The Worst Mix in the World
http://trevitron.muxtape.com/
http://trevitron.muxtape.com/
http://trevitron.muxtape.com/
http://trevitron.muxtape.com/
http://trevitron.muxtape.com/
Nelly Furtado - "Afraid (feat. Attitude)"
When making mixtapes, I often like to open with a song that opens up an album, something catchy and engaging. Surprisingly, this song was not chosen as one of the nine singles released from Loose. It's super-catchy and, like a lot of good pop songs in this day and age, features a completely disposable rap, in this case from journeyman and Timbaland-associate Attitude. Although the song is about self-empowerment or something, I can't really endorse using this song this vapid (in the good way) for inspiration. If you do, please search out more mature sources, but hey, it probably would make a good soundtrack to a kickboxing class or something. Still, it's a nice message.
Kingpin Skinny Pimp - "One Life 2 Live"
One of the least talked-about Memphis rappers and loose member of the Three 6 Mafia Prophet Posse continuum. Why do DJ Paul and Juicy J not get more credit as producers? They craft the most darkly beautiful beats in all of hip-hop, the aural equivalent of the devil getting into a fight with a bunch of angels. I like the line about God's phone being off the hook. I only want a car so I can drive around and listen to music like this. Don't player hate.
10cc - "The Worst Band in the World"
People seem to reject or act superior to pop music because at its "worst," it's obviously designed to reach its audience in a specific, pre-ordained way. Hence, a boy band or girl group is designed not to explore the artistic possibilities or sound but to sell records. But the best way to sell records is to offer something new, creative, catchy, and maybe meaningful. So it's almost never completely one-sidedly exploitive. Where rock 'n' roll stereotypically thrives off of spontaneous energy and creativity--the cliche being that a band failed to "capture the excitement of their live performances"--pop music is portrayed as being scientifically engineered in a lab. I understand the idea behind taking a stance of superiority towards the prefab and supposedly "inauthentic" or "insincere" world of pop music, but I can't at all get behind that view. In fact, I seek to destroy it forever.
Here, 10cc embrace these aspects of pop music, commanding the audience to purchase and play their record so it can become gold. By the time the song is over, the song has switched to the perspective of the record itself. For some reason, the group's claim to be the "worst band in the world" rings even more insincere and narcissistic than claiming they are the best ever. But all of it is just an excuse to record a great pop song, and this is pop at its most scientific and mechanical. But the song's structure and tiny, precise hooks come off less like a Malcolm McLaren impresario approach and more like a bunch of kids playing with lego blocks and opting not to follow the instructions in the box.
Grace Jones - "My Jamaican Guy (12" Version)"
I love the idea of Grace Jones more than anything else, but what an idea. This is the first song of hers that really comes together and works perfectly for me. It's from a recent compilation that covers recordings from Compass Point Studios, with production mostly by the legendary Sly & Robbie. We all generally know how a dance track is going to build to a climax, layer by layer, but with the best music, our knowledge of these tricks doesn't matter. This is a perfect example of that for me, building to a giant unstoppable groove. Grace Jones is the perfect pop star because she is wholly malleable to her producer's wishes, and when you have Sly & Robbie behind her, great music is guaranteed.
Steel Pulse - "Your House"
The most personal and emotionally intimate song from Steel Pulse's masterpiece True Democracy may sound out of place on the very political album, but as I've written about before, you can't disentangle the personal from the truly political. Every man needs a partner and a comrade.
What I especially like about this song is its vulnerability, which I find rather rare amongst male singers. He's not asking this woman to move in with him; he's asking to live in her house. She helped him out once, and now, he's in love with her and wants to start a home with her. He describes their love in epic, religious language, "Was a revelation to hear / Triumphant calling / Triumphant trumpets." This is the sound of true love.
Charles Aznavour - "Emmenez-Moi"
This song is about wanting to go away, far away to an unknown place, because it's bored where you are. The sing watches the boats come in the docks and then leave, and asks them to take him with them. I must admit that the reason I connect with this song so much is that I not-so-secretely want to do the same as the narrator of the song. I want to go someplace new and leave everything behind. But the reason I stay and he goes is because he lives in a song and I don't. Or maybe I'm just too scared. I think this fantasy is what I found so appealing about living in South Africa. There, I had no worries or concerns, even for a brief time, and it was like I had left everything behind. Of course, the truth is that those weeks were the happiest time of my life.
Material - "Deliver"
The singer on this song is Foday Musa Suso. Like much African music, it has a definite Lion King vibe, but having heard a lot of (South) African music, I can say with some confidence that this is just what a lot of African music sounds like. We want to believe that music that sounds this way must be the product of some exploitive minds at Disney, but I rode in many South African taxis listening to music that sounded even more like Lion King than this. I think that this suspicion arises from the fact that the Lion King is a cartoon and its music sounds like cartoon music, to an extent. We want to assume that the creators of the movie and soundtrack must have been trying to portray Africa in a cartoonishly simplistic way, all wide grins and spontaneous joyful dancing. But having met Africans who don't have a cynical, ironic, or insincere bone in their body, I start to wonder: are they the cartoons or are we? Because we can't seem to enjoy anything joyful, delightful, or just plain good without breaking it down in some way or another. What's going to happen when they make a cartoon movie about us?
Arthur Russell - "Keeping Up"
I don't reach for some Arthur Russell as often as I probably should, but whenever I return to his music, I always find that it that it has created this perfect little corner of the world in which I can find no fault. Where some music ages as I age with it, his music never fails to impress me with its faultlessness. Of course, that might be because he does not create music so much as he communicates his soul through the medium of singing and cello-playing (with occasional disco beats).
Like the majority of his music, I can't tell exactly what he's talking about here, but again, that's because he's not talking to me. He's talking to himself, but it's just audible enough for us to hear. I like to see this song as a tale of love and survival. The only things I know about Arthur Russell's life is that he was gay, devoted to his lover, a victim of AIDS, so love and survival were probably things on his mind! I don't know exactly what the lyric "And there's no end in sight" refers to, but it sounds like Heaven to me.
Pet Shop Boys - "In the Night"
This song, the b-side to "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)," is about a French, WWII-era sub-culture known as the Zazous. They rejected the Nazis and the French Resistance, and supposedly Neil Tennant wrote a song about them because he had just read a book about them. Neil Tennant is a huge nerd, and that's what I love about him. The lyrics are interesting enough, but I think he just wrote about the Zazous so he could sing "Zazou" in his sensual, lusty croon. That it's a b-side and still really awesome is just a testament to how over 80% of the Pet Shop Boys' catalogue is really awesome and worth listening to again and again.
Luomo - "Really Don't Mind (Radio Edit)"
I really love Luomo, though I don't really care for his alter-ego Vladislav Delay. As Luomo, he crafted the ultimate emo-house, detailing the ins and outs of relationships over beats that put make micro-house sound epic. I interpret his music under this guise as trying to capture and tell the story of experiences of clubbing and falling in love. How self-referential it must be to dance to this music with another person at a club! The lyrics are awkward and plain, but they capture the way people might write about their lovers or experiences at the club in their Livejournals.
This song, the radio edit of which is vastly superior to the original, is from the underwhelming third album Paper Tigers but stands up with the earlier classics. It is his most digestible and short piece of great music that I can think of, so when I listen to it, I have to put it on repeat to reach the epic lengths of his earlier songs. I really have nothing to say about it, just that it's really good.
Pet Shop Boys - "Paninaro '95"
I adore the full-length "Italian Remix" of this song, but it wouldn't fit because of its file size. That version is great because it features really awesome distorted synths, but this version works really great as a shorter pop song. It's one of the only songs where Chris Lowe sings, or rather, speaks. Like "In the Night," it's about a European, apolitical youth culture, this time in Italy. Neil Tennant identified with the Paninaro sub-culture because they like fashion and pop music, as did the Zazous. The lyrics are the Pet Shop Boys at their most deliciously superficial, but don't mistake this as insincerity in any way. There's just no other way to describe their love of beautiful appearances any better, and that's a love that I share with them.
Muslimgauze - "Priest"
I've sort of become obsessed with Muslimgauze lately, after having not listened to him for many years. It really helped discovering some of his early work, of which this is a highlight. It differs from most of his work by being somewhat relaxed and austere, a moment of peace in a career filled with indignation. I love the way he titles his music, from the very early titles to the classic titles of the mid-90s. He doesn't call this song "The Priest" or "A Priest," but rather "Priest," as if it embodies priestliness in some way. He talks about his music being almost a translation of his thoughts on a subject, and although he is not religious himself, I like to think of this song as a reflection on some positive experience with a priest or merely the passing observation of a priest. It's one of the few songs of his that can, in any way, be called happy, although it sounds more sublime than anything. This is not to say that the rest of his music is sad or even angry. Most of it is worlds beyond these sorts of emotions to be called anything like that.
http://trevitron.muxtape.com/
http://trevitron.muxtape.com/
http://trevitron.muxtape.com/
http://trevitron.muxtape.com/
Nelly Furtado - "Afraid (feat. Attitude)"
When making mixtapes, I often like to open with a song that opens up an album, something catchy and engaging. Surprisingly, this song was not chosen as one of the nine singles released from Loose. It's super-catchy and, like a lot of good pop songs in this day and age, features a completely disposable rap, in this case from journeyman and Timbaland-associate Attitude. Although the song is about self-empowerment or something, I can't really endorse using this song this vapid (in the good way) for inspiration. If you do, please search out more mature sources, but hey, it probably would make a good soundtrack to a kickboxing class or something. Still, it's a nice message.
Kingpin Skinny Pimp - "One Life 2 Live"
One of the least talked-about Memphis rappers and loose member of the Three 6 Mafia Prophet Posse continuum. Why do DJ Paul and Juicy J not get more credit as producers? They craft the most darkly beautiful beats in all of hip-hop, the aural equivalent of the devil getting into a fight with a bunch of angels. I like the line about God's phone being off the hook. I only want a car so I can drive around and listen to music like this. Don't player hate.
10cc - "The Worst Band in the World"
People seem to reject or act superior to pop music because at its "worst," it's obviously designed to reach its audience in a specific, pre-ordained way. Hence, a boy band or girl group is designed not to explore the artistic possibilities or sound but to sell records. But the best way to sell records is to offer something new, creative, catchy, and maybe meaningful. So it's almost never completely one-sidedly exploitive. Where rock 'n' roll stereotypically thrives off of spontaneous energy and creativity--the cliche being that a band failed to "capture the excitement of their live performances"--pop music is portrayed as being scientifically engineered in a lab. I understand the idea behind taking a stance of superiority towards the prefab and supposedly "inauthentic" or "insincere" world of pop music, but I can't at all get behind that view. In fact, I seek to destroy it forever.
Here, 10cc embrace these aspects of pop music, commanding the audience to purchase and play their record so it can become gold. By the time the song is over, the song has switched to the perspective of the record itself. For some reason, the group's claim to be the "worst band in the world" rings even more insincere and narcissistic than claiming they are the best ever. But all of it is just an excuse to record a great pop song, and this is pop at its most scientific and mechanical. But the song's structure and tiny, precise hooks come off less like a Malcolm McLaren impresario approach and more like a bunch of kids playing with lego blocks and opting not to follow the instructions in the box.
Grace Jones - "My Jamaican Guy (12" Version)"
I love the idea of Grace Jones more than anything else, but what an idea. This is the first song of hers that really comes together and works perfectly for me. It's from a recent compilation that covers recordings from Compass Point Studios, with production mostly by the legendary Sly & Robbie. We all generally know how a dance track is going to build to a climax, layer by layer, but with the best music, our knowledge of these tricks doesn't matter. This is a perfect example of that for me, building to a giant unstoppable groove. Grace Jones is the perfect pop star because she is wholly malleable to her producer's wishes, and when you have Sly & Robbie behind her, great music is guaranteed.
Steel Pulse - "Your House"
The most personal and emotionally intimate song from Steel Pulse's masterpiece True Democracy may sound out of place on the very political album, but as I've written about before, you can't disentangle the personal from the truly political. Every man needs a partner and a comrade.
What I especially like about this song is its vulnerability, which I find rather rare amongst male singers. He's not asking this woman to move in with him; he's asking to live in her house. She helped him out once, and now, he's in love with her and wants to start a home with her. He describes their love in epic, religious language, "Was a revelation to hear / Triumphant calling / Triumphant trumpets." This is the sound of true love.
Charles Aznavour - "Emmenez-Moi"
This song is about wanting to go away, far away to an unknown place, because it's bored where you are. The sing watches the boats come in the docks and then leave, and asks them to take him with them. I must admit that the reason I connect with this song so much is that I not-so-secretely want to do the same as the narrator of the song. I want to go someplace new and leave everything behind. But the reason I stay and he goes is because he lives in a song and I don't. Or maybe I'm just too scared. I think this fantasy is what I found so appealing about living in South Africa. There, I had no worries or concerns, even for a brief time, and it was like I had left everything behind. Of course, the truth is that those weeks were the happiest time of my life.
Material - "Deliver"
The singer on this song is Foday Musa Suso. Like much African music, it has a definite Lion King vibe, but having heard a lot of (South) African music, I can say with some confidence that this is just what a lot of African music sounds like. We want to believe that music that sounds this way must be the product of some exploitive minds at Disney, but I rode in many South African taxis listening to music that sounded even more like Lion King than this. I think that this suspicion arises from the fact that the Lion King is a cartoon and its music sounds like cartoon music, to an extent. We want to assume that the creators of the movie and soundtrack must have been trying to portray Africa in a cartoonishly simplistic way, all wide grins and spontaneous joyful dancing. But having met Africans who don't have a cynical, ironic, or insincere bone in their body, I start to wonder: are they the cartoons or are we? Because we can't seem to enjoy anything joyful, delightful, or just plain good without breaking it down in some way or another. What's going to happen when they make a cartoon movie about us?
Arthur Russell - "Keeping Up"
I don't reach for some Arthur Russell as often as I probably should, but whenever I return to his music, I always find that it that it has created this perfect little corner of the world in which I can find no fault. Where some music ages as I age with it, his music never fails to impress me with its faultlessness. Of course, that might be because he does not create music so much as he communicates his soul through the medium of singing and cello-playing (with occasional disco beats).
Like the majority of his music, I can't tell exactly what he's talking about here, but again, that's because he's not talking to me. He's talking to himself, but it's just audible enough for us to hear. I like to see this song as a tale of love and survival. The only things I know about Arthur Russell's life is that he was gay, devoted to his lover, a victim of AIDS, so love and survival were probably things on his mind! I don't know exactly what the lyric "And there's no end in sight" refers to, but it sounds like Heaven to me.
Pet Shop Boys - "In the Night"
This song, the b-side to "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)," is about a French, WWII-era sub-culture known as the Zazous. They rejected the Nazis and the French Resistance, and supposedly Neil Tennant wrote a song about them because he had just read a book about them. Neil Tennant is a huge nerd, and that's what I love about him. The lyrics are interesting enough, but I think he just wrote about the Zazous so he could sing "Zazou" in his sensual, lusty croon. That it's a b-side and still really awesome is just a testament to how over 80% of the Pet Shop Boys' catalogue is really awesome and worth listening to again and again.
Luomo - "Really Don't Mind (Radio Edit)"
I really love Luomo, though I don't really care for his alter-ego Vladislav Delay. As Luomo, he crafted the ultimate emo-house, detailing the ins and outs of relationships over beats that put make micro-house sound epic. I interpret his music under this guise as trying to capture and tell the story of experiences of clubbing and falling in love. How self-referential it must be to dance to this music with another person at a club! The lyrics are awkward and plain, but they capture the way people might write about their lovers or experiences at the club in their Livejournals.
This song, the radio edit of which is vastly superior to the original, is from the underwhelming third album Paper Tigers but stands up with the earlier classics. It is his most digestible and short piece of great music that I can think of, so when I listen to it, I have to put it on repeat to reach the epic lengths of his earlier songs. I really have nothing to say about it, just that it's really good.
Pet Shop Boys - "Paninaro '95"
I adore the full-length "Italian Remix" of this song, but it wouldn't fit because of its file size. That version is great because it features really awesome distorted synths, but this version works really great as a shorter pop song. It's one of the only songs where Chris Lowe sings, or rather, speaks. Like "In the Night," it's about a European, apolitical youth culture, this time in Italy. Neil Tennant identified with the Paninaro sub-culture because they like fashion and pop music, as did the Zazous. The lyrics are the Pet Shop Boys at their most deliciously superficial, but don't mistake this as insincerity in any way. There's just no other way to describe their love of beautiful appearances any better, and that's a love that I share with them.
Muslimgauze - "Priest"
I've sort of become obsessed with Muslimgauze lately, after having not listened to him for many years. It really helped discovering some of his early work, of which this is a highlight. It differs from most of his work by being somewhat relaxed and austere, a moment of peace in a career filled with indignation. I love the way he titles his music, from the very early titles to the classic titles of the mid-90s. He doesn't call this song "The Priest" or "A Priest," but rather "Priest," as if it embodies priestliness in some way. He talks about his music being almost a translation of his thoughts on a subject, and although he is not religious himself, I like to think of this song as a reflection on some positive experience with a priest or merely the passing observation of a priest. It's one of the few songs of his that can, in any way, be called happy, although it sounds more sublime than anything. This is not to say that the rest of his music is sad or even angry. Most of it is worlds beyond these sorts of emotions to be called anything like that.