Mux188: February 2016

Download or stream.

1. Protomartyr - The Devil In His Youth (The Agent Intellect)
2. Beach Slang - Throwaways (The Things We Do To Find People Like Us)
3. Chvrches - Never Ending Circles (Every Open Eye)
4. Veruca Salt - Eyes On You (Ghost Notes)
5. Swervedriver - Last Rites (I Wasn't Born To Lose You)
6. The Mountain Goats - Balance (All Hail West Texas)
7. David Bowie - Lazarus (Blackstar)
8. Battles - Dot Com (La Di Da Di)
9. Prefuse 73 - Now You're Leaving (Surrounded By Silence)
10. Big Grams - Goldmine Junkie (Big Grams)
11. Thundercat - Them Changes (The Beyond / Where The Giants Roam)
12. Jamie xx - I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times) (feat. Young Thug and Popcaan) (In Colour)

TRT 38:37

Rookies: Veruca Salt

2016 music: David Bowie

Mux185: Mr. Mux Trims The Tree

Download or stream. The choice is yours.

I changed the lineup approximately 27 times, so I figured just to release it into the wild. It's not that I couldn't get a sequence going but I just kept finding better songs. Basically there were at least five different viable versions of this.

Also, apologies that the "Flora > Fauna" into "Pastel Assassins" butt-cut is really intense and jarring. It worked better in my head when they were the same tempo. I tried fading out "Flora" but it's just too short to cut shorter. But how about that sweet transition from the Neon Indian outro into the SFX of the "Puzzles" intro? Butter. Also: No one cares.

The Upstream Color soundtrack is also on my writing playlist (e.g. the roughly two hours daily I spend writing the final Chronicle book, my next screenplay, and a freewrite that's starting to take shape as... something?), and beyond the gimmick of Shane Carruth doing the score, it's actually really fucking good. Glad I picked the track with the shortest Walden quote as its title. He really upped his game with the soundtrack and cinematography since Primer. Let's just hope The Modern Ocean, with all its star power, comes out within the decade.

Oh, right, I'm supposed to be talking about music. Well, I think I greatly improved my sequencing in 2015, and while it'll still technically be 2015 when I do it, I'm sure Christmas will come early in the form of Mux186: January 2016. That is, if your idea of Christmas is a 45-minute-ish mixtape that's whim to my mad-scientist leanings. As for continuing on into 2016, the rules will remain the same, even though I recently routed them when Battles dropped and for a while was completely irresistible. I'll hit Mux200 in summer and am already stockpiling tracks for Retromux 2; hard to do considering that two of the bands on 001 and 100 have broken up, other bands have gone crap, and some barely put out music. But hey, if I have to do it once every four years, I think I can manage. I'm sure a few lite themes might make a guest appearance, like another Rookies. No promises on that front, but barring some cataclysm, expecting two muxes a month as always, lest someone finally gives me a DMCA takedown. And then, shit, I'll just use my secret email list to hit everyone up for their sweet pirate mux action.

1. Ty Segall - Finger (Melted)
2. Wavves - Heavy Metal Detox (V)
3. Beach Slang - Ride The Wild Haze (The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us)
4. Hop Along - Sister Cities (Painted Shut)
5. Ryan Adams - All You Had To Do Was Stay (1989)
6. Wilco - Radio Cure (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
7. Shane Carruth - I Love To Be Alone (Upstream Color Original Soundtrack)
8. Battles - Flora > Fauna (La Di Da Di)
9. Prefuse 73 - Pastel Assassins (Surrounded By Silence)
10. HEALTH - L.A. Looks (Death Magic)
11. Neon Indian - Techno Clique (VEGA INTL. Night School)
12. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Puzzles (Multi-Love)

TRT 45:00 on the nose.

Rookies: Beach Slang, Hop Along, Shane Carruth

2015 music: Battles, Beach Slang, HEALTH, Hop Along, Neon Indian, Ryan Adams, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Wavves

Mux183: Mr. Mux's Time Is Up!

Download or stream. The choice is yours.

PSA: Yes, the opening Ryan Adams track sounds like radio quality. I thought I downloaded a bad web rip, but then I got the album legit on Amazon and, lo and behold, it still sounds like that. So apparently he doesn't care that it sounds fairly shitty. Good song, though.

1. Ryan Adams - Style (1989)
2. TV on the Radio - Winter (Seeds)
3. Dum Dum Girls - Rimbaud Eyes (Too True)
4. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Extreme Wealth And Casual Cruelty (Multi-Love)
5. Hot Chip - Dark Night (Why Make Sense?)
6. Battles - Summer Simmer (La Di Da Di)
7. The Chemical Brothers - Wide Open (Born In The Echoes)
8. Kevin Drew - You Got Caught (Darlings)
9. Wilco - How To Fight Loneliness (Summerteeth)
10. EL VY - Happiness, Missouri (Return To The Moon)
11. Frank Zappa - Watermelon In Easter Hay (Joe's Garage: Acts II & III)
12. Flying Lotus - The Protest (You're Dead!)

TRT 53:35

Rookies: Frank Zappa

2015 music: Battles, The Chemical Brothers, EL VY, Hot Chip, Ryan Adams, Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Mux181: Mr. Mux Rakes Some Leaves

Download or stream. The choice is yours!

1. TV on the Radio - Right Now (Seeds)
2. Metric - The Shade (Pagans In Vegas)
3. Swervedriver - English Subtitles (I Wasn't Born To Lose You)
4. Wilco - Random Name Generator (Star Wars)
5. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - The World Is Crowded (Multi-Love)
6. TLC - Creep (CrazySexyCool)
7. Miguel - Simple Things (Wildheart)
8. Prefuse 73 - Mojave Mating Call (Rivington Nao Rio)
9. DJ Shadow - The Number Song (Cut Chemist Party Mix) (Endtroducing... Deluxe Edition)
10. Battles - Dot Net (La Di Da Di)
11. Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater (I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One)
12. Ryan Adams - Welcome To New York (1989)

TRT 50:06

Rookies: Swervedriver, TLC

2015 music: Battles, Metric, Miguel, Prefuse 73, Ryan Adams, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Wilco

Mux180: October 2015

Download or stream. The choice is yours!

Somehow this became the mux of ripped songs that've yet to officially drop. Not trying to be all cutting-edge, but sometimes cherry-picking advance singles is easier than wading through the usual glut of albums. Continuing to break all the rules regarding Battles, since La Di Da Di has plenty of legs. I've been air-drumming "Non-Violence" all week.

And for those who've been complaining of too-long muxes, this is the shortest one since June. If I excluded "Let It Happen," it'd be even more compact. I already went ahead and chopped off the end of "Under The Pressure" since, well, that kind of just floats along forever.

1. El Vy - I'm The Man To Be (El Vy)
2. Black Lips - Freedom Fries (Freedom Fries / Watch Your Back 7")
3. Deerhunter - Breaker (Fading Frontier)
4. Chromatics - Shadow (Excerpt) (Dear Tommy)
5. Wavves X Cloud Nothings - Nervous (No Life For Me)
6. Parquet Courts - Sunbathing Animal (Sunbathing Animal)
7. Tame Impala - Let It Happen (Currents)
8. Big Grams* - Fell In The Sun (Big Grams EP)
9. Battles - Non-Violence (La Di Da Di)
10. HEALTH - Life (Death Magic)
11. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Just Wait (Surf)
12. The War On Drugs - Under The Pressure (Edit) (Lost In The Dream)

*Big Grams, e.g. Phantogram and Big Boi, is the best left-field collab in a while.

TRT 48:25

Rookies: Big Grams, El Vy

2015 music: Battles, Big Grams, Black Lips, Chromatics, Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, Deerhunter, El Vy, HEALTH, Tame Impala, Wavves X Cloud Nothings

Mux179: Mr. Mux Strikes Back

Download.

I've broken my rule of not having the same band on two consecutive muxes. Well, doubly accidental that Battles has been on three muxes in a row, but "FF Bada" is quickly becoming one of my favorite Battles tracks. Also considering "The Yabba," La Di Da Di is pretty much a lock for my shortlist for my favorite albums of the year. It'll definitely be great to hear the studio version of the album in a week or two before I see them live in early October. Hoping to see some familiar faces at First Ave. who will front-row-it with me.

1. The Black Keys - Bullet In The Brain (Turn Blue)
2. Destroyer - Dream Lover (Poison Season)
3. Titus Andronicus - Come On, Siobhan (The Most Lamentable Tragedy)
4. Cymbals Eat Guitars - LifeNet (LOSE)
5. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Can't Keep Checking My Phone (Multi-Love)
6. Brian Eno & Kyle Hyde - Cells & Bells (High Life)
7. Ought - Habit (More Than Any Other Day)
8. Built To Spill - So (Untethered Moon)
9. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)
10. The Go! Team - The Power Is On (Thunder, Lightning, Strike [Original Version])
11. Battles - FF Bada (La Di Da Di)
12. Caribou - Your Love Will Set You Free (C2's Set U Free Remix) (Our Love [Expanded Edition])

TRT 57:14

2015 music: Battles, Built To Spill, Destroyer, Titus Andronicus, Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Mux178: September 2015

8:21 p.m. central update: I've reuploaded the mux as "mux178-fixed.mp3" in the Dropbox link. The ending Battles track is still slightly distorted on the low end (especially around the 51 minute mark, since it goes into the bass basement), but it was a rip that was very low-volume (and so it's low volume compared to the rest of the mux), so this is the best I can do before La Di Da Di proper comes out. As far as I can tell, it's an Audacity problem, so if you crank the volume you won't get any more distortion than what's already there. You're welcome or something.

Damage control: Re-encoding the mux because apparently "The Yabba" didn't like being pumped up 6 dB.

Download.

And yes, "September Gurls" has been on the to-be-muxed playlist for a few years now. Finally a September came around where it could start things off.

1. Big Star - September Gurls (Radio City)
2. Tame Impala - Past Life (Currents)
3. Prince and The Revolution - I Would Die 4 U (Purple Rain)
4. Deerhunter - Snakeskin (Fading Frontier)
5. HEALTH - Flesh World (UK) (Death Magic)
6. The Chemical Brothers - Go (Born In The Echoes)
7. Beach House - Sparks (Depression Cherry)
8. Miguel - Coffee (Wildheart)
9. Thundercat - Lone Wolf And Cub (The Beyond / Where The Giants Roam)
10. Moonface - Dreamy Summer (Julia With Blue Jeans On)
11. Wavves X Cloud Nothings - Nothing Hurts (No Life For Me)
12. Battles - The Yabba (La Di Da Di)

TRT 54:01

Rookies: Big Star

2015 music: Battles, Beach House, The Chemical Brothers, Deerhunter, HEALTH, Miguel, Tame Impala, Wavves X Cloud Nothings

Mux177: Mr. Mux Cuts The Grass

Link.

1. Caribou - Can't Do Without You (Extended Mix) (Our Love [Expanded Edition])
2. Daft Punk - Megamix 1 (DJ Hero)
3. Battles - Ddiamondd (Mirrored)
4. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Necessary Evil (Multi-Love)
5. The Chemical Brothers - Leave Home (Exit Planet Dust)
6. Spoon - Inside Out (Demo) (They Want My Soul [Bonus])
7. Titus Andronicus - Dimed Out (The Most Lamentable Tragedy)
8. Lightning Bolt - Runaway Train (Fantasy Empire)
9. Wolfmother - Tales From The Forest of Gnomes (Wolfmother)
10. Death From Above 1979 - The Physical World (The Physical World)
11. Bear In Heaven - You Don't Need The World (Time Is Over One Day Old)
12. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Sunday Candy (Surf)

TRT 49:38

2015 music: Caribou (sort of), Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, Lightning Bolt, Titus Andronicus, Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Mux164: February 2015

Boom.

1. TV on the Radio - Ride (Seeds)
2. Death From Above 1979 - Trainwreck 1979 (The Physical World)
3. Iceage - Abundant Living (Plowing Into The Field of Love)
4. Split Single - Last Goodbye (Fragmented World)
5. Queens of the Stone Age - If I Had A Tail (...Like Clockwork) (Thanks to JLA for his Last.fm scrobbles)
6. Wye Oak - Hot As Day (Civilian)
7. The National - Humiliation (Trouble Will Find Me)
8. Sleater-Kinney - Hey Darling (No Cities To Love)
9. The Dodos - Competition (Individ)
10. Battles - Tonto (Mirrored)
11. Songs: Ohia - Blue Factory Flame (Didn't It Rain)
12. Bloc Party - So Here We Are (Silent Alarm)

TRT 55:17

2015 music: The Dodos, Sleater-Kinney

Mux106: August 2012

After all this rock, I went a little electronic this time around.

Yep.

1. Hot Chip - Night and Day (In Our Heads)
2. Grimes - Oblivion (Visions)
3. Cut Copy - Alisa (Zonoscope)
4. Passion Pit - I'll Be Alright (Gossamer)
5. Prefuse 73 - The Only Hand To Hold (The Only She Chapters)
6. School of Seven Bells - White Wind (Ghostory)
7. Battles - White Electric (Gloss Drop)
8. Chromatics - Kill For Love (Kill For Love)
9. Liars - Brats (WIXIW)

TRT: 38:21

Rookies:
Grimes

Mux093: The Best Winter Ever

Not sure where you're living, but after Minnesota's hell winter last year, green grass and only scant melt-the-next-day flurries is fine by me.

Dropped in the Box.

Mux TRT: 46:27

Tracks:

1. Spoon - Don't Make Me A Target (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga)
2. EMA - California (Past Life Martyred Saints)
3. Battles - My Machines (Gloss Drop)
4. St. Vincent - Surgeon (Strange Mercy)
5. The Flaming Lips - What Is The Light? (The Soft Bulletin)
6. The Microphones - The Moon (The Glow Pt. 2)
7. Why? - Gnashville (Alopecia)
8. Metric - Gimme Sympathy (Daytrotter Session [Acoustic])
9. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps (Acoustic)
10. The Wombats - My First Wedding (A Guide To Love, Loss And Despair / JLA's Best of 2007: Rock)
11. Echo & The Bunnymen - The Killing Moon (Ocean Rain)

Rookies:
Echo & The Bunnymen
The Wombats

PSA: I'm a big kick with The Microphones, The Who, and Echo & The Bunnymen, so don't be surprised to see guest appearances by those bands on the next few muxes.

Random: Rapidly approaching Mux100, which should hit on May 1, 2012. I don't have anything special planned, and I fully intend on continuing the Mux series with the same rules and schedule as before. I think, though, that I'll package as many muxes into a zip that the 1GB-limit Megaupload can handle, since I only keep the five most-current mixes in my Dropbox. I'll leave you on your own to scour my blog and find the tracklist. (Pro tip: Just search the Mux title in the search box and you'll find it from when I remixed all the muxes)

Mux092: January 2012

Starting off the year with a bit of a clearinghouse. The sequencing holds, but a look at the tracklist looks rather unwieldy.

Boxed.

1. Battles - Africastle (MPLS.tv session) (Gloss Drop)
2. The Roots - One Time (Undun)
3. The Hold Steady - Chips Ahoy! (Boys And Girls In America)
4. The Strokes - Barely Legal (Is This It?)
5. Sleater-Kinney - One Beat (One Beat)
6. Radiohead - Climbing Up The Walls (OK Computer)
7. Deerhunter - Saved By Old Times (Microcastle)
8. Phantogram - Futuristic Casket (Eyelid Movies)
9. Oneohtrix Point Never - Child Soldier (Replica)
10. Air - Alone In Kyoto (Talkie Walkie / Lost In Translation Soundtrack)
11. The Beach Boys - Surf's Up (The Smile Sessions)

In particular, "Saved By Old Times" and "Alone In Kyoto" have been in my pending to-be-added-to-a-mux playlist for at least two years. And "Surf's Up" been there even since I heard The Smile Sessions; but given the multi-suite nature of most of Smile, it's hard to cram a Beach Boys cut into the mix. Thus, it caps it off.

Rookies:
The Beach Boys
Oneohtrix Point Never

Battles rock MPLS.tv

Battles recently made a video with MPLS.tv and performed a live/session cut of "Africastle" off Gloss Drop. It was so brooding and epic that I ripped it and, now, am passing on that pleasure to you, my dear readers.

It makes a damn fine argument that Battles can take any song and make it mind-blowing if stretched out to eight minutes. And it sounds much more urgent and downright dangerous than the album cut.

So: Download this fine gem before I get sued.

Mux091: Apocalypse Soon

In the Box.

1. Archers of Loaf - Web In Front (Icky Mettle)
2. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Stick Figures In Love (Mirror Traffic)
3. Pete and the Pirates - Knots (Little Death)
4. Los Campesinos! - Songs About Your Girlfriend (Hello Sadness)
5. St. Vincent - Cruel (Strange Mercy)
6. Phantogram - Don't Move (Nightlife EP)
7. Real Estate - Green Aisles (Days)
8. Radiohead - Lotus Flower (The King of Limbs)
9. EMA - The Grey Ship (Past Life Martyred Saints)
10. Battles - Race: In (Mirrored)

Rookies:
Archers of Loaf
Pete and the Pirates (propers to JLA)

See you in 2012, which will see the triumphant release of the not-so-triumphant Mux100. There was a reason I used three-digit prefixes; guess I'll have to stop at Mux999.

2011 Music: JDK's Four Most-Favorite Albums and Ten Most-Favorite Songs

I suppose I need to disclaim: I've had my four most-favorite albums of the year known for a few months, and I don't see anything on the December horizon that will radically alter my viewpoint. What else is there besides another James Blake EP? (Never mind that albums always slip through the cracks and get discovered in the next calendar year. In a later posts I'll gush about Flying Lotus's Cosmogramma as one of the most exciting pieces of music in a very long time.)

I also want to have a lead on everyone else's lists (I'm very insecure), though my No. 1 has been forgotten by every outlet the week after its release.

But no: I won't turn this into a shouting match with everyone else out there. This is how I feel about the music in my own vacuum. I also like to eschew the trend of nonetheless-subjective sites labeling these features as Best Of, like their Best is a definitive best. These are my favorites. Me.

So.

My four most-favorite albums of 2011:

1. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

Current play count: 87

Highlights: "Bloom," "Codex," "Give Up The Ghost"

The King of Limbs already seems to be the Radiohead album that time forgot. It's probably as easy to make that conclusion because it didn't have the brilliant pay-whatever marketing scheme as In Rainbows (a lesser album that I can deride as Radiohead: Greatest Live Hits, especially with "Nude" and "Videotape" finally showing up in an album proper.)

What I like most about the albums is, for the first time since Kid A, Radiohead has placed far more emphasis on sound than riffs or hooks. The hypnotic loops that open "Bloom" immediate state the aural thesis of the album, and through the band's always-fabulous sequencing, by the time we get to the stripped-down "Give Up The Ghost," it doesn't seem anywhere out of place.

The opening track and most others feature a rather restless drumming style from Phil Selway, so much so that their touring lineup includes a second drummer on his own set. This restlessness points that Radiohead, after almost twenty years as A Big Thing (if you want to go back to 1993's "Creep," which any good Radiohead fan hates but begrudgingly admits allowed the band to record 1995's The Bends), they're still looking for ways to push forward. One, not many bands have been around that long, and two, if they have, they most certainly don't have the same lineup as when they started. Radiohead plays with all its original members, and all songs are attributed to the entire band. It's an idea that seems rather quaint in today's landscape where most bands are known by their frontman or -woman. (Hell, even I get confused with the duo of brothers that comprise the rest of the Matt Berninger-fronted The National.)

While many point to "Lotus Flower" as the album's centerpiece - by its track placement, its status as lead single, its unfortune music video, and the fact that it's the best dance song Radiohead has ever made - I think "Codex" is the real standout. Thom Yorke's fractured lyrics and the EQ-shifting, cascading piano create one of the most gorgeous textures of the year, and it's the only song without a direct narrative that elicited as strong an emotional response (though quite a different response) as last year's epic "Four Score And Seven" by Titus Andronicus. "Codex" paints a vivid, haunting scene: "Sleight of hand / Jump off the end / Into a clear lake / No one around / Just dragonflies / Flying to the sun / No one gets hurt / You've done nothing wrong." Later verses end with, "The water's clear / And innocent." The horns also add a regality to the piece, and the (I assume?) Johnny Greenwood-arranged strings make it seem tepidly optimistic, almost a mirror image of the similar-sounding "How To Disappear Completely" off Kid A.

And "Give Up The Ghost"? The first time I heard that on the very hour the album came out, I was totally blown away. A lot of the In Rainbows excitement was that it was a Radiohead-with-guitars album, and it's fitting that The King of Limbs' penultimate track succeeds brilliantly as an acoustic piece. It was almost surreal to see Yorke and Greenwood pull it off so beautifully on Jimmy Fallon with only two guitars, a loop pedal, and a laptop for the metronomic kick drum. (See it here, which will probably get pulled.)

Radiohead has been a tease by releasing "Supercollider," "The Butcher," and a Live From The Basement cut of "Staircase" separately despite Limbs only running barely over a half-hour. While the Limbs remix series is absolutely gigantic (considering all the alternate versions surfacing that didn't make the 12"), the lyric "If you think is over then you're wrong" off final track "Separator" gave diehards false hope of a second album lurking around the corner. It's a consolation prize, then, that the band claims they're going back into the studio early next year. And while they've acknowledged a desire to move away from concept-based records like OK Computer and Kid A, if The King of Limbs is indicative of the direction they're moving, I'm sure to spend a future date awake in the depths of night, waiting for the downloads to go live in England.

2. James Blake - Self-Titled

Current play count: 40

Highlights: "The Wilhelm Scream," "I Never Learnt To Share," "Limit To Your Love"

Oh, the strange trajectory of James Blake. His 2010 EPs showed his crazy genre-hopping range, and while many fell in love with his self-titled LP because the man revealed he can sing, this is probably one of the weirdest singer-songwriter albums ever made.

I can admit my own history with Blake's first full-length: I got the leak, really liked half of it, joined the backlash, was bored to tears during half his live set (post-show noogies aside), and then discovered how sequencing a double vinyl can really draw attention to the disparate movements of his music.

I lived so long with the MP3s that it was quite refreshing to get the "deluxe" vinyl put out by Polydor UK/Universal. While at-the-head bonus track "Tep And The Logic" is utterly forgettable, it lends a lot of weight to the off-kilter starter "Unluck." The end of side one and the start of side two is the one-two combo of the layers-added-to-layers "The Wilhelm Scream" and strangest-song-of-the-year contender "I Never Learnt To Share," which runs the gamut of Blake's arsenal: his early-20s croon, harmonic vocal overdubs, short-and-to-the-point lyrics, murky synths, keyboard runs, guitar (yes, guitar!), dubsteppy bass, and a bass freakout that, live, is known to shake the foundation of any indoor venue.

And while Feist cover "Limit To Your Love" was made entirely his own by Blake, just knowing it's a cover weakens some of its power; but not as the first track on LP2. Given the delicate nature of the song, it's interesting that Blake decided to unleash the most dubstep-agreeable bass wobble during "Limit." And given his propensity for brief, cryptic lyrics, Blake wisely sings a fraction of Feist's rendition. I'm trying to veer from hyperbole, but it's probably my favorite cover ever. It's one of the few that surpasses the original, like Hendrix's take on "All Along The Watchtower" or that one guy who did The Knife's "Heartbeats" on guitar.

The tail-end of the album looses far too much steam, though, and Blake mostly sits behind his piano and sings pretty. You can draw a line from the end of his LP to recent EP Enough Thunder, which doesn't have much of what originally drew listeners to Blake. The same worry can be projected onto his upcoming December EP, as well as Blake's own comments in interviews that he increasingly feels more creative simply sitting down at a piano and singing.

Not to say I'm writing off Blake completely. That was the thrill of his three EPs leading his self-titled; he's a musical chameleon, and he can do all sorts of crazy shit all by his lonesome. Maybe he'll get into dance music. Or pull a Lil Wayne and start playing guitar onstage. That's what's exciting about a young producer who, with this exposure, has the bankroll to experiment. Regardless of what happens to Blake, next time I see him live I expect the same First Avenue-shaking bass, either from an old track or something new.

3. Battles - Gloss Drop

Current play count: 28

Highlights: "Ice Cream," "Futura," "Wall Street"

Yeah, I'm the guy who didn't like Mirrored. For every "Atlas" or the criminally-short "Leyendecker" or mind-blowing closer "Race: Out," there was something that went absolutely nowhere (and took a hell of a long time going there) like "Bad Trails" or "Tij." Those last two Mirrored cuts seemed like expanded experiments from their hit-and-miss B and C EPs.

So while the departure of "vocalist" and multi-instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton left a hole that furthered Battles' growing pains, Gloss Drop is a far more complete-sounding record than its predecessor. It might lack the sheer unpredictability of Mirrored - to grossly oversimplify, Gloss Drop sounds like walking through a carnival midway in the year 2050… after having dropped acid - and the debate will never end about whether or not it was a good idea to bring it guest vocalists (especially considering how it magnifies the logistical considerations of their live show, which was the best show I saw this year, by the way). But what about the songs?

I can't think of any other album this year that pummels the listener with not one, nor two, but six sequential tracks that rightly earn the suspicion that the members of Battles aren't human. "Africastle" blows up after an austere opening. "Ice Cream" has the best front-end accelerondo in ages, followed by such joyous delirium that EA licensed it for their FIFA 12 commercial (and makes the game seem far more fun than reality). "Futura" might have a 4/4 time signature, but it turns math rock on its head by seamlessly propelling forward what starts as a simple jam into a massive, brooding juggernaut of an instrumental; never mind that legendary drummer John Stainer hits his hi-hat at intervals that may seem random but totally lock the track into place. It's like there's a very complicated equation in his head that determines when he strikes. "Inchworm" is a little slow but by track four we need a breather. "Wall Street" and "My Machines" zoom forward with a hint of the darkness that characterized a lot of Mirrored's moments.

And while I don't intend to trash the entire second half of the record, LP2 doesn't have nearly as much to offer. It took their live show to convince me that "Sweetie & Shag" is a good song, and while it served as their encore, closer "Sundome" seems to have been picked as the last track simply because it's Gloss Drop's longest.

I suppose it's more of a disconnect between the two parts of the album rather than one being good and the other bad. It's like LP1 contains all the singles and accessible material, and LP2 has a fair amount of bold experimentation amid going-nowhere half-songs. Given that "Dominican Fade" runs 1:49, 1:11 for "Toddler," and 2:06 for "Rolls Bayce," it's not a stretch to think that Battles couldn't really come up with a way to extend those concepts. "White Electric" is the second-best song out of the run, and it straddles the line between day-at-the-carnival Gloss Drop and the intergalactic war of Mirrored. Granted, it takes a hell of a long time to build; there isn't a cymbal crash until 3:15, and from there it's an aggressive, moody track that works by itself but seems lost between "Rolls Bayce" and "Sundome."

Battles' uneasy progression gets the same leeway I'm giving James Blake. Gloss Drop is a fantastic musical statement, and while it's doesn’t have the dizzying highs of Mirrored, it's far more on-message about what Battles, as a band, can achieve musically. And, like Blake, who knows what's next? A new member who can hand in larynx-melting yelps like Braxton? An emphasis on guitars? No guitars at all? I think the only solid fact about Battles is John Stanier, who has the indie kingdom's distinction as being a drummer who's the most-famous member of a band. And, seeing him smack that six-foot crash live, he deserves all credit.

(I want to live inside that music video.)

4. Fucked Up - David Comes To Life

Current play count: 7

Highlights: "Queen of Hearts," "The Other Shoe," "Running On Nothing"

Now here we have the wildcard. I think "weird" is this year's theme, and David Comes To Life fits that pretty well. You have Pink Eyes' throat-scalding yells backgrounded by rock-solid instrumentation that isn't anywhere near the sludgy hardcore you'd expect from the frontman's voice. And then you have a hardcore punk band apparently telling a very convoluted story across eighteen tracks that span an hour and seventeen minutes.

That last part is probably why I've only listened to it, in full, seven times.

And will I ever understand the story concept? Will I even look up the lyrics? Nope. The music simply rocks so hard there's no need to look elsewhere for satisfaction.

I guess I sense something about this album. I know I'll play it well into 2012, whereas a lot of my listed 2010 albums have vanished from my playlists (biggest offender: Arcade Fire's The Suburbs). There's energy and passion in both David Comes To Life and Fucked Up (who, unfortunately, might be on the outs after hearing Pink Eyes' comments about his exhaustion with touring), and in the indiesphere these traits are usually swapped out for lifeless loops and cynicism.

Bonus point for using motifs. Haven't heard many of those on solid rock albums in a long time.

(Album version)

(Kids-singing-along version)

Whew.

I'm quite spent, and I still have to tackle my ten most-favorite songs of the year. Some I already covered above, and for the rest I'm going to try to limit them to a single sentence.

Ten most-favorite songs of 2011:

1. Battles - Futura

At 2:14 I love how the doom-and-gloom chords cut out and clear the air before moving onto the next layer of complexity.

2. Radiohead - Codex

Random factoid: When drawing the sketches for Meridien K chapter headers, I drew about ten that were all "scenes" of what this song would look like.

3. James Blake - Limit To Your Love

Also random: James Blake somehow looks quite different in real life than in his music videos. He looks so fragile and brittle in videos but he's a normal dude.

4. The Rapture - How Deep Is Your Love?

Obligatory left-field choice, but I can't deny a good four-on-the-floor track.

5. Iceage - White Rune

I just get depressed when I read how young these guys are.

6. TV on the Radio - Killer Crane

"Killer Crane" has the best last nineteen seconds of any song this year.

7. Dom - Damn

(Couldn't find a non-live vid.)

I'm almost afraid for Dom to make an LP after two awesome EPs. Is there such a thing as an EP-only band?

8. Yacht - Shangri-La

Great 2011 lyric: "If I can't go to heaven let me go to LA." Yacht is the most underappreciated band on DFA.

9. Washed Out - A Dedication

Still looking for a slow-dance partner for this track. Love it when the beat comes it.

10. Tune-Yards - Powa

I fucking hate Tune-Yards, but not this song.

So those are the two big categories to get out of the way. I'll whip up another post to cover the rest of notable 2011 music say… next week?

Mux088: November 2011

Dropped in the Box.

Six "new" songs (e.g. from 2011), four "old." Not intentional, but the sequence just stuck.

1. Radiohead - Bloom (The King of Limbs)
2. Fucked Up - Under My Nose (David Comes To Life)
3. The Decemberists - Calamity Song (The King Is Dead)
4. Real Estate - It's Real (Days)
5. Ride - Unfamiliar (Today Forever EP)
6. Spoon - Jonathon Fisk (Kill The Moonlight)
7. Battles - Sweet & Shag (Gloss Drop)
8. TV on the Radio - DLZ (Dear Science)
9. Feist - Intuition (The Reminder)
10. EMA - Red Star (Past Life Martyred Saints)

Rookies:
Real Estate

Mux081: Swampy Summer

Short and/or sweet, with seven out of nine tracks released in 2011.

To the Box!

1. Fucked Up - Queen of Hearts
2. Sleater-Kinney - Light Rail Coyote
3. Times New Viking - Ways To Go
4. Cults - Oh My God
5. Friendly Fires - Hawaiian Air
6. Passion Pit - Eyes As Candles
7. Battles - Wall Street
8. Bon Iver - Calgary
9. The Antlers - Corsicana

And did I mention it's a heated race for MPC's second-favorite album of the year? The King of Limbs probably won't get unseated as no. 1, but the second slot is a cage match between Fucked Up's gloriously-confusing but shit-hot David Comes To Life, Battles' Gloss Drop, and Bon Iver's self-titled.

Rookies:
Cults

Notable albums for Q2 (and those I missed in Q1)

The fiscal quarter Q2 has ended, and though that means nothing to anyone not working at a giant record company, it seems as good a time as any to highlight stuff that has agreed with my ears. Also, there are probably some Q1 albums tossed in that I've warmed to since my last post.



The Antlers - Burst Apart

I still need to sink my teeth into this. Hospice was my number two album of 2009, and after listening to it a minimum of twenty times (according to iTunes) and seeing them live three times, a bit of fatigue set in. If nothing else, Burst Apart seems to have more aural variety than Hospice, which more or less lurked in the same brooding sonic swamp.



Battles - Gloss Drop

Same here with Radiohead: I want to call it a day and fast-forward to the year-end so I can call Gloss Drop my second-favorite album of the year (after The King of Limbs). While the consensus is that Mirrored > Gloss Drop, I'm completely the opposite. After trying and trying and trying to force myself to accept its greatness (that I am completely incapable of receiving), the only enthusiasm I can muster up for Mirrored is "Race In," "Atlas," "Leyendecker," and "Race Out." The rest sound like more fleshed-out variants on their very-experimental B/C EPs.

Not only does Gloss Drop have one of the best bonafide singles of the year - "Ice Cream" - but the consistency that was so lacking in Mirrored congeals into a reliable but no-less-experimental album. Consider that most of the album sounds like the k-hole trip toward a psychedelic boardwalk amusement park, and while the departure of Braxton (as a deranged, pitch-shifted carnival barker) puts the focus on muscular instrumentals and show-stealing guest spots, the Battles brand of post-math-rock (there, I said it) deliver some epic results. See also "Futura" and "Wall Street" if you need convincing.

Also, my upcoming shows are Marnie Stern (a repeat), TV on the Radio, James Blake, Japandroids, and Battles, and I'm anticipating the Battles show about twenty times moreso than the rest. It helps that it's at an awesome venue in which I'll probably be about five feet from the band. I imagine I'll have to crane my neck to see the crash cymbal, but it'll be worth it.



Black Lips - Arabia Mountain

I keep confusing Black Dice with Black Lips. So I picked this up for the purpose of putting on some long drones when writing. But, lo, my mistake was soon discovered, and I wasn't at all put back by this fine collection of medium-fi (did I just invent a genre?) popish, rockish songs.



Bon Iver - Bon Iver

I listened to the leak, shrugged my shoulders, then gave it another shot once the gigantic waves of praise came in. Premature verdict: I like it. You need to spin it during very specific times (e.g. not blaring from a poolside boombox at 1 p.m. on a ninety-degree day), but that shouldn't deter. And neither should the inevitable backlash, if it hasn't already started.



Boris - Attention Please

Boris is a pretty weird fucking band. Whereas their other release this year - Heavy Rocks - is total stoner bait, this one veers in a very accessible direction; the most since the Japanese-metal awesome of Pink. Though it's a throwaway track (and even though a Heavy Rocks track shares the title and is completely different, goes on over ten minutes, etc.), "Aileron" really hits the spot.



Burial - Street Halo

Not much difference since Untrue, but that's certainly no problem.



Coma Cinema - Blue Suicide

I have an affection for bands who put out records of fairly-short songs. This is one of them.

Just found something rather cool. Apparently on the band's official site, you can legally download, for free, all their albums.



EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints

Amy Klein from Titus Andronicus likes this album. So do I. Obviously this hints at a much deeper connection am I rite?



Friendly Fires - Pala

Treading a lot of the same ground as their last album (which might be, uh, better). Now if they get around to a third release and it's still this kind of happy electrodance (which plays great when washing dishes, by the way), I might start to get disappointed.



Fucked Up - David Comes To Life

Only one listen and it's pretty clear I'm going to be parsing this for a long time. Not that I'll try to sift through the lyrics or any of that rock opera confusion. Apart from that, though, the instrumentation is really, really catchy, which is a bit offsetting combined with Pink Eyes' usual screams.



Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact

Come for "MindKilla," stay for the infinity-sign interludes that will confuse your OS.



The Kills - Blood Pressures

Track by track, there are some great songs. But there's no unifying album concept except maybe a bit more of a raw, better-drum sound than the equally-uneven Midnight Boom.



Tune-Yards - whokill

You got me. My first listen was all player-hating, probably in reaction to some ridiculous Pitchfork score. Now I've gotten past my own personal backlash and can enjoy something that doesn't really sound like anything else out there.



TV on the Radio - Nine Types of Light

So what if TV on the Radio has gone soft? "Killer Crane," a rather slow burn, is easily one of the best, most ridiculously-tuneful songs of the year. Whoever thought that singing the same notes as a banjo would have such a sentimental effect?

Albums in my possession that I think I'll like but haven't yet heard AND albums with one listen that might make it up here after some repeats:

• Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
• Cults - Cults
• James Drake (mixtape) 
• Junior Boys - It's All True
• PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
• Okkervil River - I Am Very Far*
• Ty Segall - Goodbye Bread
• Tyler, The Creator - Goblin
• Wild Beasts - Smother

*Weird enough, I kind of want to not like this album, since I walked out on their set during the Future Islands/Titus Andronicus/Okkervil River show and I, clearly, don't want to waste whatever fraction of the ticket price went to OR. (But see also: The Sunk Cost fallacy) Because, come on, who could stand around with the commoners listening to a band I lukewarmly enjoy after having just introduced Titus Andronicus and rocked out to The Monitor backstage at First Ave.? (Take a wild guess what my Best Music Moment of 2011 will be? That is, unless I convince my parents to let Titus Andronicus crash at our house next time they're in MPLS.)

And of course, Q3 most certainly will have an excellent cornucopia of albums.

My original Q1 picks:



Bibio - Mind Bokeh



Braids - Native Speaker



Cut Copy - Zonoscope



Destroyer - Kaputt



The Dodos - No Color



The Go! Team - Rolling Blackouts



The Hood Internet - The Mixtape Vol. V



James Blake - James Blake



Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes



Radiohead - The King of Limbs



The Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing



Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972

Mux080: July 2011

In the Box.

1. Professor Murder - The Mountain
2. Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want To Have Fun
3. Robyn - Dancing On My Own
4. The Kills - Nail In My Coffin
5. Klaxons - Gravity's Rainbow
6. Battles - Futura
7. Black Lips - Modern Art
8. Coma Cinema - Caroline, Please Kill Me
9. The Joggers - White Madam
10. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Belong
11. Junior Boys - Banana Ripple

Rookies:
Black Lips
Cyndi Lauper

Mux079: Muxed

You know what to do.

1. Calvin Harris - The Rain
2. Annie - I Don't Like Your Band
3. Battles - Ice Cream
4. Feist - My Moon, My Man
5. Lykke Li - Little Bit
6. Wilco - Kamera
7. Bibio - Lovers' Carvings
8. Times New Viking - Fuck Her Tears
9. Devin Davis - When I Turn Ninety-Nine
10. Coma Cinema - Business As Usual
11. Phoenix - Love Like A Sunset

Rookies:
Coma Cinema
Devin Davis