Friends, Invalids, Basement-dwelling agoraphobics, lend me your ears! It’s time for another Sunday Mix Tape, and have I ever got “the goods” for you. You’ve probably been asking yourselves why I am not posting daily MP3s anymore, or why the treasures from my collector’s slum have been few and far between these past few weeks. The reason is, I’ve been advised to watch what I post in regards to the music I often share here. Cryptic, yes, but I am not really one to test boundaries. So until further notice there might be less music than many of you click onto this page hoping for. I’ll try to make up for it with some zany, off-beat stuff, but who knows if any of you even care about that shit. For all I know you skip right over my words in search of hyperlinks leading you to free music. For now, it’ll probably be Sunday Mix Tape plus one Treasure per week. If daily web traffic takes a hit, so be it.
RULES for uninitiated noobs: I give birth to a weekly Mix Tape to be deposited on your iPods or Zunes or Kingklangs or whatever the industry is currently pushing on you. Sometimes there will be themes that link all the songs together, other times I’ll just throw songs at a wall (not literally) and see what sticks.This past week, even in Southern California, has felt kind of wintry. I imagine that in other parts of America it’s been cold, damp, and maybe even snowy. This mix tape is composed of wintry music. The goal of this endeavor, as always, is to pique your interest in these artists so you’ll support the artists and buy their albums.
Sunday Mix Tape – Number 204
Awaiting your wintry return…
01. Air Conditioning – I’m In The Mountains, I’ll Call You Next Year – We begin with the dead, static-heavy skronk of Allentown, PA’s Air Conditioning. About the coolest band in town when I was in school in the Lehigh Valley, Air Conditioning delivers the kind of cold, heavy mess that feels right at home in a shitty car that just won’t heat up enough to melt the frost from your windshield. They were the lone bright spot in the local scene when I was at Muhlenberg. LA could use more bands like Air Conditioning. (Peel Back The Sky, 2003)
02. Dead C – Bone – From the fantastic Trapdoor Fucking Exit LP, which at some point I’ll have to post in its entirety for you. As empty and confused as another gray morning in a series of endless gray mornings. Like winter in Vermont or upstate New York, where the sun doesn’t shine for months on end once summer ends. Not quite as depressing as, say, Brainbombs, but close. If you listen to this enough in a miserable northeast winter you’ll probably wind up killing yourself. I don’t recommend trying it. I like you too much. (buy this album)
03. Jandek – Darkness You Give – And from the metaphysically “cold” to the psychologically inhospitable, here’s some Jandek for you! The king of outsider music has no use for melody or rhythm or any of that BS most songwriters prize. This is about as desolate as you could imagine. The perfect soundtrack for another useless day in a string of useless days. (buy this album)
04. At Right Angles – Dirty Ski Jacket – Okay, so maybe it sounds a little too hopeful for winter, but it’s got “ski jacket” in the title and it reminds me of winters back east when you needed a solid winter coat to get you through blustery days. This track is from the At Right Angles contribution to Temporary Residences’ “Travels In Constants” series. I have most if not all of those CDs, and at some point I’ll devote a week or two to sharing them all. I think they’re all out of print? I’ll have to e-mail my press contact at TRL to ask if it’s okay to share them all. Although, she reads this page sometimes, maybe she’ll contact me first and let me know.
05. Expo ’70 – Missing Sun – This is for those quiet snowy nights. The ones I remember so vividly from my childhood. I used to live on a major street — a county road — and sometimes during heavy snowstorms I would walk outside and it would be so dark and so eerily silent. It felt like something like “Missing Sun” should be playing at times like those. In my older years I’d go back inside and smoke a lot of pot and zone out watching all the trucks attempt to plow the street and the mall parking lot on the other side of the trees outside my window. Then I’d probably get too freaked out by the music and watch Mr. Show or try to con some annoying mousy Jewish girl from high school into phone sex. And now you know how I survived 25 years of East Coast winters! (buy this album)
06. Helium – Oh The Wind And Rain – In California we don’t have snow, but we have wind and rain. In fact it rained quite a bit today. And it’s been colder and windier than usual for the past week or ten days. Maybe up in the mountains it snows, but I’ve only ever seen it once. It’s always a trip to drive up to Mount Wilson in January when it’s 50 or 60 degrees in my neighborhood but 30 degrees and snowy from a place I see on my drive to work. Maybe I’ll take a drive up there on a day off soon and take some pictures for you, reader. You’d like that, right? Maybe I’ll make a snowman and name him after you. I’ll give him a tiny carrot-dick for you, too. Mary Timony was my first indie girl crush. She’s the cutest. A girl I used to let blow me in high school loved her too. I fantasized about us having threesomes. *The More You Know* (buy this album)
07. PG Six – The End Of Winter – Just kidding, it’s only the middle of the mix tape, winter can’t be over yet! Pat Gubler is from back east so he knows all about cold climates. For a while I tried to mimic his guitar playing style because I think it’s so beautiful and effortless. I always loved seeing him perform both sold (with harp or acoustic guitar) and with his band. It’s been four or five years now. I’ll see you again PG. Someday. By the way, you can buy Slightly Sorry on Amazon for as cheap as two dollars and change. Totally worth it. (buy this album)
08. Mammatus – The Changing Wind – Mammatus are, for the most part, a huge psychedelic stoner-rock explosion. But on this track they are playing the slacker weird experimental game, complete with…what is that, a sea lion call? I wonder if it was recorded up at Pier 39 in San Francisco. Winters in SF are actually pretty mild. Mark Twain was the one who said the coldest winter he ever felt was summer in San Francisco. (buy this album)
09. Isis – False Light – And because Mammatus didn’t bring the heavy, here’s some Isis. This one is from Oceanic, a record I recently sold because I realized I hadn’t listened to it in the almost four years since I purchased it. It’s not a bad album, it’s just not one I find myself wanting to listen to very often. Maybe it’s the bleakness of the instrumentation and vocals. Or maybe it’s just the “metal” vocals in general. I think that’s probably it. (buy this album)
10. 310 – After All – I first read about 310 on an Aquarius Records new arrivals e-mail years and years and years ago. It was one of those reviews that mentioned found sounds and field recordings, so I instantly committed to my memory bank’s “want list.” I found it at the first WFMU record fair I attended. Brilliant stuff. Distant noises, dreamy, ambient. Perfect for a quiet night under warm blankets with a good buzz going, or something even heavier. (buy this album)
11. Starving Weirdos – One White Candle, No Moon Night – Fuck, I forgot how good this record is. I forgot how close it was to being my choice for album of the year when it came out. I can’t believe I found a recording of the band’s live performance in LA a few years ago — my introduction to the band. I’m definitely going to have to post that in the near future. I remember it like it was yesterday. Mr. T’s Bowl, all the lights in the venue turned off, a bunch of dim candles and boomboxes playing weird field recordings, and a giant painting of Abe Lincoln at the center of the stage, like a weird shrine. It was an insane set. I fell in love. Now this. Awesome. (buy this album)
12. Vibracathedral Orchestra – The Sea Of Sleep – Unless I’m mistaken, Corpse was the VCO’s second-ever proper release. Back in ’98 when this came out, who else was doing this kind of shit? I guess Sunburned Hand Of The Man was, but they didn’t really hit their stride with this kind of weird, out-there shit until maybe five years later. And isn’t this just like sleep? It’s all fucked up and you can’t really make sense of it until you allow yourself to fully awaken and nearly forget everything you’ve just seen or heard. Winter sleep is the deepest sleep. Poppy tea will help. (Self-Released, 1998)
13. Tape – Illuminations – One of the greatest Electrical Audio forum finds ever. A trio from Sweden who have pretty much perfected the art of warm, analog synth explorations, filled with swirling drones and sun-dappled brilliance. Perfect for a long drive through a snow-white tundra. Or the midwest after a big storm. (buy this album)
14. Windy & Carl – Snow Covers Everything – What’s more predictable here, that I would use a Windy & Carl tune on a winter-themed mix tape, or that I would use a Windy & Carl song with the word “snow” in the title. Slow, slower, slowest of duos with beautiful dreamscapes and drones. Is anything more perfectly wintry than this? I defy you to find something more apt. (buy this album)
15. Set Fire To Flames – Fading Lights Are Fading – I might have used this one again, but it’s so beautiful I couldn’t not include it here. All this news about Godspeed You! Black Emperor has forced me to re-listen to all the old montreal groups on Alien 8 and Constellation that I scooped up during my UVM days. Of all those canonic groups not named Godspeed…on the two labels I think that the two SFTF albums rank slightly ahead of Do Make Say Think, Shalabi Effect or even A Silver Mt. Zion when it comes to that label’s discography. Defy me. Prove me wrong. I dare you! (buy this album)
