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rsw@jfet.org
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mixin fixin
"To me, making a tape is like writing a letter—there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind", but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules." - High Fidelity (wr. Nick Hornby)
Here's the problem: no one really uses tapes any more. Hell, no one really wants to use CD-Rs either: you just have to rip them again, or copy MP3s from them to your iPod or whatever. No, today's mixtape medium of choice is a USB stick. The problem with this is that there's just too much freaking room on a USB stick. Giving someone a dozen songs on a USB stick is... flaccid. Be generous, for Chrisake.
For myself, when I run into a problem like this, I just ask: what should any reasonable engineer do? Go up a level in the hierarchy. It's time for a new kind of mixtape: the album mixtape, a mixtape of albums rather than of songs. Now, I'll be the first to admit, the album as an art form seems to be dying: pop artists just aren't good or prolific enough to make an entire album of songs, let alone a cohesive, gestalt kind of thing. At the end of the day, yes, we end up eliminating some good one-hit wonder types from consideration, but hey, if you want that you wouldn't be making an album mixtape anyway.
So I set out to make my first album mixtape. My criteria: around ten albums in length; each album has to be one that I consider a really good album on its own (you don't put crappy songs on mixtapes, so...); has to have some kind of glue to it, be it smooth transitions from album to album or some kind of overarching theme (in the end, I went with the former). Fair game here would be Ari's suggestion from earlier today, viz., an album mixtape of concept albums.
Anyhow, this was my raw list:
- Polo Club - Greenskeepers
- Silent Alarm - Bloc Party
- We Are Not Alone - Breaking Benjamin
- At War With the Mystics - The Flaming Lips
- The Soft Bulletin - The Flaming Lips
- Come to Daddy - Aphex Twin
- Oracular Spectacular - MGMT
- Carnavas - Silversun Pickups
- The Bends - Radiohead
- Superunknown - Soundgarden
- Songs for the Deaf - Queens of the Stone Age
- Surfer Rosa - The Pixies
- Mer de Noms - A Perfect Circle
- eMotive - A Perfect Circle
- Listening Tree - Tim Exile
- There is Nothing Left to Lose - Foo Fighters
- Forever Changes - Love
- Turn on the Bright Lights - Interpol
- Lateralus - Tool
- The Mollusk - Ween
- Close to the Edge - Yes
- Loveless - My Bloody Valentine
Now, I needed to start striking stuff. First, Carnavas, while decent, isn't by itself an awesome album. Gone. Between AWWTM and Soft Bulletin, there's really no comparison; the former didn't make it. TiNLtL is a fucking great album, but it's kind of been overdone; between that and the QotSA album, I'll take the latter for novelty and musical range. Given the surviving albums, MGMT and Radiohead are starting to stick out as a bit incompatible, so they're out. Breaking Benjamin's a good band, and WANA is their best album easily, but it's also not quite right for this collection. This leaves us with a bit more than a dozen, and then it's just a matter of sorting them. It's at this stage that I ended up eliminating the last to go, viz., Lateralus, Close to the Edge, and Superunknown. All are fucking awesome, they just weren't fitting anywhere in the mix in my mind's ear.
So, the final list—in order! which is important for a mix tape, even of albums:
- Polo Club - Greenskeepers
This album starts really strong, and it's quirky and awesome throughout. C'mon, a loungey pop rendition of Slayer's "Raining Blood"?
- Come to Daddy - Aphex Twin
Polo Club's bonus track is a kind of creepy song with lyrics including "it puts the lotion on its skin / or it gets the hose again." It segues nicely into "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WANT YOUR SOULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL".
- Songs for the Deaf - Queens of the Stone Age
While CtD starts all crazy, it ends on some pretty chill strains with "IZ-US", which always felt to me like a bus ride through a bombed out city. After that, a car starting and a faux AM radio asshole deej introducing the next song seems like a good flow.
- Forever Changes - Love
This album starts with a folksy guitar riff, which transitions nicely from SftD's "Mosquito Song". This album is fucking great.
- The Soft Bulletin - The Flaming Lips
After the acid-washed depression of Forever Changes, which is kind of an end-of-the-60s retrospective on what was ultimately Timothy Leary's failure to expand our minds with copious amounts of acid, the Lips' album about depression and madness, starting with the deceptively upbeat "Race for the Prize", slides right into place. The Lips' constant stream of psychedelic rock homage is a fitting coda for Forever Changes.
- Silent Alarm - Bloc Party
Scratchy, guitar-driven rock is precisely what you need to get yourself back out of the dumps of "Waiting for a Superman [Remix]". Yeah, it's already too heavy to lift—and now it's like drinking poison and eating glass. Don't worry, though, this album sweeps you right up and takes you through "Positive Tension" and "This Modern Love" to "Compliments", which closes it out nicely and does a pretty good job of putting us in a darkish, synthy mood—just in time for
- Listening Tree - Tim Exile
This dude is relatively unknown; I saw him open for Imogen Heap. He has some good IDM/D&B/&c riffs on here, and the mood starts and stays relatively dark throughout. I'd be hard pressed to claim that this is actually one of my favorite standalone albums, but the combination of novelty (c'mon, everyone knows you get points for stumping your listener) and mood propriety saves it.
- Loveless - My Bloody Valentine
You might argue that I should've just skipped straight to this and dropped Tim Exile from the mix entirely. If that's your feeling, call Listening Tree the prologue to this gritty, atmospheric masterpiece. These guys were ridiculously exacting in the sound they were after—and it's just what we want here.
- Surfer Rosa - The Pixies
Black Francis is like a kid who just kind of bangs shit together, but the result is an awesome sound. This album is probably most popular for "Where Is My Mind," but the whole thing is just freaking great. I'd go with the extended edition with an extra 9 songs on it; they're worth the listen.
- eMotive - A Perfect Circle
What? An album of covers? Well, not quite: "Passive" was actually jointly written by Maynard and Reznor, and it shows in how awesome it is. Beyond that, there is a hauntingly awesome cover of "When The Levee Breaks" on here that by itself makes this album worth having. But at the end of the day, I like it for the "mixtape in a mixtape" aspect of it, all touched and poked by Maynard et al. And it's a damn solid album.
- The Mollusk - Ween
This is the best album to have been made in the last 30 years. I doubt any of you agree with that statement, but that just means you're wrong. More to the point, this is my mixtape, so fuck you. We start off with a nice little intro that could transition from anywhere—"Dancing in the Show Tonight"—and immediately jump into the nautical concept of the album. "The Blarney Stone" deserves a place at your St. Patty's Day celebration, and "Ocean Man" is both fun and kid-safe. Really, the reason this album belongs last is because "She Wanted To Leave" is—and has—an amazing ending.
"So go fetch a bottle of rum, dear friend,
and fill up my glass to the brim,
for I'm not the man I used to be,
now I'm one of them."
Welp, that's my album mixtape. Obviously I went for the continuity aspect over the single-concept one, but I'd submit that both are reasonable, as are many other approaches.
Now it's your turn: make me an album mixtape.
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