January Super-Mixtape!

Here’s my January (and a little February) 2009 mixtape. This mixtape fell together mostly through shuffle on my iPhone, and didn’t take me as long to make as last month’s. I am already working on next month’s, so it looks like I might be able to churn these out monthly like I hoped!

Watch out! This mixtape veers a little more toward “difficult” music–some more glitchy, ambient, noisy, non-English, or otherwise odd sounds. There’s a few (hard-to-distinguish) “bad words” and towards the end, it gets kinda brütal.

The tracklist is embedded in the lyrics field of the mp3 and I’ve got an annotated tracklist after the jump.

[audio:January_2009.mp3]

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1. Vampire Weekend – Mansford Roof

This isn’t difficult music! Ha, clearly. I really enjoy Vampire Weekend’s Soweto-by-way-of-Kennebunkport charm, and they actually write good songs! A nice way to start it off.

2. Canceling Stamps At The University Of Ghana Post Office

I found this on a blog, and this recording comes from a selection of music included with an ethnomusicology textbook. It’s incredible!

3. The Very Best – Chikondi

This comes from the freely-available-online album from Esau Mwamwaya, and is basically him singing over Hans Zimmer’s True Romance Theme.

4. Blonde Redhead – Silently

Recently it came to my attention that I did not own one of @fredghansah‘s favorite albums, Blonde Redhead’s album, 23. That situation was remedied. This is one of the many standouts from that album.

5. The Presets – Aeons

When Rossy and I saw the Presets live, they were raging, dropping beat after block-rocking beat. Suddenly, they threw this song into the set with some computer-generated water images, moving everything into slow motion.

6. Castanets – This Is The Early Game (SON LUX Remix)

Like chocolate and peanut butter. Hmm, they should do an album together.

7. Nosaj Thing – Aquarium

I found this via Analog Giant, who said it was their jam. I would tend to agree. It reminds me of the pre-Postal Service days, when lap-pop was just some dudes with iBooks, not the next big thing.

8. Prefuse 73 – Uprock and Invigorate

This song and the ones preceding and following it are a kind of mini-primer of instrumental hip hop. Nosaj Thing uses his laptop, but Prefuse 73 does all his stuff on MPCs sans-computer.

9. RJD2 – The Horror

RJD2 works strictly old-school rocking two turntables and spinning a gritty beat with horrorshow synthesizers. This song is such a great jam! “I will amuse myself with terror.”

10. Stacs of Stamina – Tivoli

Hey watch out! This song has some naughty words (t*ts, *ss, sh*t) rapped by guys who I’m pretty sure are French. Also, I tweaked this song slightly to do a crossfade that I eventually decided against, but forgot to undo the tweak. It gives the song a loping beat and slightly more studders and glitches than it initially had. I think it works, though.

11. Test Icicles – What’s Your Damage (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke Mix)

I hate the vocals on this song. Well, I’ve learned to live with them, because Alan Braxe & Fred Falke’s backing track is incredible. This song is proof that Alan Braxe can make anything amazing.

12. Kanye West – Paranoid

This song is the reason that hipsters/music critics can hate the auto-tune trend (Lil Wayne, T-Pain, etc.) and still love Kanye’s 808s & Heartbreak. He takes a party-rap song and sets it in a French dance club and it works perfectly. Don’t wait for the Justice remix because it would sound exactly the same.

13. Von Südenfed – The Rhinohead

Von Südenfed is Mark E. Smith from The Fall and German electronicky guys Mouse On Mars. With this song, they get back at LCD Soundsystem for stealing Smith’s vocal styles by writing a perfect chorus with almost no discernible lyrics save “the rhino”.

14. Justice – Let There Be Light

Justice. What do I have to say here? Justice.

15. Player – Angel of Theft

This is Amon Tobin, covering Slayer’s “Raining Blood” with a crazy d’n’b beat. Brütal.

16. Kid 606 – I Am Leo Hear Me Roar

I almost ended that mix with the previous song, but it was just too hardcore for me to accept. So I decided to switch into this noisy chunk of glitch-madness–no, your computer isn’t skipping.

17. Tim Hecker – Sea of Pulses

I had to end the mix on an up note, and Tim Hecker’s noise/ambient M-O fits the bill perfectly. This song is actually on the sleep playlist on baby Isabella’s iPod.