see: "Keep, keep bleeding") really show off her pipes. What I love most about the song though is the totally filthy drums primarily used at the start, massive bastards that a lot of dubstep producers would kill for. In a Christmas number one. It still throws me just a little.

Lykki Li - Hanging High: This song took me a few listens to really get into, but now I love it - especially the chorus - and I'm not entirely sure why. Lykke Li sounds sort of like a subdued Anaïs Mitchell with her pixie-ish vocals, and there are gorgeous subtle touches here & there, like the echoed maracas throughout.

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - If I Am A Stranger (Live Studio Version): Ryan Adams and a brand new set of Cardinals revisit a song from Cold Roses and really hit the sweet spot on it. The poignant resignation in Ryan's voice along with the slightly less out-and-out country, slightly more bare-bones instrumentation really helps this one hit home that bit harder.

Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale: The Bach-inspired Hammond organ intro is instantly recognisable, and for good reason: apparently this is the most-played record in British broadcasting in the last 70 years, and the most-played song in public places in the U.K. Not bad for a debut single, eh?

Lady Sovereign - The Battle (With Frost P, Zuz Rock And Shystie): There's a little touch of genius in the idea behind this: Medasyn took 4 unsigned rappers from England and had the two guys face off against the two girls in an improvised rap-battle for a record deal. All four of them are now signed to major labels, so that should give you an idea of how good they all are. There are some fantastic putdowns ("You versus me equals my car trunk") and gender-related quarrels ("Don't get fucked up, I go through PMS, my mood swings leave niggas in a state of distress"). Unfortunately, the rappers are all going so damn fast you miss out about half of what they're saying (the lyrics sites I've seen aren't much help, with some of them not knowing what Benson & Hedges is). Sort of like The Dust Brothers, the background is amazing with a great synth riff which gets lost in the hectic battle.

Walter Meego - Through A Keyhole: As far as I can tell, this is about some guy stalking a girl. The drumbeat is pretty good, as is the synth work, and the drawled singing adds a wee layer of creepiness; the lyrics add a big layer of creepiness.

The Mars Volta - Son Et Lumiere/Inertiatic ESP: The Mars Volta are terribly wank, a fact which isn't helped by the massive hype surrounding them and the fact that they themselves believe the hype. While I've never fully understood all of the hyperbole surrounding them (they are not, as was once suggested, the new Led Zeppelin), this intro/song combo offers a glimpse of why they were so highly praised. Frantic semi-tribal drumming, great vocals and - best of all - guitar work which is both technically impressive and musically brilliant; a rare combination.

Puscifer - Momma Dubbed (Part 1 & 2): Puscifer is the jokey side-project of James Maynard Keenan, the vocalist of Tool. This is a dub remix by Lustmord, which features huge bass, really nice sparse drumming and a general creepiness which is hard to shake off.

Digitalism - Digitalism In Cairo: This is a bit weird; it's an electronic remix of The Cure's "Fire In Cairo". To be honest, I haven't heard the original so I can't compare them, but I really like this, with its big, dirty synth riff and weird vocals throughout, especially the ones that start about 3:20 in which are utterly unintelligible.

Maxïmo Park - Books From Boxes: I'm not a huge fan of Maxïmo Park, but I can't hide my love of this song. The lyrics are quite good for a change; when I was at the top of the CN tower at night, all I could think of was the opening line line: "Night falls and towns become circuit boards", and I can't help but sing along with "We decided just to write after all, after all" near the end.

Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma: Vampire Weekend, from what I can tell, are kind of a one-trick pony in that all their songs are very similar to this one. However, there's something infectious about the catchy vocals with their crazily-high parts at various points. The guitar "solo" in the middle is pitiful in terms of musical integrity, but - against every sinew of my being - I can't help but admit that it works, dammit, as does the whole bloody cheery song.

07/09/09: Harder Now That It's Over

2009-09-03T14:04:00.006-04:00

It's a break-up mixtape this week, and I'll let Rob do the talking first:

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

And I'll let the lyrics do the talking for each of the songs on it.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090907

Jeff Buckley - Forget Her

Don't fool yourself,
She was heartache from the moment that you met her.

Shellac - Prayer To God

Fucking kill him,
Fucking kill him,
Kill him already,
Kill him.

The Bicycle Thief - Offstreet Parking

Well, I can go golfing now,
Whenever I want.
I can talk to girls,
And probably won't.

Jim Croce - Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels)

I've overcome the blow,
I've learned to take it well.
I only wish my words would just convince myself,
That it just wasn't real,
But that's not the way it feels.

Owen - Never Meant

Let's just forget,
Everything said,
Everything we did,
Best friends,
And Better halves.

Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm

You won't find love in a,
Won't find love in a hole.
It takes more than fucking someone,
To keep yourself warm.

Ryan Adams - Harder Now That It's Over

'Cause honey it's over now,
It's harder now that it's over.

Nine Inch Nails - Something I Can Never Have

Everywhere I look you're all I see,
Just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be.

Radiohead - Knives Out

Look into my eyes:
I'm not coming back

The Weakerthans - Left And Leaving

Memory will rust and erode into lists,
Of all that you gave me:
A blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest,
The best parts of Lonely,
Duct-tape and soldered wires,
New words for old desires.
And every birthday card I threw away.

Stabbing Westward - Waking Up Beside You

I miss,
God, I miss,
Waking up beside you.

Alanis Morissette - You Oughta Know

Does she know how you told me,
You'd hold me until you died?
'til you died,
But you're still alive,
And I'm here, to remind you,
Of the mess you left when you went away.

Converge - Hell To Pay

That night, I think he cried himself to sleep.
Just maybe, he felt more than we could ever know,
And I think he pulled that trigger to empty that memory.
I think he cut the weight to end the floods of you

Glassjaw - Motel Of The White Locust

Pack your shit and leave,
And take my memories of her with you,
Pack your shit and leave,
And take her fucking with you.

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah/I Know It's Over (Medley)

Well there was a time when you let me know,
What's really going on below.
But now you never show that to me do you?
(...)
And as I climb into an empty bed,
Oh well, enough said.
I know it's over, still I cling,
I don't know where else I can go.

31/08/09: We Still Believe In Love, So Fuck You

2009-08-30T09:31:00.001-04:00

I'm not going to be as busy from now on so you guys'll be getting more mixtape from me, in full and on time. Hurrah! I'm gonna start a project soon where I'll want songs from each of you for a mixtape, so start digging and get some of your favourites ready.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090831

The Tallest Man On Earth - I Won't Be Found: Fantastic picking and very Dylan-eqsue vocals combien very nicely for The Tallest Man On Earth, who appeared from out of nowhere (well... Sweden) last year with his debut album, Shallow Grave. It's well worth a listen.

The Beatles - Sie Liebt Dich: It's a bit different, isn't it?

The Wedding Present - Make Me Smile (Come Up & See Me): Y'know some songs where the lyrics just don't match the feel of the music? Steve Harley & The Cockney Rebel's original cut of this is one of them, in my mind. It takes hearing the snarled desperation in the line "There ain't no more, you've taken everything" after a long howl of feedback to really see the bite the original was lacking.

Franz Ferdinand - Lucid Dreams: Franz Ferdinand are back and making their usual jaunty, angular pop tunes again. All well and good, but shouldn't they experiment and mix it up a little? Maybe go totally crazy and try some stripped-down industrial stuff. Oh, wait... And this isn't even from that remix album I mentioned a few weeks ago. What the shit have they been on?

Fuck Buttons - Okay, Let's Talk About Magic: What ever Franz Ferdinand may have dabbled in Fuck Buttons have obviously been mainlining for quite some time. This sounds like The Locust hired a tribal drummer and made a psychedelic concept album.

Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone: Perfect catchy pop with a nice hint of a rock edge (meaning it's totally x_hArDkOrE_x to a teenage girl). At least this proves that American Idol and the like do occasionally spit out something worthwhile.

C. W. Stoneking - Seven Nation Army: One of the many covers of the infamous Seven Nation Army, but it goes to say something that the first time I heard it I didn't recognise it at all (granted, I was only half-listening). This almost Tom Waits-style take is equal parts bizarre and wonderful. Also, if it weren't for the existence of Tom Waits I probably wouldn't believe that C. W. Stoneking was white, given these vocals.

Kelly Hogan - Arms: One of Neko Case's regular backup singers, and an ex-member of the tragically short-lived Jody Grind, Kelly Hogan is a spectacular and criminally under-rated singer in her own right. This is one of her best, from her The Whistle Only Dogs Can Hear album, though pretty much everything she does turns to gold. She's covered the likes of Smog and The Magnetic Fields on her albums, all of which are well worth having a dig to get hold of

Idlewild - In Remote Part/Scottish Fiction (With Edwin Morgan): Idlewild's last moment of still being half-decent was the title track and album closer from their 2002 album. Edwin Morgan's recitation of his Scottish Fiction poem by Scottish poet Edwin Morgan over the kicked-up guitar at the end perfectly complements the more subdued, vocally and musically, first half.

Elbow - Grace Under Pressure: A stellar song otherwise, showing that Elbow really should've been noted long before The Seldom Seen Kid fully thrust them into the limelight, the refrain is what really makes this song special. "We Still Believe In Love, So Fuck You" was sung by several thousand fans watching the band's 2002 Glastonbury set and every single one of them who wrote/emailed in after the gig got their name put down in the album's credits.

Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head: This song is the one that finally changed my mind on Coldplay a few years ago. The darkness in the lyrics isn't a subtle hint as much as an outright declaration, unlike a lot of their other stuff. I still don't see them as the greatets band in the world, but they're better than I gave them credit for initially, I'll admit that much. This song soundtracked one of the later Six Feet under episodes which, I'm discovering upon re-watching the full five seasons, had some astounding musical notes.

Iron & Wine With Calexico - 16, Maybe Less: Iron & Wine sounds best when there's minimal accompaniment: the more that's added musically the more that's taken away from the gorgeous whispered vocals. Calexico provide the backing here, from the In The Reins EP, adding no more than is ever necessary, but enough to change I&W's usual bare acoustic feel to a more full neo-Americana sound.

Arcade Fire - Cold Wind: Six Feet Under, season five again - the song was released only on the Six Feet Under: Everything Ends OST and is one of Arcade Fire's best moments, in my mind. The swell behind the "Hey, hey, hey!" to come back in from the organ is a wonderful lift.

The Black Keys - Things Ain't How They Used To Be: There are great bluesy twangs abound in this song, with just a hint of neo-country to it. I can't decide if I prefer the more rocky side or the the slower side of The Black Keys, but this song really weighs my opinion heavily toward the latter. Can you imagine how good their Ike Turner collaboration album would've been if he hadn't died before it was recorded?

Neil Young - A Man Needs A Maid/Heart Of Gold Suite: Neil Young playing Massey Hall in 1971, previewing songs from his upcoming Harvest album. Fuck me... It really doesn't need much more explanation, does it?

Craig Armstrong - Let's Go Out Tonight (Feat. Paul Buchanan): Six Feet Under, season one this time - this is the song that reminded me of just how good the music in TV shows could be, this was from about the time when contemporary songs were just starting to be used in new TV episodes, about seven/eight years ago. I jumped up at the end of the episode to find out what the song was, since it'd been used so astoundingly well in the last scene, only to find I already had it on the first Six Feet Under OST album. Which was nice. This song is bloody gorgeous...

23/08/09: Holidays In The Sun

2009-08-24T13:28:00.004-04:00

This started off life as a pair of mixtapes I sent to my sister who is currently working in Minorca to ease the boredom, as she had no CDs with her. About half of the songs had already been used here, so the other half were to be put together to form another mixtape for posting on here. However, this ended up being too poppy/catchy/substanceless and not much to write about anyway, so I removed all but 5 songs and made a 5-minute mixtape (which took me over an hour, but oh well)

To be perfectly honest, I got 3/4 of a mixtape done with songs I've been trying to use for ages (e.g. Black Beatles, Major Cities) then ran out of ideas and started picking random songs either from albums with cool names or by bands with cool names (e.g. µ-ziq, Fennesz).

Looking at the whole picture now, instead of just the individual pieces, the end result is rather perplexing; I've accidentally managed to include a piece of just about everything, from the semi-jazzy pop remix of Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass and the Moby-esque Jill Barber song to the relaxing stoner music of Fennesz & supergroup Ataxia, with some heavy-as-fuck dance courtesy of The Chemical Brothers and a mashup of The Beatles & Ludacris thrown in.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090823

Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass - Love Potion #9 (Anthony Marinelli-Ozomatli Remix): The vocals on this annoyed me a bit at first, but they really grew on me the more I listened to this. Look out for the lovely guitar slide about 40 seconds in.

British Sea Power - Waving Flags:

Final Fantasy - Many Lives For 49 MP:

The Chemical Brothers - Fuck Up Beats: This is just about the heaviest dance I've heard, & it's brutal as all hell. It's awesome.

Loo & Placido - Black Beatles: I like this song so much that I've been trying to use it on here for ages, but the sudden ending made it almost impossible to find a good song to put after it. I'm still not entirely happy with this segue, but it's the best I can do.

Norwegian Recycling - No Taylor, No Scar:

µ-ziq - My Little Beautiful: The band name alone is good enough to warrant insertion here. The actual music is quite 65dos-ish in all its stop-starty glitchy glory.

The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon: The Kinks were probably one of the most underrated bands of the 60s (and perhaps all time), and this song does exactly what it says on the tin. Perfect for listening to on a warm sunny day, the wee piano touches are really nice.

Orbital - Funny Break (One Is Enough) (Plump DJs Mix): The woman's vocals on this are great, and I like the effects put on her voice when the rest of the instrumentation drops out.

Explosions In The Sky - A Song For Our Fathers: The first song on the EP that got Adam & me into post-rock in the first place. Wonderful bassline which drags you in & keeps the song going, and the little guitar touches at the start are excellent.

Jill Barber - Oh My My: As already mentioned, this is a lot like a Moby song with its old-time bluesy intro, but, unlike Moby, this one sticks to the jazz/blues theme & carries it really well.

Shearwater - On The Death Of The Waters: I've got no idea why I like this song as much as I do, which makes analysis pretty tricky. Don't play this too loud or you'll get a nasty surprise after the singing ends.

Fennesz - Grey Scale: This wouldn't be too out of place on the Lost In Translation Soundtrack. It's got a really beautiful sound to it, but it's sort of distant, as though you're listening to it while sleeping or something.

Death In Vegas - Scorpio Rising: Yes, that is Liam Gallagher singing. Apparently DIV were set to produce Oasis's sixth album (whatever one that was), but they had to pull out for some reason. Oh well.

Ataxia - Another: John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist), Josh Klinghoffer (The Bicycle Thief drummer/guitarist) and Joe Lally (Fugazi bassist) all got together and recorded about 80 minutes (10 songs) worth of great stoner-rock and released it in the form of two albums. This is from the far-superior first album, and features a pretty sweet bassline and some good vocals.

Sigur Rós - Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do (Combined): Sigur Rós as you've never heard them before: doing really weird experimental post-rock, without Jónsi's singing. This is actually 3 songs played over one another to form one song, but I figure you can get the 3 separate songs more easily than the combined effort.

65daysofstatic - The Major Cities Of The World Are Being Destroyed One By One By The Monsters: The first 65dos song Adam or I ever heard, this will always be special to us in a weird sort of way. This was probably the best song they'd done when we first heard them and, despite being 2 albums further on, is still a contender for that title to this day.

16/08/09: Emotional Landscapes

2009-08-15T21:18:00.004-04:00

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090816

Jeff Buckley - Corpus Christi Carol (For Roy): This sets the tone for this mixtape; I cannot think of a more perfect, gorgeous vocal performance than this. It's just so sweet and pure it's unreal. This is actually a poem from around the 14/1500s about a falcon leading the writer into a chamber in an orchard where the writer finds a bleeding knight & the body of Christ. It's pretty weird, but there's something exquisite about the way Buckley sings "His wound is bleeding day and night".

Led Zeppelin - Babe I'm Gonna Leave You: Another song not written by the singer, this was written in the late '50s and is now credited as being a "traditional folk song". Apparently this is the song Page played to Plant on their first meeting, which is kind of cool. Page's acoustic guitar parts on this are ace, and the massive chorus comes out of nowhere to almost deafen you.

Fleet Foxes - Mykonos: The backing singing on this is what really makes this for me, along with the nice a capella bit about halfway in. The drumming, while simple, also adds really nice touches along with the main beat which carries the song along. This is from their Sun Giant EP which apparently is not indicative of the direction they want to go in, but upon listening to this you have to wonder: why not?

Nina Simone - Feeling Good: This is a really obvious one, but you have to admit: from the a capella intro to the instrumentation (it's the tiniest shade off being sleazy, but restrained just enough) to the half-beautiful, half-scary way she nearly screams "Freedom is mine!" to the scatty be-bop outro, this is a wonderful song.

Amy Winehouse - What It Is About Men: Despite her, er, problems, Amy Winehouse still has (had?) a bloody good voice, as her debut album, Frank, shows. This has a nice hip-hop beat and there are some nice synth touches, particularly in the intro. Other than that (and some sparse trumpets), the only thing present in this song is Amy's vocals carrying the entire thing, which is pretty impressive, especially for a 19-year-old.

James Brown - It's A Man's Man's Man's World: Wonderfully sexist, this song showcases James Brown's huge voice and impressive vocal range, especially the high-pitched "Nothing!" at about 1:20. If you have a particularly feminist lean, I'd advise you to take the lyrics with a pinch of salt...

Deftones - Elite: This was actually meant to be used on a mixtape I made ages ago, but at the last minute I suggested it for this mixtape and then had to scramble around for a replacement. Anyway, if you try to sing along to this song you'll probably realise very quickly why metal bands go through singers at about the same rate as drumsticks. This also won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance, which isn't exactly a surprise given the awesome riff and drumming paired with the astounding vocals.

Ours - Fallen Souls: Jimmy Gnecco has a really good voice, as shown throughout this song, but the thing that puts this song in particular on this mixtape is what happens after you think the song has ended the first time you listen to it. Don't tell me that isn't impressive.

Maria McKee - If Love Is A Red Dress (Hang Me In Rags): This is from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, which made me think this was from the late '50s or early '60s, tops. But from what I can tell, McKee wrote & performed this specifically for the film's OST in 1994. The whistling adds much more to the song than it should, and McKee's voice shows surprising range, even in the space of 30 seconds or so. I'm surprised I haven't heard anything else of hers, to be honest.

Foo Fighters - Monkey Wrench: In contrast to most of the other songs on this list, this song isn't on here for consistently good vocals, but for a section about 30 seconds in length where Dave Grohl just keeps on singing, even after his voice is harsh as hell and his lungs must be almost collapsed. Try and sing along with him, it takes me at least two lungfuls to finish it.

The Beatles - Twist & Shout: On this cover of the Isley Brothers' hit, John's voice is bigger than the recording equipment of those days could really handle, and it's practically begging you to sing along with him to make up for it. The backing vocals alone would warrant a mention on this list, too.

The Beach Boys - God Only Knows: I always think this song is a masterpiece, solely because it's sugar-sweet but also has a sort of creepy, stalkerish quality to it that everyone seems to miss in the gorgeous way the song is executed. I mean, yeah "If you should ever leave me... the world would show nothing to me, so what good would living do me?" does seem innocent and cute in the song, but if you ever actually said it to a girl, you would not get much further before the pepper spray hit your eyes.

Pink Floyd - The Great Gig In The Sky: Clare Torry was originally paid £30 for doing this vocal performance at Abbey Road, which was a total rip-off, even in 1973, for what Pink Floyd got in return. Originally, she kept saying sorry that it wasn't good enough, but everyone present at the recording was (rightfully) stunned. Apparently she didn't even know she was on the album 'til she saw the album in a record shop in the mid-'90s and vaguely remembered doing the work.

Otis Redding - (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay: This song is another exception to the rule, because the actual performance itself isn't astounding, it's Redding's voice and its incredible smoothness which impresses me most on this. Again, there is whistling on this song which, despite its simplicity, adds much more than it should.

Percy Sledge - When A Man Loves A Woman: The refrain to this song is great enough, but then Sledge has to improve upon the song with the "Baby, please don't treat me bad" about 1:35 in. The trumpet which unexpectedly comes in with the refrain about 2:30 in really is a nice touch, too.

Bon Iver - Flume (Myspace Transmissions): Strangely, this is an even more stripped-down version of the album-opener, despite the fact it hasn't been recorded in a cabin in the middle of Wisconsin. But Justin Vernon's vocals here are just as good as (if not better than) his vocals on the album, and his new band members show they also have great voices when they back him up. Also, don't listen to this version too much; when you go back to the album, it'll sound too fast & it's as if the Smurfs did a cover of it...

Björk - Jóga: Björk's sort of always been known as "that weird Icelandic bint who wore a swan dress" which is a bit unfair, considering she's a really innovative musician. Case in point, this song comes from her album Homogenic, which combines electronica with classical music really well. You also can't take away from her voice, which shows a lot of its wonderful qualities just in the first minute of this song, when it has little-to-no backing. Probably the best (vocal) bit is at 1:44-1:50. You can't tell what she's saying at those crazy-high bits, but it's damn impressive

Damien Rice - Cold Water: This song has three great vocal performances: Damien Rice's wispy voice, Lisa Hannigan's husky voice and the chanting part in the middle of the song. There's something really affecting in the way both Rice & Hannigan sing "Lord, can you hear me now?" and in the really nice counterpoint they get going when they both sing at the same time. The violin works really well, too, with everything coming together beautifully before tailing off.

Tom Waits - Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen): In direct contrast to the start of the mixtape, I decided to end on this gem from the man with a decidedly impure voice. Tom Waits definitely does not have a beautiful voice, but you can't deny the beauty of this song in which Waits makes his voice work despite its - let's be frank - ugliness. For some reason I will never understand, Waits decided to open an album with this. I mean, how do you follow this?

10/08/09: MMMashups

2009-08-09T12:09:00.005-04:00

A Plus D - Beethoven's Fifth Gold Digger
Disfunctional DJ - You're The One That I Want In The Next Episode
DJ Morgoth - Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up
Popchop - Still D.R.E.
DJ Earworm - Stairway To Bootleg Heaven
DJ Mei-Lwun - Jesus Walked And He's Black
Linkin Park & Jay-Z - Points Of Authority/99 Problems/One Step Closer
DJ Mei-Lwun - Drop It Like It's Hendrix
DJ Earworm - No One Takes Your Freedom
ComaR - I Want You To D.A.N.C.E.
Go Home Productions - Passenger Fever
Danger Mouse - What More Can I Say?
DJ Earworm - Reckoner Lockdown
Aber N. Stein - Gimme Some Supermassive Green Onions
Wax Audio - Hallowed Be Thy Enemy
Popchop - Without Me
Party Ben - Boulevard Of Broken Songs
Wax Audio - Thunder Busters
ComaR - Surprise Paper Planes

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090810

From the simple hip-hop acapella over a pop/rock instrumental through to nine songs squeezed together in four minutes mashups are awesome things: easy to do, hard to perfect.

Reckoner Lockdown is made of two of the biggest multitracks released for download last year, I'm sure it's been done a few hundred times but I'm sure that not all of them sound as good as DJ Earworm's take. Surprise Paper Planes, Passenger Fever and Jesus Walked And He's Black all follow the same formula by more of a homebrew method - having original multitracks is a luxury unavailable to most mashups. Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up shows just how effective this method can be, given how well Astley's vocals fit with Nirvana's instrumental. Why or how DJ Earworm through of putting the seven songs together that they did I have no idea, but Stairway To Bootleg Heaven is a fantastic result - it's kinda fun trying to spot all seven in it.

For the most part hip-hop acapellas are the favoured base (Hallowed Be Thy Enemy, Drop It Like It's Hendrix, Beethoven's Fifth Gold Digger, You're The One I Want In The Next Episode, Without Me, Still D.R.E.) and the fun comes in what you pop behind it: from a funky number from a 50s Musical to Britney Spears to Beethoven. That being said, there are some astounding exceptions: Boulevard Of Broken Songs is one of the best known (and best overall, in my mind) mashups out there, noting the astounding similarity between Green Day's mega-hit and Oasis's Wonderwall, then throwing a bit of Travis and Aerosmith into the mix for good measure. Gimme Some Supermassive Green Onions is another interesting one: taking old school funk, mixing some Muse (minus the guitar wank) and finishing up with some Spinal Tap in a perfect "WTF was that?" move. Passenger Fever pits Patsy Cline against Iggy Pop in an inspired move, ComaR's addition of Justice to a song that makes you dance as it is means that I simply have to dance to this shit in my kitchen, there's really no other option, I swear. A little eighties metal never goes amiss anywhere: AC/DC meet Ghostbusters in Thunder Busters, that says it all for this one - seriously. And once you get past the slightly awkward sample use in the intro of Hallowed Be Thy Enemy (it really should've been left as just Maiden until after "The sands of time for me are running low") it really picks up.

Danger Mouse deserves some note of merit here for his Grey Album - mixing the acapellas from Jay-Z's Black Album with instrumental snippets of The Beatles' White Album, a fair amount more work than just layering one over the other, as What More Can I Say? shows. Jay-Z himself deserves some recognition too - he's not always a passive participant on these, he actively sought out Linkin Park to work with them on a studio mashup EP. The resulting Collision Course concludes with Points Of Authority/99 Problems/One Step Closer which has a wonderful level of push and pull between the two sides: LP covering some of Jay-Z's vocals and the music drifting between LP originals and Jay-Z's backing tracks and the vocals shift back and forth.

02/08/09: Chemical X

2009-08-02T13:58:00.002-04:00

Graeme's been digging through some new music and re-discovering old classics this week it seems. Sounds like he wants to share it with you guys too, you lucky cats.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090802

Benga Vs. Skream - The Judgement: This is awesome. Everything from the chanting at the start to the drums to the bass wobble to the... actually, that's just about everything that makes the song up, which is kind of weird considering how full it feels when you hear it. These guys are two of the biggest names in dubstep, and the two of them together is amazing. Adam's seen them live, and I envy him so much for it.

Rjd2 - Airbag: Another Radiohead cover, the vocals of this make it sound like it's being done in a bathroom or something. This is a bit weird, because the riff is removed completely and it's only once you're told what song it is that you realise exactly what it is you're listening to, then after that it becomes really obvious.

Cornelius - The Fight: This is a really great, catchy, electronica song taken from the Powerpuff Girls TV series OST, a bizarrely big-name album that also feature Frank Black, Devo and the Apples In Stereo. Short, sweet, to the point - damn good.

The Cinematic Orchestra - The Awakening Of A Woman (Burnout): Ok, so way back in 1929 some Soviet guy purchased a movie camera (back when they were as expensive as houses) and went around filming random things around Odessa, Ukraine and other cities in the USSR, including a woman giving birth. Whenever he wanted a "hidden camera" shot he and his brother had to distract the subject with something even louder than the camera. Anyway, numerous "soundtracks" have been written and performed by different bands, and this is part of one of those soundtracks, and even though it's 10 minutes long it somehow doesn't overstay its welcome.

From First To Last - Waves Goodbye: This is sort of like Martyn Bennet's Aye? or My Backwards Walk by Frightened Rabbit in that it gets into a style, lulling its listener in, then suddenly going completely bonkers with the drums. The counterpointed vocals are really cool, and the guitar line is a nice piece of work, too, but they almost get forgotten after the all-out assault the drums suddenly spring on you.

Portishead - Wandering Star: Some classic trip-hop here from 1994, the album this is from (Dummy) won the Mercury Prize in 1995. Normally I don't like the vocals, but in this song I'll make an exception, because there's just something wonderful about the way she half-sings "wandering stars". The instrumentation has some lovely little breaks as well, with the harmonica, some nice little scratches and a touch of acoustic guitar.

Whiskeytown - Inn Town: I really like the way the chorus is done in this, with just Ryan singing at first followed by the harmony parts after half a bar. There're also some great lines in this, like "spent a life on a heart that would rather not feel anything". The instrumental 3:20-ish in is a nice break, too.

Burial - Archangel: I've been getting really into Burial and dubstep in general recently, and for some reason I really like this song from his second album which, it must be said, really isn't as good as his first (but is still great). In a "what the hell was he thinking?" move, he samples that gun-toting, ball-busting gangster that is... Ray J. And he makes it work. That's why he's Burial.

Keren Ann - The Harder Ships Of The World: Beautifully empty, letting Keren Ann's voice do all the heavy lifting (though the backing adds nice touches and isn't to be sniffed at) this simple song is gorgeous. Not much else to say on top of that, really.

Instruction. - Great: Instruction., whose members carried on the illustrious Gay For Johnny Depp and God Fires Man, were pretty well on their way to making it fairly big until suddenly they fell out with Geffen, their record company, and dove back into relative obscurity. It's unfortunate, because they were awesome, and a great band to see live. This song showcases their modest side.

Industrial Tribute To Metallica - Battery: Exactly what it says on the tin; Metallica's metal classic Battery done in an industrial fashion, which works much better than one would expect for something from one of those "Tribute To..." albums. The vocals aren't great, but the synth work makes up for it.

The Creeps - Codename: Farflight: The Creeps are a bloody fantastic Canadian dumb-punk band, who think they're being chased by the CIA; this song basically sums them up, as they're singing about being captured and used as basically human data-storage devices. Yeah, when I said they were dumb I meant it, but in a good way.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Mistakes & Regrets: Fantastic starting line, and other lyrics in general, are reason enough to listen to this song, but, apparently not happy with just that to hang their hat on, Trail Of Dead added superb drumming, good guitar work and a wonderful chorus to create this beast of a song.

Gorillaz Vs. Spacemonkeyz - Lil' Dub Chefin'/More Rubba Dub/More Peanuts: Some great dub on show here, especially in the last 5 minutes or so where Clint Eastwood gets the Spacemonkeyz treatment. This came about after Daman Albarn heard their remix of Tomorrow Comes Today and liked it so much he then got them to remix the whole first Gorillaz album as Laika Come Home.

BT - Good Morning Kaia: This is a gorgeous semi-ambient piece dedicated to his daughter Kaia which closes the brilliant album This Binary Universe. The piano part is wonderfully restrained until the "heavy" part starts unexpectedly, and there are nice small things which keep the whole piece together, along with glitchy drums which sort of shouldn't fit in with the piano but do.

26/07/09: Slacking Off

2009-07-26T10:44:00.002-04:00

I'm on holiday this week and the mixtape I had planned for you (another Found Sound one) is so horrifically bad that I can't actually bring myself to subject you to it. Thus, I'm giving a homework assignment instead: head on over to CPI's blog and download a mix there. Pick a recent mp3 blog or dig back a bit and grab one of her DJ Mixes. Recommended ones are: Nothing Always Happens (brooding, head-nodding Dubstep), Monastic Deathcore (over an hour of drone, doom & death all rolled together in one big fuzzy ball) and Head In The Clouds (a delightful hour and a bit of gorgeous trip-hop).

Hell, grab a few - knock yourself out, I'll be back next week.

19/07/09: By Any Other Name

2009-07-19T12:01:00.002-04:00

Steve Porter - Henry Rollins Rant Remix (Feat. The Techno Viking)
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll (L.A. Boxers Dub Remix)
Adele - Hometown Glory (Chewy Chocolate Cookies Remix)
Dirty Disco Youth - Eye Of The Tiger (Survivor Reinterpretation)
Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl (Rusko Chapstick Remix)
The Stranglers - Peaches (Roland Dubbs Mouldy Peaches Remix)
Radiohead - Remyxamatosis (Cristian Vogel Mix)
Rihanna - Umbrella (Travis Barker Remix)
Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Fun Machine Mix)
Andy Williams - Music To Watch Girls By (Mr. No Hands Remix)
The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter (Illuminoids Remix)
Slipknot - My Plague (New Abuse Remix)
Franz Ferdinand - If I Can't Have You Then Nobody Can
Bon Iver - Blood Bank (Duossendo Remix)
Michael Jackson - You Are Not Alone (VIKING & CJ Milli Shooting Stars Tribute)
Bob Marley - I'm A Rainbow Too (Fatboy Slim Techno Mix)
Gene Kelly - Singing In The Rain (Mint Royale Remix)
Bloc Party - Where Is Home? (Burial Remix)

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090719

Remixes are interesting things, and something that I rather like - as you may have noticed. From a minor re-touch of an alright song that tightens it up and makes it a really good song all the way up to a complete re-imagining of a song that renders is next to unrecognisable. Slipknot's My Plague is an example of the first type of mix: it was improved from a middle-of-the-album song to a pretty beast cut by the New Abuse Mix, all without much added or taken away - it was just tuned up and anything superfluous was cut. Burial's take on Bloc Party's Where Is Home? is at the latter end of the spectrum: the remix is anything but Bloc Party. The title line and a few snippets are sampled, but it's 90% a Burial song, it just happens to be that the samples were from Bloc Party and not his usual girl-next-door vocals. The "remix" of Eye Of The Tiger here is actually more of a cover than a remix, to the point where I'm actually happy to leave credit for it with Dirty Disco Youth rather than call it a Survivor song that they've remixed.

Everything else lands somewhere between these extremes: from simply lifting the vocal line and building a new song around it, the treatment faced by a lot of the Motown Remixed series, can create a pretty decent mix - as the Fun Machine remix of I Heard It Through The Grapevine shows. Taking a little more of the original lands you with something more akin to the Illuminoids take on the Stones' Gimme Shelter, giving it a bit more of an electro feel. Now, Gimme Shelter and Grapevine are stone-cold classics and neither song is improved by their respective remixes - I don't think any ever expected they would be. My dad can't get his head round why anyone would remix or cover a song period, let alone one where they have no chance of improving it. He's pretty open to things musically, but he can't stomach different takes on songs he loves. I don't understand trying to out-do a song by remixing or covering it (unless you decide to improve something you don't like but can hear potential in, but that's a different kettle of fish entirely) but I do get the idea of trying to present it to a different audience than would normally listen to it. For example, taking The Yeah Yeah Yeahs to a Dubstep crowd: I quite enjoyed this Dubstep take on a band I'd not normally listen to. Adele is a singer I'd hear of as rivalling Amy Winehouse in the neo-soul revival but Chasing Pavements, when I heard it, never got me. The remix of Hometown Glory, however, with it's subtle wobble on the bare piano and her gorgeous voice caught me pretty quickly. The filthy drop that shortly followed sealed it, but the point is that I liked what I heard of the original and I'm likely going to delve more into her now, something I wouldn't have done before. Henry Rollins seems to have a similar attitude, more towards electronic music in general , but also toward the idea of using someone else's output as the basis for your medium. A touch of auto-tune, some rather creative sampling and suddenly the message he's spouting seems a little less relevant. (There was a song like this a few years ago where Eminen's "Ain't nobody listen to techno!" dig against Moby was set to a heavy techno beat to similar effect.)

Remixes can be incredibly easy to make which, unfortunately, leads to some terribly trashy remixes. Remember the mid-nineties where remixing something simply meant speeding it up and adding a nn-tsh-nn-tsh beat to it? I - for reasons still not quite fully known - decided a while ago to see if anyone had decided to remix 2008's darling of the indie blogs, Bon Iver. I found mention of only a handful of remixes, one of which was one of the aforementioned nineties takes on Skinny Love, which made the falsetto even higher at the faster speed and ended up sounding like the Bee Gees on a banjo. The other was a much nicer experience: Duossendo's remix of the newly-released Blood Bank, a more subdued affair that used portions of the original song appropriately, rather than just slamming the thing in a blender or accelerating it.

Back to terrible nineties remixing: it's back with a vengeance with the horror of knocked-out-in-10-minutes Dubstep remixes. There are some amazing mixes out there, but they take a little more digging to find, unfortunately. Rusko's take on Katy Perry's insanely catchy I Kissed A Girl is exactly what Dubstep remixes should be like: it distils the song down to is bare-bones then makes it ten times more danceable with the addition of a MASSIVE bassline and some excellent breaks. Another good bet in Dubstep remixes is to check out the remixes of songs that aren't currently a big thing, like Roland Dubbs' take on The Strangler's Peaches. It's pretty standard wobble-bass stuff, but you can hear there's been some thought put in the process and there's enough variation on the original that it holds itself up quite well. Andy Williams' classic Music To Watch Girls By has undergone a similar, but different, treatment where the main drive has been turned on its head with a well-done filthy bass line. A simple remix - in terms of what's been added - can work spectacularly well, at times. The things that Travis Barker has been doing to hip-hop songs recently are amazing, all through just taking over the original drum-line and spicing it up. (NB: I am in no way saying that his drumming is simple, merely that the addition of it is a pretty simple thing to do). There's a touch of extra guitar for bite on his remix of Umbrella but otherwise it's the song as it originally was, just with more awesome drums. Ace, eh?

The rest of the stuff on this mixtape is just as good, I just didn't have a way to work it into my ramblings: Remyxamtosis is an ambitious mix, removing the highly distinctive, driving guitar line of Myxamatosis and letting it the tinny, jittering drums lead the way for the feedback and stuttered vocals to follow. I was surprised and sceptical upon hearing about the release of Blood, an entire album of Dub remixes of Franz Ferdinand's Tonight album. It was sadly disappointing upon first listen, a lot of tame background stuff that just stood to give a slightly different view of the originals. I was about to give up when the second half of the album made me sit up and pay attention with its dramatic reinterpretations of the source material. If I Can't Have You Then Nobody Can is the best of the bunch, but also noteworthy are Katherine Hit Me and Backwards On My Face (not least for the fantastic sound produced by rendering the vocals into unintelligible gibberish through massive distortion). I'd completely forgotten about Fatboy Slim's take on Bob Marley until I decided I was going to do a remix mixtape, when I stumbled across I'm A Rainbow Too again and suddenly remembered the massive airplay it got way back in the day when it first came out - round about when You've Come A Long Way, Baby hit and he was The DJ. It's aged pretty well, actually, which is nice. Finally, You Are Not Alone is tear-jerkingly/eye-rollingly apt (depending on your point of view of Michael Jackson's death and the void - or lack thereof - it's left in your life) these days, and VIKING & CJ Milli Shooting Stars Tribute is one of the best of the recent wave of remixes of MJ's stuff that's flooding the internet. Nothing spectacularly different, but it's interesting to hear what a touch of auto-tune does to the man's voice.

~~Oh yeah, and apologies for the schizophrenic volume levels - I'm working on it, promise!~~ Fixed it!

12/07/09: Found Sound 3 - Mix #24

2009-07-12T13:02:00.003-04:00

I hadn't found a mixtape at a Mixed CD Exchange for a good while, but the other day I picked up three from one them them - high winds (or a jackass, I'm not sure which) had knocked them down and out of sight, meaning they'd also been scratched up a bit They play alright - a few jumps and skips here and there - but they're a pain to rip. So a lot of these songs I've had to find elsewhere and sub in to the right places (less so on this mix than the others) but it's all turned out alright. (If anyone can help fill in the blanks of songs I couldn't find info. on it'd be much appreciated!)

My guess for the author of this mixtape is a girl in her early teens, simply from the musical choices, but the fact that it's apparently the 24th mixtape they've put up - and I don't think many youngsters really do them theses days - I'm really not sure who they are at all. Some interesting picks on it, at least.

Apologies for laziness - my parents are in town and I've got little time to make mixtapes/write about them myself. Regular service will be back in 2 weeks, promise!

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090712

Destiny's Child - Emotion
Unknown - Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye (Live Leonard Cohen Cover)
Pearl Jam - Better Man
Nirvana - All Apologies
Ayo - Down On My Knees
Paolo Nutini - Last Request
Unknown - Unknown (Something In Some Foreign-Speak)
Roberta Flack - First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
The Temptations - My Girl
System Of A Down - Chop Suey
Beyoncé - Irreplaceable
The Corrs - Somebody Else's Boyfriend
Cher & Eros Ramazzotti - Più Che Puoi
Feist - Mushaboom (The Postal Service Remix)
Maroon 5- She Will Be Loved

05/07/09: These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things...

2009-07-04T17:08:00.005-04:00

Graeme's been trying to use the last song on this mix for a while, but I've refused to let a half-hour piece be slapped on at the end of an otherwise regular mixtape, so he came back with another Long Songs mix. It's pretty awesome, to be perfectly honest.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090705

For A Minor Reflection - Kyrrð/Reistu Þig Við, Sólin Er Komin Á Loft...: A nice slow opening to an album, but don't let its serenity fool (or bore) you; this builds slowly, until - seemingly out of nowhere - you realise it's HEAVY. The story of FaMR is quite weird: they started off as a hard rock duo, then added a member & switched to indie rock, added another member and switched to blues before settling on post-rock. I seriously recommend seeing them live, because they are the best live act I've seen in terms of how much is added to the (already good) music; you can feel every drumbeat, and the guitars seem so much heavier. (P.S. The bit at 7:30 or so is an excellent wee touch, as is the sudden change at 10:20.)

Boris - Flood: Part I: A beautifully simple idea. The guitar plays a minimalistic riff, but all the while the reverb is being slowly turned up and up. You have to wait 6 minutes for anything else to happen, but the cyclical yet simultaneously ever-changing guitar line keeps you interested enough. Keep listening to the end; Boris are renowned for being absolutely bat-shit insane and they don't disappoint here.

John Coltrane - My Favourite Things: Pretty self-explanatory: this is one of the legends of jazz performing his take on the Sound Of Music's My Favourite Things. If you understand the underlying structure of this kind of jazz (which sounds very, very elitist, but there is actually a specific ordering of the piece: the basic idea is that there's an intro then the main riff is repeated over and over by the band while each member takes a turn soloing over the others) you'll realise that while it's full of solos, riffing and repetition it's actually never wanky or boring. This was recorded in 1960, only a year after the musical was released, and has since become a jazz standard - for very good reason.

Iced Earth - Gettysburg 1863: The Devil To Pay/Hold At All Costs/High Water Mark: The metal/orchestra thing has been done before (see Metallica's spectacular S&M album with the San Francisco Symphony, among many others) but this is different in that the orchestration, played by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, doesn't take a back-seat to the metal. This half-hour-long epic (in the true sense of the word) tells the story of the crucial battle of Gettysburg - the tipping point in the American Civil War - from the Confederate side for a change. It uses snippets of American classics like When Johnny Comes Marching Home and The Star-Spangled Banner to great effect, immersing the listener in the period, along with the strangely appropriate metal helping you visualise the carnage of war all around you. I'm not a huge fan of metal, but for something this good I will make an exception.

28/06/09: The King Is Dead, Long Live The King

2009-06-27T20:17:00.005-04:00

I planned to make this some kind of MJ mix, but then I figured people would be hearing his greatest hits left, right and centre so more of them wouldn't be particularly well-received and a bunch of remixes, covers and rarities might be just a little bit of overload. Anyway, there's a little bit of him on here but otherwise I just took the first song as a seed and picked the next based on the outro - basically another Five Minute Mixtape. I've also tried normalising the whole mixtape so hopefully there won't any unexpected jumps or drops in volume. Enjoy!

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090628

It's Pride weekend, I'm busy partying lots - you'll get some pretty words later, promise. x

21/06/09: High Contrast

2009-06-21T11:45:00.004-04:00

Compare and contrast is today's theme, the idea being that there are two songs by each band, each showing a completely different side to the band's sound. Either a departure form their usual fare (see: Metallica, Moby), the range the band's sound covers (see: Gay For Johnny Depp, Dillinger Escape Plan, Coalesce) or just the way a band's sound changes over time (see: Primal Scream, Oasis). Whatever way, it's likely you'd never guess both songs are by the same band.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090621

Coalesce - Whole Lotta Love / Thank You: Two songs from Coalesce's Nothing New Under The Sun EP, both Zeppelin covers both completely different takes on the originals. Whole Lotta Love is done in Coalesce's usual style, i.e. Heavy. As. Fuck. The vocals are brutal, "Gonna give you every inch of my love" becomes a threat and the whole thing packs a major punch. Believe it or not Thank You is sung by the same guy, his voice soften to the point where it's difficult to comprehend it's the same as that on WLL. Even further stripped down than the Zep's original I think this rendition actually hits the spot a little better for the lack of the superfluous organ addition on the original.

Metallica - Battery / Mama Said: Heavy, fast and just plain metal as it comes, Battery has it all: intricate solos, massive thrash riffs and lyrics full of violent tendencies ("Crushing all deceivers, smashing non-believers") and it does a pretty good job of summing up Metallica in the eighties. After their self-titled 1990 album and years of constant touring they seemed to mellow a little bit, ending up releasing Load, a radical departure from their eighties sound. This is the pick of the album, the country-tinged ballad about a trying to find your way in life with apron strings still attached.

Oasis - Fuckin' In The Bushes / Champagne Supernova: An instrumental piece featuring samples from the movie Message To Love (about the 1970 Isle Of White Festival), Zep-like riffs and some great guitar licks Fuckin' In the Bushes is hardly traditional Oasis, but it's bloody brilliant stuff and soundtracks the fight scene in Snatch spectacularly. If you don't know Champagne Supernova already, though, then shame on you - possibly Oasis' best song (they have surprsingly many candidates, though) it's a huge, gorgeous, grand work that rattles on for seven and a half minutes and has a real bloody supernova named after it.

Moby - Heavy Flow / Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?: Ever thought all Moby's songs sound the same? They're all nice, yeah, but a bit simple - plinky piano, old gospel vocal samples, nice beat and bit of an effect here and there and you're done, right? I'm not knocking it, it's a great formula and it's made some beautiful songs, like Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?. Bet you didn't know Moby released a punk-rock, aggressively pro-vegan concept album (Animal Rights) in the mid-nineties. No shit - that's really Moby screaming "I want to break you down and make you cum".

Dillinger Escape Plan - Panasonic Youth / Like I Love You: Proper heavy mathcore is awesome, and Panasonic Youth is exactly that. Dillinger Escape Plan are experimental as it is, but throw in some Mike Patton influence (as they had just worked on an EP with him) and you're pretty much guaranteed some wondrously mental goodness unfolding. It's a little odd, then, to hear such a faithful cover of Justin Timberlake's Like I Love You, pretty much the only differences being the intro jam and the lack of the rap chorus. Taken from their Plagiarism EP it does exactly what it says on the tin: straight-up takes on Nine Inch Nails, the JT and Massive Attack, among others. Well worth checking out.

Gay For Johnny Depp - Fucking Isn't Cheating / Godspeed You! Black Mogwai: I could tell you all about how the lyrics to almost every Gay For Johnny Depp song are violently homoerotic, usually about some kind of coerced, bloody sex with Mr. Depp. Or I could tell you about how this is an epic in GFJD's repertoire, clocking in about three times longer than their usual style of song, bouncing about around a wonderful main riff. But I won't, instead I can sum up the essence of this whole song in two words that will let you know just how amazing it is: Kazoo. Solo. It's just a touch different from the post-rock stylings of Godpseed You! Black Mogwai (bet you'd never have guessed it'd be post-rock, eh?). There're only about 500 copies of the 2005 Tour EP that this came from, I think, and it's almost like the band are trying to hide a secret with it. They're actually really proficient at this post-rock stuff, not just taking the piss as I expected from the title. It's gorgeous.

Primal Scream - Movin' On Up / Space Blues #2: Screamedlica is a full of gospel-tinged, acid-fueled, house-scene-conquering dubby goodness, especially on Movin' On Up, the album's opener. Driving, pulsing and pushing it's the song you keep moving on as you start your way home before the acid comedown really kicks in, the rest of the album as good as designed to ease the journey. Space Blues #2, on the other hand, is about as far come down as you can get. It still retains a touch of the gospel feel, in the hymn-like lyrics, but it's much more mellow, chilled-out and bare.

14/06/09: ...

2009-06-14T11:03:00.000-04:00

This week's mix is full of instrumental goodnesses. Feel free to sing along loudly and obnoxiously, inventing your own words as you go. Bonus points if you video it and upload it to YouTub. Interesting fact time: the last instrumental to hit the top of the Billboard Top 100 was the Miami Vice theme in 1985; in the UK it was Mr. Oizo's Flat Beat in 1999 that last topped the charts.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090614

Placebo - Bulletproof Cupid: This is one of Placebo's few instrumentals (the only one on an album, as far as I know) and it's bloody brilliant, avoiding all the usual Placebo pitfalls of repetitive lyrics (by default, in this case) and being a bit-long for its own good (which is kinda tied into the first quibble I have). This piece is short, sharp and to the point - no messing around, no drawing it out just two and a half minutes of tight, driven, snappy rock. Awesome.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? - Attack Of The 60 Ft. Lesbian Octopus: Does It Offend You, Yeah? are vying with The Locust here for best song titles. This is a poppy, shrill beast that drags you along with it's hopping synth line and it pretty much never lets up. And, just in case you couldn't tell from the way this sound, the band are pretty energetic live apparently. During the last show of their US tour the lead singer broke his leg on the last song, yet still returned to the stage for the encore. That's pretty bad-ass.

Gorillaz - 68 State: Gorillaz have B-side albums almost as good as their proper album releases, 68 State is lifted from D-Sides, the rather ace Demon Days companion album. It's got a slow, pulsing groove hidden in its pushing bassline that makes it wonderful travel music. The high keyboard line almost replicates vocals, but leaves room a voice wouldn't to give the whole thing an air of openness and motion.

Firebrand Boy - Such Great Heights: Bitpop takes on The Postal Service, what a perfect marriage. Glasgow-based Firebrand Boy makes all his music with glitched Nintendo stuff and the occasional tough of guitar work. Such Great Heights loses the melancholy edge that tinges all The Postal Service's work and becomes pure joyous fun here.

The Flaming Lips - Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia): The closer to The Flaming Lips' sort-of-but-not-quite concept album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and is nigh-on designed to be a space-out come-down - which is a perfectly apt ending if you've just traversed the journey that album takes you on. It can feel a touch repetitive, but when it's mixed with a good dash of the unexpected (trumpets, anyone?) it levels out quite nicely.

Bad Plus - Iron Man: If you didn't know (as I didn't when I first popped this on, not really looking at the tracklisting) that there's a Black Sabbath cover coming it'll likely take you by surprise: the intro is innocuous enough, not even really hinting at what's to come, but when it really kicks in with the heavy chords there's no mistaking it. The song translates bizarrely well to a jazz trio set-up, as does Karma Police which they've also covered (among others).

Atlas Sound - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel: This experimental ambient piece comes from the first solo album by Bradford James Cox of Deerhunter. Recorded almost entirely in Ableton Live (including all the effects used) his aim was to create "a haunting record" that began and ended with ambient tracks, "and in that way, the entire album was a dream."

These Monsters... - Dust And Ivy: Mental Floyd-esque sax takes centre-stage in this massive jazzy post-rock piece, the most impressive thing being that despite all the elements that might predispose it to being pretentious wank (historic speech samples, sax in post-rock, bells etc.). It actually manages to stay on the right side of grandiose, the rest of the band stay focussed while our friend the sax player just goes nutty over the top of it all by the end of it.

Red Sparowes - Buildings Began To Stretch Wide Across The Sky, And The Air Filled With A Reddish Glow: Talking of grandiose, Red Sparowes are a touch guilty of straying into that territory. Just in case their name and the song title didn't give it away. Still, it's hard to fault them musically: their bass-heavy sound stays clear of the pitfall of being a low, rumbling mess by embracing a bouncing, rounded mid-range; the addition of pedal steel guitar lends them a very interesting sound that no other post-rock band really has; and their three guitarists really give them a versatile range. Live they're worth a look too, despite the man behind them leaving the band he's allowed his visuals to remain in use, which makes for a pretty, pretty slide show during their set.

Nine Inch Nails - Adrift And At Peace: Nine Inch Nails' Still album was rather appropriately named, containing older NIN song that had been "recorded live in a deconstructed fashion", losing all the ragged computer synth sound and being played entirely on acoustic instruments. This is one of the new pieces that was recorded in the same fashion for the album, a simple but gorgeous drifting piano piece. Beautifully subdued.

Explosions In The Sky - Day Six: The story behind The Rescue is an interesting one, but the trouble that led to it brought about some of this band's best work. While on tour a few years ago the band's van broke down, the transmission completely shot. Flat broke from paying for its repair and with nowhere to stay (and no money to pay for anywhere) they were taken in by a stranger and allowed to stay in an attic for eight days. The album was then written and recorded in eight days once they got back home, a song a day with no previous material to work from. This is one of the best pieces from the album and one of the best things Explosions have ever done.

Air - Alone In Kyoto: Sofia Coppola's amazingly beautiful Lost In Translation had a wonderful soundtrack to go with it, this is quite possibly the best choice from it. Used when Charlotte takes a tour of Kyoto and her journey there it speaks as much as the film does at that point. Its simple electro sound gives way to a more human piano about 3/4 through that closes it out before the sound of waves fills the rest of it.

Justin Vernon - We Will Never Die: This is a very last-minute addition to the mixtape, its length meaning it edged out a few other songs for its place. The high, held strings and the moan of a trumpet take the place of his voice on this piece, but the yearning that fills his music is kept. It's long but it's wonderful, there's a slow undercurrent that pulls it along until about four minutes in when it picks up (well, as much as it ever does). From there is just flows, meandering about without much sense of purpose but it doesn't really lack for it. There's a sad, lost feel that foreshadows the loneliness of Bon Iver. Come to think of it, in fact, the trumpet on the song For Emma almost echoes that used here at points.

Mono - Black Woods: A while ago I seem to recall I promised some heavy-as-fuck Mono. Well, promise delivered on this one. The early build is slow, but when it kicks in it's sudden and urgently pressing. The push and pull, led by the bass, keeps the song going until - pretty much out of nowhere - all hell breaks loose about 3.30 and it only gets heavier from here, at times sounding like it's broken your speakers (there's a very high chance it hasn't, if it has it's pure chance and not my fault, honest). By the end it's fallen into a whirlwind swirl of white noise that takes over and fills the latter half completely. If you can get into it there's an odd rhythm to it that can be relaxing, but I can see it being tough to find.

07/06/09: "This is my mom's favourite song..."

2009-06-07T13:52:00.006-04:00

Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom - Graeme's guesting again. Enjoy.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090607

Herbie Hancock - Watermelon Man: A reworking of a jazz classic by the man who first wrote it, I first heard this last week or so and it single-handedly got me into jazz. The intro reminds me of the music in the Black Mage Village in Final Fantasy IX, and the bassline's timing always throws me off.

Led Zeppelin - Bron-Y-Aur Stomp: The Zep need no introduction. This is a hoedown (according to Wikipedia) about Robert Plant walking his dog in the woods which has great guitar & a wonderful beat to it.

George Baker Selection - Little Green Bag: If you've ever seen Reservoir Dogs (and if you haven't, do so now), you'll know this song. Fantastic bass opening and just a joy to listen to throughout, this was recorded at the band's own cost. I'd say it was worth it.

CCC - Struttin' Rita: Another mashup, this time from CCC's Cracked Pepper (can be found here, I recommend it), this is a mix of Struttin' by Primal Scream and The Beatles' Lovely Rita. Mashing up The Beatles is risky business, but - in my opinion - CCC pulls it off with aplomb here.

Chris Thile - On Ice: Chris Thile is the mandolinist (seriously: he's a full-time mandolinist) for Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers. This song, taken from his Grammy-winning fourth solo album, has a really good riff to it, and the combination of mandolin and occasionally backwards drums (two of the 39 instrument used on the album) is so weirdly good that you have to listen to know what I'm talking about.

Alarm Will Sound - Cliffs Remix: Aphex Twin (Richard D. James is weird, weird guy) has released a few album of really quite disturbing ambient music. This is one of the songs from those albums as done by a 20-member chamber orchestra then remixed by said outfit. Any questions?

Eminem - Guilty Conscience: A clever play on the angel-and-devil-on-either-shoulder gag we all know from Looney Tunes cartoons, but in this Dr. Dre plays the angel, Eminem plays the devil, and the moral choices include date-raping a 15-year-old and robbing a liquor store. I love the rhymes in this one because it goes against the normal monologue style of rapping and focuses on the fantastic interplay between Em and Dre.

Paul Simon - Kodachrome: The talented half of Simon & Garfunkel released this in 1973, and it strangely hasn't aged that much, considering he seems to be talking about colour photography as being a fairly new experience. Look out for the lovely hum he does about 2:53 in, I love it so very much.

t.A.T.u. - Lyudi Invalidi (Intro): Kinda dancey, kinda rocky, I can't really fit this into a genre. But don't worry if you hate t.A.T.u.; they don't sing in this one, it's just a 50-second instrumental intro.

Cornel West & BMWMB - The N-Word (Feat. Tavis Tavis Smiley & Michael Eric Dyson): This is a 12-minute discussion by some Dr. Cornel West and fellow Ivy league American University professors (the Black Men Who Mean Business mentioned in the artist name) about whether or not "the N-word" should be used by blacks to refer to each other. Really interesting stuff, and there's some great humour in there as well when you least expect it. The jazz in the background is repetitive but you don't really notice it because the combination of it together with the discussion keeps you from being bored.

Fires - Bomb (223): Two and a half minutes of tight, hard-hitting rock. Try and get your hands on EP One by Fires and the follow-up EP by God Fires Man (same band, different name). A few of the guys are famous for being sexual-hardcore band Gay For Johnny Depp and the remnants of criminally under-rated garage punk band Instruction..

Funeral For A Friend - Bullet Theory: After they released their EPs and started working on their first album, FFAF kinda went downhill but they redeem themselves somewhat with this fairly heavy, un-whiny song from aforementioned debut album. It's got a great, jagged opening riff and some real oomph to it throughout.

Benny Ill Vs. DJ Hatcha - Highland Spring: While I am hardly an expert on Dubstep, this is what is described in layman's terms as a "thumpin' choon". Don't be fooled by the fact it's (technically) dance music, though; this is really interesting stuff, with a wonderful riff to kick it off and some insanely good drum rhythms throughout (not just the regular thumpa-thumpa-thumpa stuff you hear out car windows in Glasgow).

Harlem Shakes - Carpetbaggers: Harlem Shakes have a bizarrely Motown feel to them, which is surprising given just how white they all are. This song's got a brilliant groove and a good dollop of funk to it. The background vocals are worth looking out for, as is the drumming throughout.

Wax Audio - You Better Run, You Better Take Cover: A different kind of mashup here, using two different covers of Men At Work's Down Under and a host of radio and TV samples from the 2005 Cronolla Beach Race Riots. As the creator of this mashup put it:
We're not racist in Australia BUT... when we gather in drunken mobs of 5000 to bash "lebs and wogs" in "defence" of our beaches it's OK for Alan Jones (Sydney's number one shock-jock) to spur them on - especially when the country's top politicians back him up. The message to these "middle eastern grubs" is simple: "I come from the land down under, you better run, you better take cover".

Mostly Other People Do The Killing - Handsome Eddy: The name of the band is wonderful, as is the name of the band leader (Moppa Elliot) and the description I've found of the band on Wikipedia, calling it "terrorist bebop" and that's kind of accurate, I guess. The playing is erratic and sometimes feels like it's out of time or someone's looking at the wrong page of music, but the refrains repeated throughout keep *just* enough order in this chaotic piece for it to work.

Kid Koala - Moon River (Live In Sydney): Using three turntables and a helluva lot of skill, Kid Koala turns Audrey Hepburn's song from Breakfast At Tiffany's into something totally different. Watch out for the instrumental section starting about 2 minutes in; if you thought turntabling could never be beautiful, this will prove you wrong in an instant.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Open Invitation: The "hidden" song on BRMC's out-of-the-blue country-tinged third album, this is weirdly empty and features only vocals and a distorted organ. The sparseness of the sound works well, though, and the song acts as a good closer to the album.

31/05/09: Let's Get It On...

2009-05-31T11:10:00.003-04:00

I've had a busy week at a boring, boring Physics conference sans computer, let alone intarwobs, so there's not much wordiness to this update. That kinda works out, though, since this mixtape kinda speaks for itself - eighteen songs of sheer, unadulterated filth (in one way or another). From the stone-cold classic which lends its name to this mix through the smooth funkiness of Puscifer, on through Bruce Springsteen's slightly worrisome yearning to The Stooges utter depravity and everything (young girls, strippers, strap-ons...) in between. This one's more of a choose-you-own-adventure mix than anything I could put in a sensible order (despite my best attempts). Pick and choose your songs and ordering based on your comfort with the subject matter, stamina (*nudge, nudge, wink, wink*) and, well... go enjoy this mix.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090531

24/05/09: Between You And I, I Know She Could Tear Me Apart

2009-05-21T10:39:00.012-04:00

This is a tribute mix of sorts to CPI's mp3 blog that I keep encouraging people to subscribe to on facebook - it's well worth signing up to facebook if only to get her updates. This collection of songs has been culled from the blog postings she's made since December, when I first stumbled across her. The 73-odd minutes here are a tiny slice (~3%) of the huge amount (~36 hours) of music she's sent out in those five months. Right now she's being a bit quiet, but there can up to three 80 minute posts a week - which can prove somewhat overwhelming, but there's almost always something there that you'll enjoy that you'd never have come across otherwise.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090524

N.A.S.A. - N.A.S.A. Music (LA Riots Remix) (Feat. Method Man, E40 & DJ Swamp): Massive vocals and excellent stuttering effects over a huge riff are complemented superbly by some well-fired guest raps on this remix. The number and range of guests brought in for the album this comes from is insane - from Method Man to M.I.A. to Nina Persson to Karen O to the last thing recorded by ODB before his untimely end.

Lonely Island - Jizz In My Pants (Cousin Cole House Edit): The guys behind the Emmy-winning Dick In A Box have made a whole album of songs now, some of them better than other (just ignore Like A Boss, it's really not worth it). The best thing they've done, however, is Jizz In My Pants - the tragic tale of, well... you'll figure it out. This remix is the lightest of re-touches, adding exactly the right amount of oomph without turning it into a ridiculously over-extended ten minute "edit".

Alexander Marcus - Papaya: I really don't know where to start on this one, the chorus is one of the catchiest I've heard in a long, long time. The video is an essential watch, not least for the boy's astounding dance skills toward the end - they're seriously impressive. Other than that, it makes about as much sense as it sounds like it does.

A. R. Rahman - O Saya (Feat. M.I.A.): Easily the best bit of the otherwise boring, predictable and bizarrely award-laden Slumdog Millionaire. This song was up for the Best Original Song Oscar, but lost out to another one from Slumdog. There's a great running beat to this and the touch of vocoder - though becoming quite overdone these days in rap - is a nice addition to M.I.A.'s vocals.

Fever Ray - Triangle Walks: Sitting down to write about this I've just realised by this song has so such a similar feel to Heartbeats by The Knife in its bare drums and well-placed electro highlights: Fever Ray is the alias Karin Dreijer Andersson - half of The Knife - takes for her solo act. Given how much I love The Knife, Heartbeats especially, I don't see much wrong with this. There's an very swayable slow groove hidden in the bongo beats that sidle their way in midway though, sneaky but much appreciated.

Caspa - Born To Do It: Proof that not all Dubstep is all moody, pensive and deep: here's something wondrously danceable and fun from Caspa - who, incidentally, works incredibly well when he's paired with Rusko, who has done an out-of-this-world remix of one of last year's big hits that I'll need to send out your way soon. Caspa is indeed born to make this shit: big beats, a touch of wobble (which is far too easy to overdo in Dubstep) and some great use of old-school samples.

Disfear - Get It Off: This is the first "heavy" (opposed to Isis's super-heavy stuff that I've been really digging recently) song I've really liked in a while, the beast of an intro riff followed by the massive low-end make for an awesome start, the rapid-fire pace after that keeps it tearing along quite nicely. Shit like this that never lets up is awesome.

Wolfram Huschke - Praise: I can't dig up much on Wolfram Huschke, save to say that I think he works mainly with a cello - which explains the gorgeous sliding and popping he throws out on this. This song's got a weird sixties feel to it, the chorus feels almost too much like Karma Chameleon to be comfortable, but he backs off enough that it's just a cheeky nod. I don't think anyone's every made the words "TV dinner" sound quite so appetising as he manages on this, what a voice... from what I can tell this is a break=up song of some sort, but it sounds far too happy for that simply due to his superbly smooth vocals.

Nina Simone - Take Care Of Business (Pilooski Edit): A lot of Nina Simone's appeal is that she requires next-to-nothing in the way of backing in order to really capture your ear, which makes remixing her a bit of a tough job (the Nina Simone Remixed album was certainly a mixed bag). This remix manages to toe the line quite well, adding a decently splashy beat and a fair amount of goings-on without drowning out or relegating the vocals to the background. Goes to show that she wasn't just a crooner either - this is one of her feistier numbers.

The Inbreds - Amelia Earhart: Born of the same city/scene as Sloan I need to remind the wife every time she hears this that it is indeed a different band. The song's nicely sparse but feels like there's more going on than there really is. You should check out the very, very weird video if you get the chance.

Jill Barber - Never Quit Loving You: Ooft, what a voice - I love the gems this neo-soul revival is bringing out. The Temptations-like backing vocals add a really nice Motown touch to this number. The string arrangement is incredible as well, outside of the drums I don't think there's much backing otherwise but it certainly doesn't feel lacking.

Fight Bite - Swissex Lover: This song reminds me of a mellowed-out version of Stars: from the overlapping and interweaving female and male vocals to the organ-led backing to the really tight beat. Incidentally - since the lyrics aren't exactly clear as day with the vocal style here - this is the song this mix gets its name from.

Noon & DJ Twister - Vision: I keep coming back to this song, possibly because it confuses me so much and I spend so long trying to figure out how it manages to mix trip-hop, a touch of dub and country so well. That and every time a new instrument is added to the intro it reminds me of yet another song.

Jennifer O'Connor - Here With Me: Plaintive, simple and very, very effective - a girl and her guitar. The pleading in her voice is heavy at times, really tugging at you. She seems to be making a name for herself with the blogs, NPR and the like so hopefully we'll be hearing more from her soon.

Lisa Germano - From A Shell: What a treat: yet more gorgeous vocals, after Jill Barber and Jennifer O'Connor. Her voice has a lovely, tired and wispy tail-off to it, added to rather well by the restrained backing that suddenly pops itself forward, still leaving her firmly in the foreground when she sounds like she could be overpowered by it so easily at points.

Bichi - Whirl-A Stream Of Comfort, To Cool And Surround Me, Until I Lose Sight Of My Own Defeat: Someone had been listening to too much Red Sparowes when they named this one, though the squealing low-fi glitchy electro is nothing like the RSs musically. Someone's set this song to a video of location scouting for a movie in Death Valley, it's wonderfully apt given the emptiness and abandonment the song creates.

The Choir Practice - Failsafe: Though not quite at the opposite end of the choir scale from Scala & Kolacny Brothers (I think Langley Schools Music Project grabs that honour) The Choir Practice is certainly more of a small-scale outfit. This is an an awesome (mostly) a capaella rendition of one of The New Pornographers' tunes. The musical backing that is there is quickly eclipsed and superseded by the harmonised vocals and hand-claps.

Digitonal - Black Box: This song provides a wondrously freaky horror movie-esque ride, sounding at times like it's both building and collapsing simultaneously. Samples from The Shining (which Digitonal re-scored for The Media Lounge's astounding re-edit) help set the mood. Listen to it with all the lights off after watching the re-edit, I dare you.

B. Fleischmann - Phones, Machines, And King Kong: I'm not allowed to listen to this when the wife is round any more. It's one of the few songs she simply cannot stand, and I can kind of see why. I think it's pure genius, though - the plot of King King is re-told in (what sounds like) the words of a seven-year old, monotone delivery and terrible pronunciation of Pterodactyl (listen out for it - it's a real treat) all included. Helpful insights such as saying that the Empire State Building's role in the movie was "like a phallic symbol" make this a fun listen. I will understand if it drives you crazy, though.

17/05/09: And If You Take My Advice And Try 'em You Might Like 'em

2009-05-17T12:38:00.004-04:00

Another guest mix, my brother again. A lot of neat instrumentals here, look out especially for BT near the end. If anyone's sick of Radiohead already, please say - otherwise, enjoy.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090517

Radiohead - I Am Citizen Insane: Ok, so I know there's been a lot of Radiohead on these mixtapes, but they've been consistently excellent for 15 years, and tried their hand at many genres along the way (see Jonny Greenwood later), so there's a huge amount of top-notch, varied stuff. This comes under the "weird" heading, an instrumental semi-glitch song from the COM LAG EP.

Johnny Cash - Redemption Song (With Joe Strummer): A very odd take on Bob Marley's neo-spiritualist Pan-Africanism from two distinctly non-African legends in completely different musical fields. What's really neat is how distinctive Cash & Strummer's voices stayed in their later years.

Evil Dead: The Musical - What The Fuck Was That?: Brilliantly fun song from a great musical. Went with my brother last year and got covered in blood. Sadly, it's stopped showing in Toronto, but apparently there are plans for a film version...

Goldfrapp - Cologne Cerrone Houdini: A nice wee groovy piece, with excellent restrained use of violin. Very good for chilling out to, and Goldfrapp shows she can sing quite well.

Snoop Dogg - California: I can't find anything on this anywhere, but the drumbeat & the singing are great. Even if you don't like rap, I'd recommend this because you can pretty much ignore the smallish amount of rapping (if you want to).

Spiritualized - Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space: This one starts off slow, then quickly builds up to a huge crescendo. The multiple vocal lines overlapping are a treat.

She & Him - Sentimental Heart: Zooey Deschanel can sing, too, but more importantly watch for the totally unexpected last 30 seconds or so of this song; it's a bit nuts after the quiet opening.

Ben E. King - Stand By Me: A classic which almost didn't get recorded (he had some spare studio time and decided to try this out; everyone loved it, so it went on his next album). Apparently there's a version by Muhammad Ali out there...

Danger Mouse & Jemini - Don't Do Drugs: If you still don't like rap after listening to these mixes this is probably your last chance to have your mind changed. This is a brilliantly fun song which my brother & I found by accident when we went into a shop in Oxford playing it on their sound system.

Minus The Bear - Houston, We Have Uh Oh: Great intro, great song name & a great song. The band name comes from an inside joke amongst band members about a T.V. show called "B.J. and the Bear".

Aldrine Guerrero - Schizophrenic Snowflakes: A ukelele tune by some Hawaiian guy, I got this on the same mixtape as that Martyn Bennett song a wee while ago. It took a while to grow on me, & it's not as good as Martyn, but I still really like it.

Jonny Greenwood - Open Spaces: From the There Will Be Blood soundtrack, this atonal minimalistic piece apparently does things my guitar teacher has never hear a string quartet do before. Give it a few listens, because it took me a few to get into it too.

Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass - Lady Fingers (Camara Kambon Remix): Whoever had the idea of remixing Whipped Cream & Other Delights, a Jazz classic, was either brilliant or stupid. You can make your mind up upon listening, but I love it and this is (to my mind) the pick of the already impressive bunch.

The Be Good Tanyas - Human Thing: Somehow the simple harmonies, repetitive guitar and sparse drumming add up to much more than the sum of their parts, creating a great wee bluegrass song.

Blonde Redhead - 23: The drumbeat in this song just keeps driving it on and, even though you can hardly tell what the girl is singing, you want to sing along like a tone-deaf tit.

Pilate - The Travel Song: Quite different to the rest of their stuff, this song is a beauty. The singing is quite good, but the feeling he puts into it makes it even better.

Shutter - Crystal: Some fine post-rock from a little-known Scottish band. I'm a big fan of both the opening riff and the breakdown about 3 minutes in. The tremolo picking at the "chorus" is pretty awesome, too. I've seen it played live and the guitarist's hand was actually a blur.

BT - All That Makes Us Human Continues: This was written over 6 months using this. It's crazy-good. Best bit: the crescendo that starts building at about 4:10 in, where it's nearly impossible to listen to, there's so much going on. Then suddenly... well, I'm not gonna ruin it for you, but it's one of my favourite moments in music ever. Play it LOUD enough that you can barely stand it to get the full effect.

Doves - The Cedar Room: A great ender, and also Doves' only good song. I really like the woman's subtle background vocals throughout. That's it until next week, I guess.

10/05/09: Oh, You Ironic Pop-Rock Fuck...

2009-05-10T14:54:00.005-04:00

Another guest spot today: my good friend Chris is handling main mixtaping duties today. As he puts it: No real theme, just odds'n'sods. Here we go...

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090510

Mastodon - The Wolf Is Loose: Seemed like a good place to start. Powerful drum intro and a seriously energetic bridge riff. Mastodon play good metal and (hopefully) don't take themselves seriously, if their latest video is anything to go by...

Lush - The Childcatcher: A creepy relic of the mid-90s shoegazer movement all about the young girl who slowly realises she's being used by a dirty old man. Really, it's quite a creepy listen...

Michael Armstrong - One: And speaking of creepy... A bunch of people thought it'd be a good idea to indoctrinate their youngsters on their music of choice as soon as possible. The Rockabye Baby albums are the result. One is particularly unsettling done on a xylophone.

The Black Mages - Opening/Bombing Mission: The first of several pieces of videogame music. The Black Mages are the rock band formed by the composer of the vast majority of the Final Fantasy game series soundtracks, Nobuo Uematsu, playing arranged versions of tunes from said games. This is taken from Final Fantasy 7 and sets the tone for a sizeable portion of the game. Very enjoyable listen.

Booker T. And The M.G.'s - Green Onions: A classic. No other way to put it. Alongside 'Little Green Bag,' this is one piece of music that'll have you wanting to walk around in your suit and sunglasses in slow motion...

The Haunted - Forensick: Biting social commentary followed by a kick-ass, driving metal riff. It's just a pity The Haunted have disappointed on pretty much all fronts since their self titled debut, which contains this little gem.

Daniel Lanois - Fire: I heard this one on House. The show has a pretty good soundtrack, every now and then. I've heard Iron & Wine and Bon Iver on it. This is just a nice, slow, easy listening number. Didn't think much of the rest of the stuff I listened to, but I recommend this. If only for the use of 'tremolo' as a lyric.

Týr - Regin Smiður: Viking metal. Relax, it's not what you think or expect. The thing it brings to mind, for me, is a barbershop quartet. With guitars. And lyrics in Pharoese, English, Danish and Icelandic. The vocal harmonies are impressive live, too. This is off the 2006 album Eric The Red, which I heartily recommend.

Akira Yamaoka - Angels Thanatos: The second of the videogame pieces in this list, this time from Silent Hill 2. A generally unsettling game that instead of having a 'light' and 'dark' world has an 'unsettling' and a 'downright terrifying' world. The soundtrack fits. This is one of the heavier pieces, but seemed to fit here better than the rest.

Lily Allen - Not Fair: A song most guys should find uncomfortable since it's about a guy being shit in bed, but it's a wonderful example of how pop music doesn't need to be mass market shite that only appeals to 12 and 13 year-olds. Plus, the country and western feel to the rhythm is fun.

Buckethead - Jordan: The madman that is Buckethead has a lot of fun with a cutoff switch throughout this song. It has a fun riff and unpredictable soloing that shows you don't have to stick to tried and true figures yet can still play something people actually enjoy listening to. Kerry King, I'm looking at you...

Murder By Death - Ash: The band who want to be Johnny Cash. Or they do now, at least. First few albums were bog standard 'indie' crap. The second two adopted this much more 'country' feel and are much the better for it. This song, from 2008's Red of Tooth and Claw, is a fine example.

Billy Idol - Wasteland: From 1993's much maligned Cyberpunk, Wasteland is a great piece of music. The whole album is very underrated - it has topped numerous 'worst album ever' lists - but I find it very good quasi-background music. Also, it's one of the first albums to be recorded with the use of computers, I believe.

Bon Iver - Blood Bank: "Well, I met you at the blood bank. We were looking at the bags..."
Justin Vernon needs to be careful. He's in serious danger of falling in love with his own legend, as the video for The Wolves should go some way to prove. This is, I fear, the only worthwhile track on the EP of same name. Still, if he hits this well when he's on target, he'll help us forgive his misses...

Strapping Young Lad - Far Beyond Metal: Because sometimes you just need to rock out. As cheesily as possible.

Kenji Yamamoto & Kouichi Kyuma - Submerged Temple: The last of the videogame pieces. Some people might not go for this. If you don't like it it is a bit long, admittedly. 9+ minutes of fairly minimalist electronic music might not sound like everyone's cup of tea, but I really like the piece. It's from the Metroid Prime 2: Echoes soundtrack.

Philip Roebuck - Running Home: There's nothing quite so plaintive as a depressed sounding banjo...

Iron Maiden - Mission From 'Arry: Not really a song, per se, but something of a legend amongst Iron Maiden fans. Anyone who has ever had a raging argument about nothing at all will find this familiar. Pay particular attention to the third man, the band's singer Bruce Dickinson subtly egging the other two (drummer Nicko McBrain and bassist Steve Harris) on - he's the one recording the whole thing. Plus, the last line seemed like the perfect way to end, well, pretty much anything...

03/05/09: "Thumping Tunes, Kicking Bass, God I Sound So Stupid"

2009-05-03T12:18:00.001-04:00

Okay, a simple idea this week - something you can dance your tits off, shift gears before you burn out and a decent cool off at the end. Dance music is funking ace at times. Ten points if you can identify the quote in the title correctly.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090503

Pendulum - Prelude/Slam: This is a beast of a starter, a great spoken intro that really build to a kick in the chest of a bass shot to. Fuck the neighbours and turn your speakers up loud for this one.

65daysofstatic - Dance Parties [Mechanised]: At one crowned point Radio 1's Hottest Track In The World this is 65 remixing 65, a fucking lethal combination.

Leftfield - Phat Planet: Sans dodgy Scottish bloke talking pish, this is the brilliant organic dance tune that pounded along as the surfers took to the wild horse-powered waves in that Guinness advert a few years ago. Leftfield are hideously under-rated, mainly because they've only ever released (I think) two albums, the majority of their work being odds and sods on OSTs and the like.

Prodigy, The - Omen: As if you'd ever doubt it, Omen proves that The Prodigy still have it, better than they've had at points before, actually. If you get the chance go and see them live - they are blinding on this current tour. As soon as I can get a copy of the dubstep breakdown they're doing live in Breathe these days I'm posting it here, it was astounding.

Deepsky - Atia: I found this gem on Deepsky's In Silico album when I was looking for Pendulum's album of the same name. The Pendulum one was pish, but the Deepsky one is pretty good chilled stuff. Cracking use of a vocal sample about halfway through as well (another ten points up for grabs if you can identify this one).

Amethyst - Blue Funk: The Wipeout games are renowned for their phenomenal OSTs and Wipeout Fusion was no exception. This is a choice cut from that album, but it's always closely tied to the game with me - to the point where I kinda feel perpetual motion whenever I hear this song.

Zongamin - Double Dostiev: This song, from little-known Japanese lo-fi electro artist Zongamin, has a very oddly fmailiar feel to it. Anyone know where I'll have heard it before? Awesome use of the standard handclap sample and a nice comination of a catchy low-end riff and a higher squelchy hook to it.

Underworld - Born Slippy [Nuxx]: Do you need me to say anything about this one? Really? (On a side note, get the Trainspotting OST if you don't have it already - it's one of the best soundtracks ever put together for a movie.)

Dangerous Muse - The Rejection (Eric Kupper Mix): Dangerous Muse are ace, even if they are taking a little long in making their first album (~3 years by my count so far) they've at very least left us with a fantastic EP (Give Me Danger) to tide us over 'til then. As if that wasn't nice enough, there're two remix EPs (Give Me Danger and The Rejection) as well - not all are as good as each other, but some - like this one - are simply astounding. Not a massive change to the original style, but nicely drawn out and retouched.

Faithless - Insomnia (Monster Mix): See: Born Slippy. (Just in case, though: this is a seminal song, an absolute stone-cold classic that you just need to know.)
EDIT: I've just been linked to Benga's seminal remix of this, check it.

Massive Attack - Radiation Ruling The Nation (Protection): Mad Professor's dubby take on a Massive Attack song for a B-side was enough for the band to invite him to remix their whole Protection album the same way, yielding the No Protection album this comes from. It loses a touch of the layered, almost jazzy, Massive Attack feel in the process but it picks up a brilliant laid-back buzz instead. Interesting fact: this is the "sly declaration of new classic status stuck into the list of old safe ones" that Rob puts on his Top Five Side One, Tracks Ones in High Fidelity.

Frightened Rabbit - Set You Free: I know, it seems that I can't post a mixtape without including some greetin'-faced Scottish git on it, but at least I keep within my general mixtape theme in doing so. This is Frightened Rabbit's take on N-Trance's classic/terrible massive nineties hit, and it basically describes itself. Never before did euphoric ecstasy sound quite so plaintive and defeated.

26/04/09: Under A Different Light

2009-04-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

This week's mixtape is full of songs that have been picked up and turned upside-down. In some cases they've then been spanked and set on fire (see: The Locust). However they've been later reworked, remixed or reinterpreted - either by the artist themselves or by someone who saw some potential in it to become something else - they're all a different look at something familiar, something to make you rethink what you've heard before.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090426

Simon & Garfunkel - S.O.S. (Trinity FM Remix): Remixing Simon & Garfunkel is kinda like remixing Bob Dylan, The Beatles or The Stones i.e. you don't fucking do it. Somehow, though, this remix defies logic and not only works, but actually improves upon the original (at least in my mind). The beat is wonderfully huge when it first kicks in and the bassline has a marvellous bounce driving it along. I've got to the point where I can't listen to Sounds Of Silence without hearing the echoes on the vocals in my mind.

Gnarls Barkley - Reckoner (Live): Reckoner is easily my pick for the best song on In Rainbows - Thom Yorke's falsetto is simply gorgeous on it - but I must admit I prefer Cee-Lo's massive vocals and the slightly different tack taken in this cover. Quite possibly my favourite Radiohead cover, of which there are many contenders.

Natasha Bedingfield - Natasha Beats The Devil (65daysofstatic Remix): I know I used the original of These Words only a few weeks ago, but the 65daysofstatic treatment completely desconstructs that song and builds it back up into the perverse glitchy bastard step-child presented here. There's a brilliant video that the Media Lounge made for an extended version of this that's floating about online somewhere.

Gorillaz - Dirty Harry (Schtung Chinese New Year Remix): Trust the Gorillaz to take one of their songs and completely re-do the whole thing in Chinese: the vocals have been translated and the instrumentation has been re-worked with a Chinese flavour, now full of little bells, flutes and who knows what else. It's a great idea, very well executed.

The Locust - Flash's Theme: Be honest: if I hadn't told you what it was a cover of would you have guessed? Believe it or not, this is The Locust at their most understandable, sounding relatively calm at that.

Nouvelle Vague - Too Drunk To Fuck: This song's turned on its head totally - going from yet another bragging, macho tale of "this wicked party I was at last night" (admitted, though, it was a very tongue-in-cheek take on that oft-told story) to sounding like Holly Golightly embellishing her weekend exploits after her fourth lunchtime martini. Interesting fact: the Dead Kennedys original was the first British top 40 single to have the word "fuck" in its title.

The Darkness - Street Spirit (Fade Out): Okay, so the original is still far better but I love that The Darkness managed to make this sound like it was initially written as a huge eighties metal beast. It actually makes the bleakness of the song far more bearable, simply because it's nigh-on impossible to take it seriously any more.

Tiësto - Adagio For Strings (Original Mix): To have even thought of doing this remix means that Tiësto must be crazy, ballsy, up himself, or some combination all three. Very glad he is, though, because this is really, really bloody fantastic. It takes a damned good re-working to make something as instantly recognisable as Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings unidentifiable to the point where you don't immediately think of Platoon when you hear it. Next to Robert Miles' Children or the second half of Screamadelica I don't think there's much better come-down music out there.

Tool - Pushit (Live): Maynard James Keenan's spoken intro to this song is what gave me the idea to make this mixtape and it nearly made this song the starter, were it not for the fact it just doesn't fit there. Tool slow the first half of this song right down, draw it out and really make it resonate. The additional tablas really add something to the already insanely complex polyrythmic drumming that starts in a few minutes in. By the end of it all the song's fallen back into the form it takes on Ænima, but the journey getting there has completely changed how it feels.

The Blood Brothers - Under Pressure: This take on Bowie & Queen is wondrously mental, and frenzied but the Blood Brothers still manage to keep it masterfully controlled. It starts out incredibly fast and the band proceed to tear through it from there, heading to the other extreme at the quiet part by completely dropping out. The jumps between quiet/frantic really make this one.

Neil Young - Like A Hurricane (Live): This pump-organ-led version of the normally raucous, guitar-heavy Like A Hurricane comes from Neil Young's Unplugged set in the early nineties and shows how the best way to stay relevant and not become a tribute band to your (or your band's) glory days is to constantly reinvent yourself to keep ahead of the curve (like Madonna, but not quite).

Creedence Clearwater Revival - I Heard It Through The Grapevine: Yet another interesting fact for you: the original of this song isn't the Marvin Gaye version nor is it the Gladys Knight & The Pips one (recorded after Gaye's but released before it), in fact it was The Miracles who first recorded it in 1966. Now you know. Anyway, it wasn't long before CCR got their grubby mitts on it and took the three-minute Motown hit and drew it out to this fantastic swampy eleven minute jam.

John Mayer - Kid A: Okay, so there's a lot of Radiohead songs on this mix, but you'd hardly guess they were all Radiohead songs, would you? John Mayer bores me at the best of times, but this cover really caught my ear and made me re-evaluate him when I firts heard it a few months ago. Taking the bizarre, convoluted ramblings of Kid A's title track and turning it into an intelligible acoustic work isn't a huge undertaking, but it's one that I doubt many others would have, or even could have, thought of doing.

Jonna Lee - The District Sleep Alone Tonight: The menaing of this song isn't changed much by this cover, but the cold, detached, almost empty feel of the Postal Service orginal is replaced by a more human voice here. The same story, but a different telling - I think of this as being the slow realisation three months later, compared to the stark reality facing the narrator initially.

The Sick Anchors - Whole Again: This is a perfect example of a song needing a re-imagining in order to really shine. The Atomic Kitten version is a shiny, crisp, over-produced girl band affair with the obligatory girls-looking-seductive lip-synched video. If you just read the lyrics they tell a slightly different story, one that Aidan John Moffat (half of the infamously miserable Arab Strap) captures equisitely in this take on it. Interesting fact: one of the guys from OMD co-wrote it for Atomic Kitten.

Ryan Adams - Wonderwall: I'd be surprised if anyone didn't know this already, but just in case you've never heard it it or have forgotten how amazing it is, here you go. Through stripping it down and reminding us that the song is actually meant to be about someone - which it's easy to forget in listening to the original - Ryan really changed this song. Oasis started performing it this way after Noel heard this take on it and was suitably impressed by it.

19/04/09: Found Sound 2 - Blends 2009: Chicken Monstersuit Flavor

2009-04-19T13:53:00.003-04:00

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090419

Another mixtape I found at the Mixed CD Exchange spot near my house, but with a twist. Here are some excerpts from the emails I got from the mixtape creator (unknownblend@gmail.com):

"[A]ll tracks on that mix are blends (acapella+instrumental) and are not to be found anywhere else in that particular configuration.
[...]
i started the blending process back around december 20th of last year up until about the 19th of february. Using a 5 minute time limit in which to get these things right (or as right as they're going to get) i've managed to create roughly 260 of them so far.

After that i started moving them around town anonymously in an honest effort to have good hip hop heard without claiming any fame for myself (feel free to reproduce/claim you made/blog about them wherever you like). What's really surprised and pleased me doing this is that the outcome is usually 5 to 10 times better than the respective originals (why don't rappers have my taste in beats?)
[...]
As for making them, all the verses are from vinyl, the beats are often from vinyl also, but i also have "finalscratch" which allows any music from my digital collection to be used at my fingertips.

i also have to agree with the allure of remixes/blends (when the mixes are as half arsed as i do them i like to call them blends) being the total change in vibe. Personally it's all about taking some super thugged out verses about shooting children with knives or whatever and then putting it over some hella emotional introspective mood music, rarely fails.
[...]
Don't really have anything to say to the blogging world (except maybe blog as thou wilt) but feel free to reproduce any of our correspondences for your reading public."

Any help identifying exactly what songs are what would be much appreciated.

12/04/09: Submit To The Sound

2009-04-12T12:45:00.003-04:00

My brother's taking over again since I'm ill, bogged down with marking and loaded up with far too much revision to do. S'a pretty good mix he put together, you lucky people.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090412

Incubus - Pardon Me: A song about spontaneous combustion. Or something.

Thom Yorke - Atoms For Peace: Quite cool electronica which still sounds oddly natural.

Snoop Dogg - Signs (Feat. Justin Timberlake): Don't scoff, just listen. Try & tell me JT's voice doesn't work amazingly well with the high singing part.

Cornel West & BMWMB - Bushonomics (Feat. Talib Kweli): Amazing intelligent rap song. Also, what other rap song d'you know that name-checks the Zep ("We can predict the levee breaking like a Zeppelin song.")?

Martin O'Donnell & Michael Salvatori - Drumrun: The Halo OST is fantastic. That is all.

kanYe West - All Falls Down (Feat. Syleena): The old-school Motown feel to this works really well, especially the wee vocal line by Syleena repeated throughout

Meat Puppets - I'm A Mindless Idiot: Cool wee instrumental thingy which I really love at the moment for some reason.

Foxboro Hot Tubs - Mother Mary: Green Day's alter-ego band doing a fun, bouncy little piece for a change.

Jim Croce - Ol' Man River: Old slave song being reworked by Croce, a real legend. Captures the melancholy feel really well.

The Langley Schools Music Project - Desperado: In contrast to the previous LSMP song posted on here, this is just the one girl. She can't sing all that well, and she makes wee mistakes (like the pronunciation of "able" about a minute in) but it's still gorgeous in some indescribable way.

Marilyn Manson - This Is Hallowe'en: Yes, the "This Is Hallowe'en" from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The drumming works really well and Manson, unsurprisingly, does well as the malevolent, creepy voice telling you about the town.

Indefinite Cure - Ringfinger Techno Mix: Great riff, and the song builds on it quite well.

Kinesis - Zyklon B: Kinesis really should've turned out better than they did, but oh well. C'est la vie.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Porcelain: Not my favourite band, but this underrated gem is a beautiful wee piece, which always seems to be forgotten among all the more popular, upbeat songs.

Whiskeytown - The Ballad Of Carol Lynn: Ryan Adams' old band, from before he went solo. His vocals on this song still always interest me, because he's singing in kind of a weird way, but it works really well.

Headlights - Tokyo: Could fit easily onto the Lost In Translation OST. The semi-muttered singing, be it deliberately or just the guy's voice, is really nice. Best Bit: The wee synth bit just after "so many little red lights".

Brian Eno - Deep Blue Day: Ambient song from Trainspotting OST. Great for relaxing to.

Danger Mouse - December 4th: From the famous Grey Album. For those of you unfamiliar with this, basically Danger Mouse (the whiter half of Gnarls Barkley) did a mashup album of stuff from Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles' White Album. Really. It works insanely well even thought it shouldn't, not unlike...

DJ Mei-Lwun - Sweet Home Country Grammar: Mashup of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Nelly. Honestly, where do these guys come from? I'm not complaining, though.

Richard Ashcroft - Music Is Power: The frontman of The Verve sings about music, saying a great deal while still having kind of crap lyrics at some points. Still, the song's not to be sniffed at.

Nikola Sarcevic - Vila Rada: The main guy from Millencolin redeemed himself with his solo album, especially this heartbreaking song about his brother, who disappeared, which includes lyrics like "I hope you know that I always loved you, even though it's something I never said".

Ida - Laurel Blues: There's not much I can say about this one, except that it's really beautiful.

05/04/09: Everything In Its Right Place (Eventually)

2009-04-05T16:01:00.003-04:00

Gah, a busy Sunday (just for a change), so no talky-talky yet. I do, however, have a tracklisting for you lovely, lovely people to salivate over while you download the mixtape.

I threw this week's one together in five minutes once again, then spent four days discussing the potential song choices and orderings with my brother before finally coming to an agreement (of sorts) yesterday. Not quite another Five Minute Mixtape, hence the title. Anyhow, you've got a couple of better-than-the-original (maybe...) covers, some classic pop, very mathsy metal and even more depressed Scottish whinging. Enjoy.

The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter: Barack Obama's favourite Stones song, I've been assured. So there.

Handsome Boy Modeling School - If It Wasn't For You (Feat. De La Soul & Starchild Excalibur): This is a great, catchy tune with some fantastic raps: "You ma muhfucker, I'ma hold you like piss, even when the itchy burn makes me wanna let go". Classic.

Head Automatica - Beating Heart Baby: Bouncy & fun - brammer. Fades really well into the next 'un, too.

Blur - Beetlebum: The dead notes on this song make it, it uses a fantastic guitar tone to full effect.

Natasha Bedingfield - These Words: I love this song, it's one of the things that reminded me a few years ago that not all pop music is necessarily shit. I can't help but dance like a retard to this one whenever I hear it.

Diadem - All You've Got To Do Is Let Go: Under-rated Glasgow band that never got anywhere, which is a shame. This is probably one of their catchiest songs, great use of the bass on it, for sure.

The Prodigy - Breathe: I just saw the Prodigy live about 2 weeks ago and this was the highlight of the night - no way the recorded version can do justice to the live one (especially since this doesn't contain the Dubstep breakdown they do at the end now), but damn if it isn't bloody brilliant. The new album's pretty ace, too.

Frightened Rabbit - My Backwards Walk: More depressed/ing Scottish whining about exes, sex-lives and inadequacy. Yay!

Oasis - Whatever: Arguably one of Oasis' best songs, a single-only release from 1994 that (bizarrely) never made either The Masterplan or Stop The Clocks, even though it's B-sides (Half The World Away, (It's Good) To Be Free) did.

Damien Rice - Delicate: Damien Rice's voice is gorgeous and this song is simply beautiful, making for an absolutely wonderful combination.

Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale: A stone-cold fucking classic. Period.

Tool - Lateralus: Mathsy as funk (as you can read all about here) yet still heavy and enjoyable without being complete wank. Result.

Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place: Almost criminal not to use this as the opener, I know, but it worked so well here. Oh yeah, and it's possibly one of Radiohead's finest moments (of which there are, obviously, many).

The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother: Another stone-cold classic, but one that I always (embarrassingly) struggle to place the name of until the chorus. It's so, so pretty, though.

Nina Gordon - Straight Outta Compton: A gangsta rap - THE gangsta rap song - as interpreted by a rather prim sounding, very obviously white woman. What an amazing idea, and it works perfectly. I love cover songs like this.

Ryan Adams - SYLVIA PLATH: Ryan Adams' Gold is his most successful, and probably his best, album. This is one of the favourites (not my favourite) from it, understandably so. He really knew what he was doing when he wrote this album, pity he lost it a bit in the past few years. Still, he'll be back, I bet.

Michael Andrews - Mad World (Feat. Gary Jules): Another cover, another complete re-interpretation, but one of the ones which makes you wonder why the original artist recorded the song the way they did when it's so clear how much better it is this way. Also, the last UK Christmas number one of note (i.e. the last one that wasn't a Pop Idol, X Factor etc. winner).

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Into My Arms: I'm not much of a Nick Cave fan, but I adore this song. If the song doesn't destroy you by itself check the video (if you can find it) that should finish you off.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090405

29/03/09: The Hungry Robot Mixtape

2009-03-29T20:31:00.004-04:00

~~Write-up's done, coming soon - promise.~~

Okay, so this week we've got a "guest mixtape", courtesy of my brother. It's not hugely dissimilar to a mix I'd make, since we share a very broad taste in music and shared a music collection in our room for a long time. Still, he's chosen songs and an ordering I probably wouldn't have and said things I wouldn't have said. It's a pretty good mix, all-in-all, and you'll probably be reading more of his ramblings rather than mine soon with the exam period coming up soon.

65daysofstatic - When We Were Younger & Better: 65daysofstatic took a different tack with this album (their 3rd) from the previous ones, with some mixed results; it's really good at some points, but can be a bit boring. This opening song, though, is amazing and is varied and interesting enough to make me forget it's almost 7 minutes long. What's really scary about this is that it's in 11/8 for its entirety and it took me ages to notice it; it really doesn't seem like it, because it flows so well.

Baader Meinhof - Meet Me At The Airport: This is from a concept album about terrorism and being a terrorist which was released in the 90s and really didn't get as much attention as it deserved. The opening riff of this is the attention-hogger, but the semi-tribal drums, the singing in the background, the violins and the amazing guitar solo (I'm normally not that big on guitar solos, but this one grabs me for some reason) all add up to something really special. It also segues surprisingly well into...

Sigur Rós - Hoppípolla (Hopping Into Puddles): Fairly standard fare for a Sigur Rós song; great piano riff, gorgeous singing, a gradual build and a dream-like feeling to it all. Can't really think of much else to say, so I won't.

Ryan Adams - Everybody Knows: A really good song from a sub-standard album. The secondary guitar which comes and goes adds really nice touches, and the drumming - while nothing complicated, I admit - fits in really nicely and just makes the sections of the song flow into each other nicely.

Wax Tailor - Alien In My Belly (Feat. Charlotte Savary): I can only assume that this is about being pregnant, and as such the lyrics should be more worrying than I find them (perfect example of this is the bit at the end: "Please little beast, let me go. Please little beast, let go of me."). The violins are great, as is the drumbeat, and both add a weird, semi-jilted ethereal feel to the whole song.

Will J. Godfrey - Where Have They Gone?: Beautiful piece mainly on a piano and glockenspiel. I can't describe it very well, though; it requires a proper listen. Perfect for just sitting back and relaxing for a few minutes, though.

Radiohead - Creep (Feat. Fred): A slightly remixed/mashupped version of Radiohead's first hit. Not much to say about it, seeing as I'm guessing most people will have heard the original, though I love what's been done with the big dead notes just before the chorus, and the sort of theremin-like sounds throughout the song. The guitar solo in this one is also really good, so that makes it 2 out of 2, I guess.

Lock3down - Lord Move Me On Up: Mashup of DMX and Primal Scream which works much, much better than it really should. Keeps just the right amount of both songs for it to have an accurate representation of both, and there are some really nice subtle extra touches by the DJ.

From First To Last - Minuet: A minute-long solo acoustic guitar playing something which reminds me a lot of the music for Vincent in Final Fantasy VII (c'mon, back me up here. It's not just me, is it?). Because it's so short, I can't say much about it, apart from that it's a great little piece and a really good guitar exercise.

Firebrand Boy - Press Start To Play (With My Heart): Fred makes a reappearance of sorts (no, not deliberately) to start things off, then it goes into a great little tune done entirely on Gameboy/SNES/NES sounds. Again a short one, coming in at just over a minute & a half, but great fun nonetheless.

Volcano, I'm Still Excited!! - Trunk Of My Car: Starts off in an a capella fashion with really great counterpoint, but drums come in soon, making a great entrance, with keyboards not far behind. It quickly builds itself up & up, seeming to contain a much more vast range of instruments than it really does.

Bon Iver - The Wolves (Act I & II): Though I'd recommend seeing this live to fully appreciate it, the album version of this song more than does it justice. Why should you see it live, you ask? Because halfway through, when Justin starts singing "What might have been lost", he gets the crowd to join in. Everyone is to sing it, and though I don't normally do that sort of thing, it really works for this song. It adds to it endlessly, with his singing mixing with the crowd's somewhat less-capable (but not in a bad way) voice wonderfully, helping to reinforce the intimacy of the gig. Really, just go see it live, you'll know what I'm on about. But anyway, in this version the drumming goes nuts, and the crescendo at the end is awesome.

Michael Rother - Flammende Herzen: Another 7-minute instrumental, this one does feel more like 7 minutes, but that doesn't mean it's boring; it just lacks the variation of the 65dos song (I refuse to use the word "track"). But what it lacks in this department, it makes up for in a really great lead guitar melody, and the instrumentation around it builds slowly throughout, filling the spaces left by it. The drums are simple, yet contribute a driving force to the whole thing, and by the end the single guitar has grown to... well, 2 or 3 guitars and a drum kit, from what I can tell, but it's great anyway.

Owen - I Woke Up Today: A Japan-only addition to one of Owen's album's, yet one of his best songs. Great little story of a guy who wakes up & realises he's getting old and doesn't really have anything to show for his life. The usual self-deprecation takes place, and he does what he does best: makes you feel so sorry for him without being overbearingly obvious. Best line: "It seems those 15 pounds I've lost since you left were the part of me that you loved most, and knew best."

Dntel - Roll On (Feat. Jenny Lewis): Not much of Dntel's stuff outside of his work with The Postal Service is worth listening to, but this collaboration with Jenny Lewis is really great. It's sort of like TPS, but with better lyrics & acoustic guitar. Really nice effects from Dntel plus and lines like "I guess there's muscle-memory for love" make this one a winner.

This Will Destroy You - I Believe In Your Victory: This is a lesson for budding musicians out there on how to use space in music: there's a wonderful sort of emptiness in their stuff, especially this song (just as I typed that, an eventful bit appeared. Oh well, I know what I'm talking about, it starts about 3 minutes in). A great, barren drumline in this one breaks the lone guitar after that, but you don't see it coming at all. It doesn't build to anything, like I expected it to, which I didn't like initially, but I've come to love it for the same reason.

Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism: Ok, so I know that 8 minutes of Death Cab For Cutie probably wasn't what you wanted to listen to today (or at any other point in life), but give it a shot. This song has the same sort of emptiness as the end half of the previous song. The lyrics aren't great, but the "I need you so much closer" line and how it's sung really do have the effect intended. The guitar riff is minimalist, again leaving tonnes of space, but it allows room for the crescendo to build around it. The end 2 minutes of this are great, especially the "so come on" part.

The Bicycle Thief - Boy At A Bus Stop: This one speaks for itself, really. All I can say is that I don't know why this band isn't bigger than it is; their album is still one of my favourites, every song is good. "My Mom thinks I need religion, I think I need a shower & something to eat" is a great line.

Malcolm Middleton - Devil & The Angel: Bit of a downer to end it on, but it's a fantastic end to an album/mixtape, so I'll use it as such. Fits well with the previous song, and again the story pretty much speaks for itself.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090329

22/03/09: Long, Long, Long

2009-03-21T14:07:00.012-04:00

First off, they're not intentionally in descending length order, it just kinda happened. They are, however, all intentionally very long songs. Partly I felt like being lazy in writing this mixtape up, and partly I'm just annoyed at the two minute snippet preference of the iPod generation. Where're all the Hey Jude, War Pigs and Blue Monday equivalents these days? None of these songs fall into boring repetition, though I'll admit that none of them are likely to ever have troubled the charts, and they're all excellent (at least in my mind, hence why they're being pushed upon you). Your best bet with these is to sit down somewhere and take them in, they're not really walking tunes as much as my usual batch. Normal service will resume next week, promise.

Gavin Bryars - Tramp With Orchestra I (String Quartet): I'll let you read the whole story of how this came about and how it affects people here then you can come back and read my ramblings on it. It's okay, I'll wait. Anyway, my mate, Andy, once described what's happening on this recording as being like a static picture in a constantly changing frame. What you see (hear) as the main focus is always the same (the tramp, drifting in and out of key) but the surroundings (the orchestra, compensating for the tramp's drifts as they work round him) are moving and evolving. Tom Waits had a copy of the earlier, 25 minute version of this album (this piece is taken from the 74 minute CD release) but lost it, so got in touch with Gavin Bryars to get another copy. One thing led to another and, with Gavin Bryars wanting to record a new version to make use of this new-fangled CD technology's capacity, Tom Wait was invited to duet with the Tramp for the new recording. I considered using that here, but Waits overpowers the Tramp a little there, somewhat removing the point of what I'm trying to show here. Still worth a listen, though.

Jesu - Ruined: Jesu started out strong with Heart Ache, the EP this is from, and have been hit-&-miss since, spread thin doing splits with Envy, Eluvium and Battle Of Mice as well as pumping out EP after EP. This is exactly what Jesu should sound like though, if J. K. Broadrick were to just slow down and focus on making quality, beastly good music. Ruined is a collection of amazing repetitive piano riffs; distorted guitar chimes; rattling, almost tinny drum-machine loops; ultra-reverb echoed vocals and brutally heavy vocals. Bloody awesome - sit back and enjoy this one.

Mono - Yearning: Mono don't go for the slow build into heaviness as much as they suddenly drop it on you most of the time. After a few minutes of gorgeous, meticulous guitar parts they work in a little build-up then suddenly turn on the distortion and kick it up to eleven (check out Black Woods to hear some insanely heavy noise). The break-down in Yearning is nothign less than amazing, the rythym they build into their guitar parts is astounding. The second guitar line that comes in about 10.30 is phenomenal, and... man, it's just all so, so good. And I've just read that Steve Albini produced the album this is from. Interesting.

The Mae Shi - Kingdom Come: "It's kinda like an eighties-themed electro-remix of a Stones song, which then goes all 90s techno before suddenly getting the Daft Punk makeover treatment. Then it takes a turn to sound worryingly like Mylo's cover of Sweet Child O' Mine before devolving into an amazing stereo experience of random sound sampling and super-crisp beats, followed by a squelchy twist on 90s dance in round two of Mylo and christ knows what else by the end because that's me only just over halfway through it." That's the best description of this bizarre epic I could muster when trying to explain to it my brother. The Mae Shi have taken the odd step of creating a techno-megamix of every song on their recent album, HLLLYH, and sticking it in the middle of the album in all its glory.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090322

15/03/09: The Five Minute Mixtape

2009-03-15T22:44:00.008-04:00

I had a mixtape ready yesterday, after toying with it all week and finally deciding on the final tracklisting I decided against the whole thing overnight and scrapped it all, throwing this one together in five minutes earlier. And it's actually better than what I had planned, oddly enough.

~~Unfortunately I've had a busy day and don't have time to write up on it all just now, but I'll give a full rundown later - promise. For now, though, enjoy!~~

The Low Anthem - Charlie Darwin: The Low Anthem didn't impress me with their first song when I saw them supporting Lisa Hannigan. However, the second song caught my interest and I knew, by the end of their set, I needed to hear more of their stuff. My brother wasn't expecting to be impressed with this song when I sent him it. He told me that as soon as the vocals came in his mind was changed and he wanted the rest of the album. This is the folk-tinged, Bon Iver-evoking opener of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (out soon in Europe) and you should try to catch them in the NE US soon, then at SXSW in April. They're also playing a support slot at Massey Hall on April 15th, if anyone fancies joining me.

Anaïs Mitchell - Your Fonder Heart: Talking of Bon Iver, I was lucky enough to see them on their first UK show (as I think I've mentioned before). Something my brother was incredibly jealous of. We're even now, though, since he saw them in Edinburgh after I'd left Scotland last year. Anaïs Mitchell was his support that night and this is an astounding song of hers. I can't put my finger on what's in her voice that gets me, the best description I can come up with so far is that it's pixie-like. It certainly carries in a very strange way, but it's gorgeous in its own way.

Ballboy - I Hate Scotland: This song pretty much expresses everything I try to say about Scotland much more eloquently than I can ever manage normally. The drums and guitar lock in with each other very quickly and stay that way for almost the whole song, but it's somehow never boring or repetitive and it only serves to make the vocals more pronounced and prominent. The fact this it sounds almost like Renton's Choose Life rant is a plus, it certainly makes me think in a very similar way as I do after I've read Trainspotting again. The mental attitude described isn't a purely Scotland phenomenon, but it's more prevalent there as a national mindset than it is anywhere else I've seen. I'm just glad I got out.

Envy - A Winter Quest For Fantasy: You probably don't know Envy (I'm not a snob, honest - I only found out about them from the split they did with Jesu that this comes from) but you might recognise the vocals as belonging to Tetsuya Fukagawa, who provided guest vocals on Mogwai's I Chose Horses. The builds and drops are wonderful, and the radio-like vocals are an excellent sound that's not used often enough, but the bit of this song that really gets me is the way it builds, plateaus and builds again until it's really dense then it all just... drops. What's coming next just floored me the first time I heard it - it's a kick in the teeth and a half. Brutally good and a magnificent break from the first part of the song.

Green Day - Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life): Okay, so everyone will know this song already but that doesn't mean it isn't still as awesome as when you first heard it at 15 and played it to death. Arguably still Green Day's best song, it seems odd now that it's more mature than anything they've written since. Especially now they've gone all teen-angsty again and it's hard to tell Billie Joe & Avril Lavigne apart once they've been to make-up. Best bit: the barely-audible "fuck" after the second messed-up intro.

Franklin For Short - Bishops Hat Cactus: I got this band's album free after postage troubles from an indie label in California. The main album I'd bought was Le Meu Le Purr's second, so this went unnoticed for a while but it's a pretty decent album by nice, subtle band. The fiddle is used in exactly the right way on here - it's an instrument I quite like as an embellishment but it's far too often totally over-done (apparently restraint is not usually in a fiddle player's nature).

Decibully - My Lighter And Strings: Choosing one Decibully song from the two albums full of utter gems was incredibly difficult. They make insanely good music than I can't really classify. It's country but it's indie but it's rock but it's poppy but it's soulful but it's... It's definitely incredibly deeply layered, so much so that they heartbreakingly powerful vocals don't overpower the rest of the instrumentation (compare and contrast with Obadiah Parker).

Bent - Always: As a dance act Bent are alright, nothing really special. They really come into their own with their (quote, unquote) "dodgy" sampling from their private record collection. This one is a fantastic chill-out beat with a sample of a 1930 recording of Norrie Parr & His Orchestra's "Always In My Heart". It's a very, very interesting mix but it works incredibly well.

Thee More Shallows - House Break: I realise this is probably the fifth time I've harped on about this, but I really do like whispered vocals - they add such a strange feel to something that would've been nothing like it otherwise. They also makes some otherwise ambiguous things very creepy: "So say goodnight, or say goodbye".

The Knife - Heartbeats: As much as I like covers I can't stand José Golzález's acoustic re-working of this, it loses all the wonderful eighties synthiness and the fnatastica Björk-ish vocal drawl. I also can't see how you could cut the drums from something like this. Some things work better in all their glory and lose their touch when you take too much away from them. That being said, the Scala version of this is great in its own way. Maybe I just think José Golzález is a wank. Oh well.

ZZZZ - Assassination Polka: ZZZZ (pronounced 'Zees', I've just discovered) were a weird band: they were formed from the ashes of Tekulvi and Sweep The Leg to make sax-tinged post-rock, but disbanded before recording anything, they then reformed and replaced their guitarist with a pianist and started recording mental jazzy polkas. Sadly this wonderful jumpy song (that's somehow both catchy and constantly flitting between 12/8 and 8/8) is about the only one worthwhile from the album, the rest coming off as its bastards derivatives. At least they made something worthwhile, though.

The Be Good Tanyas - When Doves Cry: This is the first of a string of eclectic covers about to follow, you may need to bear with me a little. This one is a bluegrass take on a Prince number. I love the stripped-down, raw, understated feel of it all. The drums are wondrously simple but driving, the sparse banjo adds just enough and the rest is filled with the breathy vocals that have the lightest touch of a rough edge to them.

Simone White - Beep Beep Song: I actually heard this song in a car advert, where I think most people who know Ms.White heard of her from. Fair play to her - it's a great, catchy song that shows off her lovely voice, almost immediately reminiscent of Fiona Apple or Aimee Mann. I also love her lyrics, this song especially for the line: "Can you wait forever, if time is all it takes?".

Scala & Kolacny Brothers - Yellow: The Scala girls choir is composed of 20-100 Belgian girls in their teens or twenties (though the rotating roster has over 200 girls), composed by the Kolacny Brothers, who sing versions of rock and pop songs. Some of the songs work better than others - the more plaintive one-to-one originals don't translate as well to a mass of girls singing them. The really rocky ones can also lack their original punch when stripped down to just the piano and choir, but this is one of the better renditions - one that proves Coldplay can actually write a good song every now and then. Even if you don't like the way they do it you should hopefully appreciate this.

Travis - Blue Flashing Light: The best work Travis has ever done, tucked away and hidden at the end of The Man Who. Tragic. This is the one time they've ever really bared their teeth, shown a bit of grit and sung without simply repeating the same word over and over as a replacement for a chorus (the lyrics speak for themselves, in this case). Another song where the fudged intro actually adds something to things (I've only just realised now this was the second one on this mixtape).

Obadiah Parker - Idioteque: Obadiah Parker are probably best known for their lead singer, Matt Waddle, and his musically bare, vocally massive take on OutKast's Hey Ya!. His voice is just as impressive in a full band set-up as it is when it's just him & his acoustic, likely because of the careful balance of the backing - it's simple without being wanting, letting his voice take centre stage while still framing it in the context of the song's complexities (of which a Radiohead song has many). This is a completely different look at Idioteque without doing the obvious and cutting it down to just an acoustic again.

The Langley Schools Music Project - Space Oddity: I'll warn you now, you may very well hate this song. If the idea of a group of 10-12 year old Canadian school children singing Bowie off-key, though earnestly, accompanied by their own musical instruments (of which they have very limited knowledge) you may want to skip this one. However, if you like the idea of Bowie as you've never heard him before give this a shot. Bowie himself is quoted as saying this is one of his favourite versions of the song, one that he "couldn’t have conceived of, even with half of Colombia’s finest export products in me." Beware of the sudden "take-off" sound after the countdown, though.

The Low Anthem - Ticket Taker: Technically I'm not breaking a golden mixtape rule by using the same artist on a mix twice since I'm book-ending the mix to show the two sides of said artist. (Back me up on this anyone?) Anyway, this is another song from Oh My God, Charlie Darwin and the only one from the show that really stuck with me (in that I remembered lyrics from it, they definitely all affected me). You can hear some of the wide variety of the (at times completely bizarre) instruments they use on this recording, yet somehow one of the most interesting parts of the recording is the way all the hard T's catch and hiss on the mic. Believe it or not, this was actually even better live than it's presented as here.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090315

08/03/09: Found Sound 1 - This Is Super!

2009-03-08T22:01:00.010-04:00

There's a story to this week's mixtape - the key point being that I didn't actually make it. I've merely ripped it, named it and posted it for your aural pleasures. I found this mixtape on a CD-R labelled "This Is Super!" hanging on a hook at a Mixed CD Exchange near my local Sobey's supermarket. I put a CD on the wall there a few months ago but had never seen one hanging there until last Sunday. I already had a mixtape planned and ready to post then, so I thought I'd leave it a week and share it now. I had a fair few of the songs already but I don't know many of them particularly well and, as it isn't my mix, I really don't have much to say about it. It's pretty good, though - some choice cuts and some very, umm... "interesting" songs I'd never heard before as well. I got the tracklisting mainly from google searches so please let me know if anything's mislabelled, or if somehting's a remix/mashup that I didn't realise.

Missy Elliott - Bring The Pain (Feat. Method Man): I do love myself a good bit of the old Missy Elliott. Not my first choice from her stuff (you'll be hearing an awesome Missy/Cure mashup on another of my mixtapes soon) but a good one.

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Shimmy Shimmy Ya: ODB! Just as good solo, if not better, than he was in Wu-Tang. I really don't know how they went on without him. In the absense of having much to say about this particular song, here's an awesome story about him: "[ODB] gained notoriety when, as he was being profiled for an MTV biography, he took two of his thirteen children by limousine to a New York Statewelfare office to pick up his welfare check while his latest album was still in the top ten of the US charts. The entire incident was filmed by an MTV camera crew and was broadcast nationwide. " Legend.

Scissor Sisters - Comfortably Numb: I was really surprised - given the Hip-Hop feel thus far on the mix - to hear this song the first time I listened to it. It's one of my favourite covers, ever, though - so my opinion of it was raised considerably. Managing to make Pink Floyd dancable and fun is an astounding feat.

Cazwell - All Over Your Face: Umm... this is a seven and a half minute tibute to cumming on a hooker's face, as far as I can tell. Interesting, to say the least.

Gorillaz - DARE (Soulwax Remix): Not my favourite remix of a Gorillaz song (that one'll probably show up on a mix soon, as well) but still a damned good one. Fantastic song, and Soulwax rarely touch anything without it turning to gold. Definitely a good pick for this mix.

Missy Elliott - Hot: Now, here's my main problem with this mix. It's as good as a golden rule that you don't use the same artist twice ona mixtape (I struggled putting a Lou Reed song on a mix where he guested for 20 seconds on another song), the only real exception being starting and ending a mix with one artist. That occasioanlly works. But yeah, another good Missy song here, but a bit unnecessary.

Peaches - Hit It Hard: Peaches is awesome, but this isn't her best work - she'd kinda lost it by this album, though it was her best named one yet (Impeach My Bush). But then, it's not my pick. Oh well. Check out "Back It Up, Baby" from Fatherfucker - that would've been the one I'd choose.

Lupe Fiasco - Lupe The Killer: Not familiar with Lupe Fiasco at all, but this is a decent beat laced with some pretty good rhymes. Not the greatest rap out there, pretty standard "I'm a gangbangin' thug, I kill people, I carry weapons, rarr!" stuff but still enjoyable.

M.I.A. - Bamboo Banga: This song's ace, for the first minute at least. M.I.A. - even on the bloody fantastic Paper Planes - suffers from the same problem as Placebo do and that in all too prevalent in modern Rap music: there's a great idea that'd make a brilliant two minute song, but the whole thing lasts four or five minutes and is full of repetition. Still, whoever made this mix could have done a lot worse than some M.I.A. - I heartily approve.

The Blow - Pile Of Gold: I had never heard of The Blow before, but I think I'll be hearing more of them now - this is some ace electro shiznit here. The vocals remind me of The New Pornographers a little but there's much more of a diving beat here and the little glitchy stutters in the backing are amazing.

Ladytron - Manila: This one takes a little while to get going, but once the chorus kicks in: "So I started to dance..." it's funking amazing. Very, very dancable and perfect for making a complete tit of your self in the kitchen.

Ada - Eve: This was a bastard to find on google, given the fact the lyrics comprise of seven rather distorted words (I swear she's saying "wax", not "wet"). Cracking tune, though.

Bounty Killer - Khaki Suit: This is some brillig reggae stuff - very, very head-noddable with some fantastic dubby bass goodness. Oh yeah, I think the labelling on the file is wrong, it should be "Khaki Suit" by Bounty Killer, not the other way round. Oops.

Datarock - Fa-Fa-Fa: I knew the name Datarock but had never heard any stuff. Initially I thought this was a remix of "I Am The Resurrection" given then bassline, which now has me wondering if there any any remixes of that. The vocals remind me of someone else from the eighties (any ideas?). Could be reminded of worse things than The Stone Roses and whoever else it is, I'm sure. Fun if a little forgettable.

New Order - The Perfect Kiss: Yeah... I stick my my original opinion that New Order are really only worth it for two or three songs. And this isn't one of them, sadly. Oh well.

Adam Tensta - My Cool: This is slick and very nicely done, I like it a lot. The rap makes me think of Will Smith (hey - he did some good stuff), the riff is amazing and the little touches of glitching added to the vocals are ingenious. Awesome song, possibly the best of the mix.

Rihanna - Umbrella (Feat. Jay-Z): Best pop song of 2007 (I nearly said “last year” – tits), easily. Fantastic mixtape ender, not exactly how I’d have done it but I like it for that.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090308

01/03/09: Gimme A Bassline!

2009-03-01T14:51:00.011-05:00

Week three: there’s not much of a story to this one, just a lot of excellent songs I want to share. Hopefully you’ll enjoy them as much as I do:

Alkaline Trio – Burn (65daysofstatic Remix): I like the Alkaline Trio sometimes, they do some not-bad pop-punk stuff that can be rather enjoyable. Burn was not one of those songs I enjoyed, in fact it’s really pretty bland and crap. This, however, shows the power of the remix – 65daysofstatic are a bit hit & miss on them, but this one’s easily their best to date.

Le Meu Le Purr – Pop Rocks & Soda: This band does what the Alkaline Trio don’t and make interesting punk with a bit of depth to it. Admittedly they’re a bit more punk-rock than pop-punk, but they’re still leagues ahead in my mind and criminally unheard of. They also manage that which is rarely ever done right: punk that lasts over three minutes and still sounds good, without being boringly repetitive.

Torpedo Boyz – Gimme A Bassline! (Torpedo Remix): And what a bassline they get. This is a funky, bouncy and all around fantastically fun song. There’s a load going on in it, from scratching to samples to some brilliant drumming and glitching of said drums. The beat is one of those that’s constantly dragging you on, trailing you behind it as it rabbits away, taunting you to keep up.

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings – I’m Not Gonna Cry: Sharon Jones’ singing career only took off a few years ago, by which time she was in her fifties. With a voice like hers you’ve got to wonder how no-one had heard it before, because if someone’d heard it they surely would’ve signed her immediately. Anyhow, she’s signed now and is cranking records out and touring constantly. Backing her are the wonderful Dap Kings, who you’ll recognise from a guest-spot on Mark Ronson’s Version (God Put A Smile Upon Your Face) and as the band on all of Back To Black. Oh yeah, and this song’s killer.

Stars – Division: The male/female lead vocals on Stars’ stuff works very, very well without coming across as a cheesy duet (as it so easily could with lyrics as sweet as they have). The changes in their music are also marvellous – in this case there’s a sudden drop about two and a half minutes in, then a swelling rise thirty seconds later – and convey as much as anything actually played, simply in the shift of feeling.

Buena Vista Social Club – Clocks (Feat. Chris Martin): To hark back to remixes, this is another one that does exactly what it should do – make you struggle to hear the original the same way again – but in a completely different way to the almost entirely computer-based 65dos one. The Buena Vista Social club recorded a whole album of covers/remixes of songs by UK acts, rarely keeping any more than the vocal track as they rearranged and funkified (it’s a word now) the original. Check it out: Rhythms Del Mundo.

Rjd2 – True Confessions: This is the sort of stuff Rjd2 used to do that I mentioned before: wonderful instrumental hip-hop cum trip-hop with a spectacular use of spoken-word samples (if anyone knows where the one used on this one comes from, please tell me. His almost schizophrenic cuts are phenomenal – from full-blown beats suddenly turning into to a simple, slow piano riff to a fade-out jumping suddenly into a drum-run and a bitching guitar solo, he really knows what he’s doing.

T2 – Heartbroken (Original Extended Mix): This song’s synth sound may sound old and overdone to you, and I do apologise if it does since it’s everywhere now, but since I first heard this I’ve purposefully avoided anything that rips it off. I don’t know if T2 was first to use this sound, but he was the one who used it to greatest effect, as far as I’m concerned. The spliced vocals over it are a wonderful use of Jodie Aysha’s voice and actually make the vocals you do hear somehow more apt. Interesting fact: she wrote this song when she was ten years old, having seen how her older sister was affected by a break-up.

Comar – Knocklife: Not to drone on, but a mashup is very much like a remix – taking the bets elements of a song (or two, as in this case, or more in others) and forcing the listener to rethink their view based on the remixer’s reimagining of it. I found Lily Allen’s Knock ‘em Out very strange to hear after months of this song on one of my kitchen CDs. The whole ska-pop feel disappears and is replaced by the unmistakable sound of Blur’s Britpop anthem. You really do need to wonder how people think of these mixes sometimes. Then you need to thank them for it.

Amy Winehouse – Cupid: I don’t like Amy Winehouse much, as a celebrity/personality, mainly because I don’t like the way the media have turned her into what she is. As such I didn’t want to have anything to do with her music (which is stupid of me, I know). I thought (and still do think) that Back To Black was a hideously over-rated album with only a few saving moments. However, hearing this cover of the old classic Cupid really opened me up to her – her voice is perfectly suited to this sort of old-school song. This really sounds like it could’ve been lifted straight out the Motown vault for a ‘Digitally Remastered’ release.

Death In Vegas – Girls: I can’t hear this without seeing the opening minute or so of Lost In Translation in my head, and that’s always a good thing. The leisurely, calm sound of it just gently floats… The drums that come in change the whole feel of the song without doing terribly much, simply making use of the tempo and picking things up themselves. It never seems like there’s a sudden shift until everything drops away at the very end though, that’s how natural it is.

The Heavy – Girl: Ah, British soul – gotta love it. This bassy ode to a girl the protagonist sees walking past his front room is bizarre and filthy, yet very genuine because of the lyrics’ frankness. The Kinks-if-they-did-disco-funk bassline is simple but incredibly effective because just doesn’t stop. What really impresses me, though, is the completely out-the-blue switch from the Streets-like accented not-quite-rapping to crooning on the last verse. I’m impressed every single time.

The Stranglers – Golden Brown: This song was made in Pixieland out of magic dust and implanted in The Strangler’s collective consciousness under cover of night, I swear. I just don’t see that there’s any way such an amazing song could have been conceived of by man. I don’t understand how something in 13/8 time has such a swing to it, nor how the guitarist manages to solo over it. This one of those songs I can’t stop myself grinning to when I hear it.

Martyn Bennett – Aye?: I just got this a few weeks ago form my brother, who received it on a mixtape. This was the ‘amazing’ song on it he told me to look out for on it. I stuck it on, it sounded ok – an interesting mix of very basic guitar and a good, strong beat – but I wasn’t hugely impressed by anything. Then it all goes a bit nutty with the fiddle; the deep, deep bass; the other fiddle; the maracas; the glitchy electro beat; the dub samples; the almost DnB beat, and the sirens. I had no idea what the hell was happening by the time it closed out, back to how it started. But I immediately put it on again – it’s bloody brilliant.

Maxïmo Park – Acrobat: Maxïmo Park are a band I didn’t expect to be hugely impressed with. They make alright, quite catchy indie-rock stuff but it’s all pretty standard, isn’t it? Books From Boxes changed my mind on that (it’ll probably appear on a mix in few weeks) so I got their albums. This gem is tucked away just before the end of their first album, A Certain Trigger, and completely breaks from the mould of their usual angular sound. It’s heartbreakingly good, despite some of the weak lyrics (just ignore the bit about the sky and the horizon). A lot of people think it’s the weird weak link on the album, but it makes it for me.

Burial – U Hurt Me: Again, an apology – mp3 is really not the format of choice for Dubstep. Even with vinyl, I very much doubt many speakers could handle the sub-bass required. Still, accepting this as an approximation just goes to show that Burial really is something else. The beat is basic, though it has its fair share of flourish, and the samples are wondrously used to build something amazing. Even if you don’t know anything about Dubstep you can always pick his stuff out of a Dubstep Allstars compilation without a second thought – he’s one of those artists that define a genre, even if they didn’t build it.

Arab Strap – Deeper: I love the bassline on this, it’s one of those things that gets you every time. When it first swoops down after “She had long, black hair and green eyes…” I get a shiver down my back. I don’t know that many people have written better fucked-up love songs than Arab Strap. The downbeat, depressed Scottish intonation improves the delivery of the spoken tale tenfold. It’s actually nearly uncomfortable to listen to by the end, but you just can’t help it. I love this song, I really do.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090301

23/02/09: For No One 1 - Got To Get You Into My Life

2009-02-22T12:31:00.006-05:00

Week two: the basis for this mix was a mixtape I made for my girlfriend a few months ago; back when I was still wooing her (isn't "wooing" a great word?). I've cut a few songs and replaced them with others, doing a little re-ordering in the process, simply because there are better songs I want to share; hindsight shows where I could've improved it, and recent events have conspired to remind me of the sheer gorgeous beauty of some songs that I'd somehow forgotten. Here goes:

Elbow - One Day Like This: Get The Seldom Seen Kid. Just get it. This song is second-last on the album - and it fits there perfectly - but taking it individually makes for a fantastic mixtape starter. Coupled with the last song on this mix (don’t cheat and read ahead!) it’s one half of a set of first-rate album bookends. “Throw those curtains wide”, turn the volume up and enjoys listening to dynamics over compression for a change.

Fiona Apple - Across The Universe: This is damn-near blasphemous, but I think a Beatles song was bettered here. Honestly. Fiona Apple dropped the tempo slightly and turned it into an almost melancholic piece. It’s a beautiful re-working of the song, without turning it into a complete re-imagining (which is always the harder thing to do, in my mind). Simply wonderful.

Architecture In Helsinki - Souvenirs: I first heard thing song in a commercial when I was visiting the States a few years ago and fell in love with it immediately. It’s simple, there’s barely anything to it lyrically (either in length or in meaning), and it’s charmingly child-like – all-in-all it’s simply an exceptionally pretty song. Sadly Architecture In Helsinki haven’t ever made anything else like it, so just enjoy this one. Lots and repeatedly.

Blur - Tender: Another song where my first impression was utter delight at the sweet charm of it. I was, however, dumbfounded to hear it was Blur. Parklife Blur? Not any more, apparently. It has the feel of an old gospel song, from the jangly, scratchy guitar that starts it to the powerful backing vocals to the simple beat of the bass drum that has such a huge presence. It builds so well and never gets boring or repetitive, making the nigh-on eight minutes it lasts seem nothing like it.

Iron & Wine - In My Lady's House: I really like Iron & Wine; the simple, stripped-down songs are masterfully done and the soft, whisper-like, quality the vocals have is rarely heard as well as it is here. This song is, again, a very sweet one and it’s so completely sincere and genuine. Get yourself some early I&W stuff, before it was ruined by full-band over-instrumentation.

Sigur Rós - Untitled #3 (Samskeyti/Attachment): I’ve realised, listening to this song a few times now, that there really isn’t much I can say to describe Sigur Rós, or the album this song is from, other than that they are a very, very good band and that ( ) is a very, very good album. It’s a cop-out, but it’s true.

Owen - Bed Abuse: Owen’s love songs are heartbreaking in the worst possible way: he knows he’s a loser that’s fucked up, he can be bitter and hurtful about it or he can be dejectedly accepting of it but you always feel sorry for him, despite knowing he’s in the wrong most of the time. This one, however, is a bit more optimistic – a song about staying in bed and doing nothing, because he doesn’t see the point in life having “seen what trying’s done for those who’ve tried”.

Malcolm Middleton - Best In Me: If you thought Owen was downbeat and a bit depressing you may want to skip Malcolm Middleton. Half of Arab Strap, from the album he made when he was “severely depressed, desperate and unhappy”. It’s not the cheeriest of listens, to say the least. But this song is a touching break from the norm, with lyrics laid bare about the girl that makes things better for him.

Antony & The Johnsons - Fistful Of Love (Feat. Lou Reed): I went to see Antony & The Johnsons earlier this week and I’d forgotten just how absolutely fucking blinding Antony’s voice is. this song was far-and-away the highlight of the show. The intro Lou Reed speaks on the studio version is ace and I adore it, don’t get me wrong, but live the song really didn’t want for the lack of it. For a song about abuse it doesn’t seem that downtrodden and victim-like, which is possibly what makes it that much more haunting. As I said: fucking blinding.

Ennio Morricone - Chi Mai: This song is… something else, it really is. I have no idea how to speak about classical music other than in terms of how I feel listening to it – I can’t describe it at all. This bit of music is exquisitely uplifting, superbly layered and somehow always manages to stir something in me, I have no idea what though. This really is exquisitely grand music.

Bon Iver - Re: Stacks: I first heard of Bon Iver when I saw them supporting Iron & Wine last year. If ever I needed my faith in support bands rejuvenated Bon Iver did it. Now a band, Bon Iver was a one-man thing when this was written & recorded in a cabin in Wisconsin over winter. The lyrics don’t make sense because they were written to fit the sounds Justin vocalised over his guitar parts, but somehow they speak more than most songs could ever manage.

Lou Reed - Perfect Day: And the other side – from Elbow’s rousing start to the day to Lou Reed’s tranquil look back over it, I think these two bookend things so well. Compare and contrast this remarkable version with the overwrought, star-studded BBC adaptation from a few years that completely destroyed the whole meaning and feel of the song. Another wonderful example of where less is more.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090223

16/02/09: Playboy Recommends

2009-02-15T09:22:00.005-05:00

So here it is, the first instalment of the Monday Mixtape project. I'll explain it all properly elsewhere later, no doubt - but suffice to say for now that I plan to upload a new mixtape every Sunday so it can be download and burned/loaded ready for Monday morning. The idea is borrowed/stolen from/inspired by CPI and her music blog on Facebook (one of the few reason I use the site).

The songs I have in this week's mixtape are from my favourite mixtape I've ever made; it's comprised entirely of songs recommend in (believe it or not) Playboy magazine's monthly playlist picks from about two years ago. So, without further ado, on we go:

The Ataris - New Year's Day: This is such a great song to begin a mixtape, the riff's catchy but it's not too much of a "Listen to me!" attention whore, it simply grabs you. A fantastic kick-starter.

Boyskout - Spotlight: The change from New Years Day to this is a wonderful shift in style from rocky to slightly groovy without feeling like a massive departure from where we started. I love the slow bounce to this song and the way vocals are never quite what I expect from them.

The Moovers - Someone To Fulfil My Needs: This band is one of those terrible losses from the late sixties/early seventies, bands in the hit factories (the Deep City label this time, I think) that never quite made it big enough. This is a wonderfully funky song with a fantastic bassy feel and amazing vocal harmonies.

Robbers On High Street - The Fatalist: The slow intro always starts my head nodding in expectation of the wonderful bouncy, rounded bassline. The vocals intrigue me as well - they've got a tiny bit fo the the rock/emo distortion to them, but only in the way that makes them seem like they've been lifted from a Motown song and retouched for a remix. The outro also just sets up fantastically for...

Apples In Stereo - Sunndal Song: I'm really not a huge fan of this band otherwise, but this song just makes me so happy every time I hear it. The fuzz on it is gorgeous and the tiny vocoder harmonies on the vocals are just tremendous. The whole thing is fantastically playfully, I dare you to listen to it and not feel at least a half-grin slip onto your face.

Dangerous Muse – Apart: Dangerous Muse are one of those bands that release a blinding EP (Give Me Danger – just get it) then wait far too long to follow it up with anything of merit. Granted, the remix EPs were okay but the album’s been in the works for about three years now and I have the feeling it’ll probably be a disappointment. Oh well. This is the song that introduced me to them, all about a long-distance relationship they’re determined to make work. It’s sweet, dancy and is just ragged enough round the edges.

Young Love - Find A New Way: How this guy isn’t bigger I don’t know, the rest of the album this comes from (Too Young To Fight It) is just as good as this one. It’s always a touch slower than I remember it, just always just as good. Christ, it makes me want to dance and I’m a Physicist – that’s got to be saying something.

Money Mark - Pretend To Sleep: Frequent Beastie Boys collaborator, this is Money Mark at his most simple – just him and an acoustic guitar. His voice is syrupy, always dragging just a little bit, and somehow covers the downbeat feel of the lyrics and makes it seem almost like a love song. What should be the most touching line, “Sorry if the words are missing”, almost seems callous and off-the-cuff when he sings them. A very interesting cat, indeed.

Softlightes - Heart Made Of Sound: This one brings things back upbeat with a sixties-feel happy-happy sing-along. The trilled piano bit about halfway through always makes me smile. I know all the words, I can sing them along back to the speakers (and frequently do) but do I remember them ten seconds later? Do I know what they’re about? Do I need to? Nope, nope, nope –and it doesn’t matter at all.

Jesse Malin - Bastards Of Young: I want to like Jesse Malin, I really do. Ryan Adams recommends and endorses him all the time, but he just doesn’t grab me. Except for here. This beautiful, piano-led cover blows away the Replacements’ original with the earnest, aching vocals. I love cover songs, and in my mind this is up there with Aretha’s improvement of Otis Redding’s Respect and Paul Young’s take on Wherever I Lay My Hat: they all took a song and made everyone completely reconsider the way they thought about it.

Rjd2 - Sweet Piece: Rjd2 lost his touch when he added vocals in my mind (his Deadringer period was far better, in my mind). This, like the song before, is an exception to the rule, though. The vocals add to the swing and fill in for the sparseness left by the instrumentation alone. Best bit? The near-instantly muted high-hat hits that pepper the backing after the verses.

Young Galaxy - Swing Your Heartache: This one starts the slow, spacey portion of the mix – the long, drawn-out intro is wondrous and sets up perfectly for the lazy drums that come in. I love the way the vocals have a whisper-like quality to them, they add to the whole song laid-back feel of the song. Even when it feels like it’s about to kick off it settles back down and makes you wait. Marvellously calming and oddly uplifting.

120 Days - Come Out (Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone): I always forget this song’s on the mix, to be perfectly honest. It continues the cool, serene feel – slowly building its way up so you don’t even really notice it’s there until it’s in full swing and the vocals spark. It ends up feeling like a chilled-out take on something from Kasabian’s debut album – very good stuff.

Radio Citizen - The Hop (Feat. Bajka): This is the concluding part of what I think of as the spaced-out section, but it’s got more of a dynamic feel than the previous two. It starts to wake things back up with some ace beats and well-placed drops into total silence. The end appears just as unexpectedly as the first of the silence spots, setting up for:

Ike & Tina Tuner - Honky Tonk Woman: I’m not even really sure I need to say much about this one. It’s Ike & Tina Turner doing the Stones’ Honky Tonk Women. Nah, I’m not really sure there is much else to say. Just enjoy it.

Download: Monday Mixtape 20090216