I'm starting to feel like I should have more icons if I'm going to post in the comm this often... But! I wanted to do a fanmix, so here is one, for the prompt 'life or death', which I took to be about ghost!Spike in Angel S5. All links go to YouTube, apart from 'Tenant', because I can't find the studio version, and 'Nick in Reverse', which isn't online anymore.
Phantom.
Tenant (Siouxsie and the Banshees)
but they have eyes at the keyholes and ears to the walls
Fire and the Thud (Arctic Monkeys)
I did request the mark you cast didn't heal as fast
I hear your voice in silences
will the teasing of the fire be followed by the thud?
Nick in Reverse (Graphics)
--
Phantom Part II [Soulwax Remix] (Justice)
--
+
Scrape Away (The Jam)
because you're all dried up and you don't believe
you reckon I'm dreaming when I say I still feel real
.
I don't really know how other people do fanmixes. I generally attempt to try and create an atmosphere and tell a story - not worrying too much about on-the-nose lyrics. That's also how I go about vidding, even though it doesn't seem to be the standard approach, as far as I can tell. Or at least I do something weird, because my end product never seems to follow the proper rules.
Anyway, the 'plot' behind this is my head-canon for AtS S5, which goes like this: Spike doesn't really know what he's doing as a ghost, since he's caught between life and death (so to speak, if you want to fit this prompt, like I do). He deals with his angst very sensibly by willing himself solid enough at an opportune moment to call Buffy on a payphone in the city, after which grand reunion the pair of them decide to gang up on saving Angel from himself (not least, to start with, because Spike can't leave anyway). So that's what we got (don't ruin my fantasy)!
The Siouxsie track seemed like a good place to start for this story, given its sense of claustrophobia and decay, which is how I see Spike wandering around the back corridors of W&H. The Monkeys track was then the closest song I could find in my collection for 'Spike misses Buffy', mainly because I don't have that much angsty love music. But I like this track - it has fire in it! Naturally I interpret this soppily after a certain random moment of flamey hands (I have to confess, when I'm not seizing on it for fanmixes, I'm not entirely sure how the logic of that moment works - but never mind).
The glitchy electro after that is supposed to be Spike wandering around LA, because that's what I think it should sound like - all the snatches of people talking and the sirens in the distance. I seem to really like songs where you can't tell what people are saying... But I think it's evocative! And nice and dark - which contrasts with the Justice track, which is much more hopeful, I like to think. This is the big reunion moment, hence the very straightforward boom drums and excellent sweeping bassline of New Beginnings. Plus, it's a song about a phantom, and clearly that's what this fanmix was about. We end on triumph!
The Jam track, then, is a sort of bonus/coda, which about Spike getting angry at Angel's politics, which gives him a second reason to choice Life and activity over the proverbial death. Etc.
And that is the end of my wanky commentary. Aren't you lot glad you got this medium in? ;)