Mux200: Retromux Deux (plus Mux001 and Mux100)

So it only took eight years, but Mux200 has arrived! And, just like Mux100, this Mux is comprised (almost) entirely from bands that featured on the very first Mux back in 2008. Well, the first Mux only had 11 tracks, so I tossed on a Radiohead cut to bring it up to 12; no major foul given that Radiohead featured on Mux002.

I probably won't do a third Retromux for 300 (set for, at this rate, sometime in late 2020) given that a lot of these bands have either called it quits or have faded considerably. For example, The Joggers probably won't release another album, and I've used up all their muxable tracks. And Dan Deacon hasn't really done anything too spectacular as of late, same with The Smashing Pumpkins and... well, you get the idea. Maybe I'll revise that idea in 2020 and make it a combination of 001 and 002.

Last thing: Same as the jump from 099 to 100, there's new art for 200 and going forward. 001-099 was a picture I accidentally Photoshopped that way when I was 12 or so, and 100-199 was a rather triumphant photo of me leaping over fireworks after a particularly-difficult day of shooting Archetype. Given my total lack of talent at graphic design (and I haven't really directly talked to JET lately, who did some awesome art for the two Tapes By JET), I just took a rather horrifying picture of me. If anyone thinks it far too terrible for these fines Muxes, make me something better!

So download or stream Mux200, and check out Muxes of yore below it.

1. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone? (Hearts of Oak)
2. Destroyer - European Oils (Destroyer's Rubies)
3. The National - Looking For Astronauts (Alligator)
4. The Joggers - Little Kings (Solid Guild)
5. Dan Deacon - Trippy Green Skulls (Spiderman of the Rings)
6. Radiohead - Daydreaming (A Moon Shaped Pool)
7. Cut Copy - That Was Just A Dream (Bright Like Neon Love)
8. Wolf Parade - Dear Sons And Daughters of Hungry Ghosts (Apologies To The Queen Mary)
9. Pavement - AT&T (Wowee Zowee)
10. Spoon - My Little Japanese Cigarette Case (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga)
11. My Bloody Valentine - What You Want (Loveless)
12. The Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock (Siamese Dream)

I readded Mux100: Retromux to my Dropbox, so you can also download or stream that. Tracks below.

1. Pavement - Summer Babe (Winter Version) (Slanted & Enchanted)
2. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Tell Balgeary, Balgury Is Dead (Hearts of Oak)
3. My Bloody Valentine - Loomer (Loveless)
4. Wolf Parade - Fancy Claps (Apologies To The Queen Mary)
5. The Joggers - Era Prison (With A Cape And A Cane)
6. Dan Deacon - Snake Mistakes (Spiderman of the Rings)
7. Cut Copy - Autobahn Music Box (Bright Like Neon Love)
8. Spoon - Back To The Life (Kill The Moonlight)
9. Destroyer - Chinatown (Kaputt)
10. The National - Geese of Beverely Road (Alligator)
11. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979 (Acoustic) (Single)

And Mux001: May 2008 is also in there to download or stream. Tracks below.

1. Wolf Parade - Language City (At Mount Zoomer)
2. Cut Copy - Saturdays (Bright Like Neon Love)
3. Ted Leo - La Costa Brava (Living With The Living)
4. My Bloody Valentine - Off Your Face (Glider)
5. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979 (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness)
6. The National - Slow Show (Boxer)
7. Destroyer - My Favorite Year (Trouble In Dreams)
8. The Joggers - Back to the Future (Solid Guild)
9. Pavement - Cut Your Hair (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
10. Spoon - Finer Feelings (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga)
11. Dan Deacon - Pink Batman (Spiderman of the Rings)

Until 2020...

Mux167: Springtime For Mr. Mux / Hall of Famer #3

Boom.

1. Purity Ring - Bodyache (Another Eternity)
2. The Singles - Candy (Single)
3. Chromatics - I Can Never Be Myself When You're Around (Dear Tommy)
4. Belle and Sebastian - The Party Line (Girls In Peacetime Just Want To Dance)
5. David Bowie - Let's Dance (Let's Dance)
6. Felix Da Housecat - What She Wants (feat. James Murphy) (Devon Dazzle and the Neon Fever)
7. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - The Wind Cries Mary (Are You Experienced?)
8. Justin Timberlake - Don't Hold The Wall (The 20/20 Experience Vol. I)
9. Spoon - Outlier (They Want My Soul)
10. Tortoise - Ten-Day Interval (TNT)
11. Caribou - Pelican Narrows (The Milk of Human Kindness)
12. Dan Deacon - Mind On Fire (Gliss Riffer)

I'm far too lazy to find all the separate muxes, but Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience Vol. 1 is the third album to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Said Hall is reserved for those rarest of albums in which all tracks miraculously find their way onto a mux. The first winner of such acclaim was Japandroids for their 2009 album Post-Nothing, followed by Cloud Nothing's Attack On Memory in 2012. Truly, no higher honor can be bestowed upon an album that is slowly-but-surely cannibalized by a seven-years-running, blog-based mixtape series.

TRT 51:16

Rookies: The Singles

2015 music: Belle and Sebastian, Chromatics, Dan Deacon, Purity Ring, The Singles

Mux133: Shorties In Portie

Hoping my stolen internet can hold up long enough to upload this.

Boom.

So with my hard drive wiped I thought I lost my muxtapes pics. But, dur, I can just save them off an old file. But I already made a new crappy one without text because my wiped hard drive doesn't have the super-old version of Photoshop I use! If I had PS, the contrast would be jacked up about 1000% to make me look like Burial or some shit instead of a dude in his PDX apartment in a Dunder-Mifflin bathrobe because my office is above an uninsulated garage and I'm too cheap to turn on the heat until December.

ALSO: I got a laptop to replace my dying Dell, and while I did manage some black magic to transfer my playlists, of course a ton of data was lost. So I have to rebuild my mux library from scratch, e.g. the master source I use to determine if I've already had a song on a mux. Boring and technical, yes, but I played it safe and made something a bit crazy that I'm fairly sure has no repeats.

But order will be restored! Likely when I get real internet instead of siphoning off some tech-lacking person with such a dubious network name as "NETGEAR." Hmm, I wonder why it's unsecured. Maybe it's a trap!

1. Chvrches - The Mother We Share (The Bones of What You Believe) (For JET)

2. Disclosure - When A Fire Starts To Burn (Settle) (For JCD and my neighbor's girlfriend who liked the Disclosure CD I gave her)

3. Dizzee Rascal - Fix Up Look Sharp (Boy In Da Corner)

4. Propellerheads - Velvet Pants (Decksanddrumsandrockandroll) (For Andy D.)

5. Daft Punk - Instant Crush (Random Access Memories) (For [E/Z]U)

6. Chromatics - These Streets Will Never Look The Same (JDK Edit) (Kill For Love Drumless version)

7. A.C. Newman - On The Table (The Slow Wonder)

8. Arcade Fire - Intervention (Neon Bible)

9. Built To Spill - The Plan

10. Dan Deacon - The Crystal Cat (Spiderman of the Rings)

11. Justin Timberlake - Pusher Love Grrl (The 20/20 Experience Vol. I) (For Jessica Biel - Love, JT)

TRT 51:23

2013 music: Chvrches, Daft Punk, Disclosure, Justin Timberlake

Rookies: Chvrches

JDK Dance Party #10: Monsoon Season

Download or stream off drop.io.

Tracks:
1. Teen Daze - Wet Hair (Japandroids cover)
2. Scapegoat Wax - Aisle 10 (Hello Allison)
3. Phantogram - Mouthful of Diamonds
4. TV on the Radio - Crying
5. Gorillaz - Dare
6. Hot Chip - Over And Over
7. Friendly Fires - In The Hospital
8. Annie - Heartbeat
9. Cee-Lo Green - Fuck You
10. The-Dream - Yamaha
11. Daft Punk - Human After All
12. Solid Gold - Bible Thumper
13. Health - Triceratops (CFCF Remix)
14. Felix Da Housecat - Rocket Ride
15. Dan Deacon - The Crystal Cat

JDK's 2009 in Albums

I hate it when websites put up their “Best Of” year-end lists. The implication of the word “Best” seems like it makes my own opinion moot. So here are some of my “favorite” albums of the year.


1. Japandroids – Post-Nothing

I saw the Japandroids play at the Pitchfork Music Festival this past summer. In short, they were fantastic, and they played with an energy I thought impossible for a duo.

Later that day I won a charity auction for some Japandroids merch. While I was cradling a vinyl of their debut Post-Nothing, I was asked by some blogger if they could briefly interview me about the band. I obliged, and the first question was, “How would you describe their music?”

I paused for a moment because, honestly, I didn’t quite know how to call it anything other than the blanket term of “rock.” Sure, others have said they’ve part of some 90s revival of something-rock and garage-rock, but I don’t even know what that means. I just know what I hear on their album and live on stage: fast, intense, distortion-heavy, drums-heavy songs that are anthemic without the weight of being called an “anthem”; lyrics that, despite my usual habit of ignoring, I’ve actually read and found out usually consist of little more than a few sentence bits sing-shouted over the course of a track; rock about escape, which one could argue is what rock is all about; escape from the nothing-towns of our youth, the friends we had just because we went to school with them, not giving a shit about the weather in our hometowns “‘cause we’re far from home tonight.”

All this over eight blistering tracks and thirty-five minutes and forty-four seconds.

One could mull over the corner the band has painted themselves into, and how a second record could bring a change in sound or a change in some sort of direction that would probably seem untrue to themselves. Maybe they should just bow out now and leave Post-Nothing as their ultimate work after two pretty-good EPs.

Regardless, Post-Nothing was my most-listened-to record of the year; I saw Japandroids play live twice and they are one of my best live bands I’ve seen; I have an autographed t-shirt pinned up on my wall; I dug my mom’s old record player out of the crawlspace so I could listen to Post-Nothing on vinyl; and, despite the killer single “Young Hearts Spark Fire” and the single-quality of every last track, Post-Nothing coheres into a brilliant album, and it’s by far my favorite of the year.


2. The Antlers – Hospice

In the same vein I love The Antlers’ Hospice as I do Deerhunter’s Microcastle. Both make the case for the dwindling trend of an album as a whole instead of just a collection of songs, beyond the simple trick of having tracks bleed into each other.

Unlike Japandroids, though, I have blissfully ignored the lyrics to Hospice. I only know that album highlight “Bear” is probably about an abortion, and I’ve read reviews and year-end lists that mention the overarching story of a cancer patient and death and all that gloomy stuff.

But even with subject-matter that wouldn’t play well as a good driving record, Hospice manages to reach cathartic heights I haven’t heard since The Arcade Fire’s Funeral. “Sylvia,” “Bear,” and “Two” have their slow points, which makes their triumphant apexes all the more majestic.

And, like Japandroids and my next-favorite album, the band is apparently a duo. Consider it the Year of the Duo.


3. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport

Take former album Street Horrrsing and LCD Soundsystem’s 45:33 and create a synthetic bastard child and somewhere in its angsty teenage years you’ll get Tarot Sport.

Gone is the sometimes-huge disconnect between tracks of the still-brilliant Street Horrrsing and the toy-microphone screaming. Gone is the inner-map-of-the-mind noise-madness that defines the former and, fortunately, keeps it relevant (meaning Tarot Sport is no replacement). Here is, by god, a Fuck Buttons album you could dance to. Here’s an album that goes from the paranoia of “Surf Solar” to something as high-flying as the march-step “Olympians” and spaceship-to-Mars glory of ender “Flight of the Feathered Serpent.” If Street Horrrsing was a way to see inside your mind, Tarot Sport is the world surrounding, in all its chaos and beauty, absolutely seamless from fevered start to breathtaking finish.


4. Why? – Eskimo Snow

I’m usually wary of albums culled from the same sessions as the prior album. How can an educated listener think of them as anything but B-sides? That’s my continued problem with Radiohead’s Amnesiac, which has been called Kid B by many.

But Why?’s Eskimo Snow is the comedown to last year’s Alopecia. Singer Yoni Wolf seems to be either apologizing or embarrassed of the massive guilt-admissions that peppered the band’s 2008 offering, in which Wolf dug down into some ugly shit like, “Sucking dick for drink tickets at the free bar at my cousin’s bar mitzvah / Cutting the punchline ‘cause it ain’t no joke.” Here, he seems more pensive, more guarded, still willing to admit “sporting my ex-girlfriend’s dead ex-boyfriend’s boxers” but unwilling to finish the statement “I need to quit doing all this random fucking,” just letting the anticipated word fizzle after a long-held F (which I thought he’d let rip at their live show, but didn’t).

So sharing the Alopecia sessions is probably the reason for the band releasing two albums in two years. Because of the strength of Eskimo Snow, I might have to revise my opinion of multiple albums culled from single sessions.


5. Cymbals Eat Guitars – Why There Are Mountains

Cymbals Eat Guitars’ Why There Are Mountains falls into the sort of space as The Antlers’ Hospice. It doesn’t, however, have any clear singles. Some might point to “Wind Phoenix” as a standout track, but I see it as the long-coming burst after the four-minute build up of “What Dogs See.” And one of the band’s more accessible, stand-alone tracks, “The Living North,” comes at the very end of the album. Not to mention the album starts with “And The Hazy Sea,” a six-minute marathon with as many peaks and valleys as some entire records.


6. Dan Deacon – Bromst

I was talking to my friend Dan Kricke shortly after the leak of Bromst. I was already a big fan, and he was a bit on the fence. “I think what you don’t like about it is that it’s like a bunch of ‘Big Milk’s,” I said, referring to one of the slower, more contemplative tracks on Deacon’s schizophrenic Spiderman of the Rings. It’s arguably true, which may be due to the nature of Deacon using more “analog” equipment, like marimbas and vibraphones and all that stuff that was tucked in the back of the BHS orchestra room. Counter that, though, with the revealing documentary about the making of the album, which shows off Deacon’s new favorite toy: a computer-programmable piano capable of hammering out notes faster than human fingers could possible play.

Still, Bromst is a solid step for Deacon in terms of both his impossibly-complex compositions and his more toned-down, simple melodies. For those who fear change, there’s still “Woof Woof” and “Get Older.” For those thinking Deacon might get locked into his bright-neon-plastic cage, listen no further than the plaintive “Snookered,” which feature vocals by Deacon (“been wrong so many times”) that haven’t been contorted to Woody Woodpecker-esque shrillness, or the beautiful, computerized-piano ending of “Slow With Horns / Run For Your Life.”


7. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

I didn’t really “get” Yellow House until I drove to my parents’ house on a predawn Christmas morning a few years back. Veckatimest, however, seemed poised as that fearful indie promise – a “crossover” record – once “Southern Point” slammed right into “Two Weeks,” which is the first song since Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” that I’m pretty sure I’ll have stuck in my head when I’m eighty years old.

There’s been a lot of ballyhoo concerning the album, from the “Two Weeks” Letterman premiere to the album showing up on the Billboard charts its first week to the Jay-Z sighting at a Grizzly Bear show. This all, of course, underscore the fact that it’s a fantastic album that lived up to the hype that the band was piecing together said “crossover” record after the acquired taste of Yellow House (that is, for those who venture outside of repeat listens of “Knife”).

But, like most of the albums on this list, it’s up here because it’s an album-album. Some might download it and delete everything except “Two Weeks” and “While You Wait For The Others” off their iPod, but I’m in it for the long haul. For me, Veckatimest starts with “Southern Point” and I’m sure as hell not done listening until the gorgeous closer “Foreground” goes silent.


8. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

I guess I’ve fallen into a trap that may or may not have been baited by the Dirty Projectors themselves. Much like the weariness associated with “crossover” records, here is the DP’s “accessible” album.

But other than “Stillness Is The Move” and “Useful Chamber,” what’s so accessible about it, really? Can anyone tell me what time signature most of these songs are actually in? Or how profoundly weird the track “The Bride” is without even hitting the three-minute mark?

After, I suppose, months of trying to figure out all this, the answer came pretty simple: it’s the first record in recent memory in which the singers can actually sing. It’s not just empty prettiness: all that other stuff – the weird guitars, the math-rock beats – keep it interesting. That, and from here to forever, the long-as-hell ending of “Stillness Is The Move” will segue into a beatmatched “Teardrop” by Massive Attack on every mixtape I make for the rest of my life.

Sunday: Notable albums that didn't make the top-eight cut.

JDK's 2009 in Electronic

Again, very few of these are attached to my favorite albums of the year, but these set themselves apart from the gigantic mass of music that comes out at any given year.

Stream or download off drop.io.

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero
2. Dizzee Rascal - Holiday
3. Junior Boys - Hazel
4. Bibio - Fire Ant
5. Royksopp - Happy Up Here
6. Handsome Furs - Radio Kalininbrad
7. Dan Deacon - Snookered
8. Memory Tapes - Plain Material
9. Fuck Buttons - Flight of the Feathered Serpent
10. Fever Ray - If I Had A Heart
11. Health - In Violet

Thursday: favorite "random" songs of the year (e.g. some hip-hop, some weird stuff, etc.). Friday: my favorite songs at this point in my life (sans "1979" by The Smashing Pumpkins because somehow I forgot it). Saturday: All the albums I listened to plus my eight most favorites. Sunday: Notable albums that didn't make the top-eight cut.

Mux019: March 2009, the reissue

Boomshakalaka

1. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
2. Junior Boys - Hazel
3. Phoenix - 1901
4. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Today's Lesson
5. The National - So Far Around The Bend
6. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Young Adult Friction
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Dull Life
8. Swan Lake - Widow's Walk
9. The Thermals - Power Doesn't Run On Nothing
10. Dan Deacon - Snookered

Mux020: April 2009, the reissue

These make good background for my breakdowns and shot lists.

Have at it.

1. The Thermals - A Pillar of Salt
2. Max Tundra - Will Get Fooled Again
3. Lykke Li - I'm Good, I'm Gone
4. The Juan Maclean - No Time
5. The National - Secret Meeting (Remix)
6. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Stay Alive
7. The Kills - What New York Used To Be
8. Handsome Furs - Radio Kalininbrad
9. Phoenix - Countdown (Sick For The Big Sun)
10. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Share
11. Dan Deacon - Get Older

Mux001: May 2008, the reissue

What better way to procrastinate on heavy Arc lifting than by mixing down my first muxtape, back when there was still Muxtape?

Also: Imeem is a pain in the ass to deal with. You can just go to the drop.io link, hit the drop-down, and select "preview" to stream it. Much simpler, and no registration or anything required.

Download or stream at Dropbox. [Updated to the correct link on April 14, 2018.]

The tracks, back before I was obsessed with sequencing, but sequenced decently:

1. Wolf Parade - Language City (At Mount Zoomer)
2. Cut Copy - Saturdays (Bright Like Neon Love)
3. Ted Leo - La Costa Brava (Living With The Living)
4. My Bloody Valentine - Off Your Face (GLider EP)
5. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979 (Mellow Collie and the Infinite Sadness)
6. The National - Slow Show (Boxer)
7. Destroyer - My Favorite Year (Trouble In Dreams)
8. The Joggers - Back to the Future (Solid Guild)
9. Pavement - Cut Your Hair (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
10. Spoon - Finer Feelings (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga)
11. Dan Deacon - Pink Batman (Spiderman of the Rings)

TRT 49:40

Hey look, another list of albums!

And yet another gun-to-my-head scenario, in which if said gun was held to said head, and if said gun-holding thug demanded that I rank Pitchfork's Best New Music my ten favorite albums of the year, in order of preference, it'd go like this:

1. Japandroids - Post-Nothing
2. The Antlers - Hospice
3. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains
4. WHY? - Eskimo Snow
5. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
6. Dan Deacon - Bromst
7. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
8. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
9. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
10. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Also, here are some albums I liked once or twice but have yet to give a fair/full shake:

• Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
  
• Eyedea & Abilities - By The Throat
  
• Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
  
• The Dodos - Time To Die
  
• Health - Get Color ("In Violet" is easily one of my favorite songs of the year)
  
• Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem
  
• Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
  
• A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
  
• Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
  
• The xx - xx
  
• Yacht - See Mystery Lights

And what hasn't come out yet that might surprise me?

• Annie - Don't Stop (which is apparently all-new beats and some new tracks compared to the mass-leaked version I have)
  
• Los Campesinos! - The Sea Is A Good Place To Think About The Future
  
• Weezer - Raditude (probably will have one good song)

A few more albums in consideration for my best of '09

Old list prior to additions:

• Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains
  
• Dan Deacon - Bromst
  
• Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
  
• Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
  
• Japandroids - Post-Nothing
  
• Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
  
• We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls

Stuff added for consideration in the past month or so:

• The Antlers - Hospice
  
• The Big Pink - A Brief History of Love
  
• Eyedea & Abilities - By The Throat
  
• Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
  
• Why? - Eskimo Snow
  
• Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
  
• The xx - xx

I saw the Japandroids at the Turf Club the other night. Fantastic show. I'll have a bigger write-up later today or tomorrow. I'm also set to see Phoenix next week, Why? in early October, and the Dirty Projectors in November. The only other "band" I'd want to see live would be Fuck Buttons, but don't you have to be on drugs just to get in the door? Like as a rule?

Mux031: Clusterbomb

At the point where I shouldn't bother with naming these based on months, given that I've made like six mixes this month.

Starts off with two newish tracks, then kicks into some classic jams that, for whatever reason, haven't been put on a Mux yet. The Pitchfork 500 Tracks of Whatever reminded me to include them.

As always, download it via drop.io for your iPod pleasure.

Trax:

1. The Rural Alberta Advantage - The Ballad of the RAA
2. Jay Reatard - Wounded
3. Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
4. The Walkmen - The Rat
5. Radiohead - There There
6. The Go! Team - Junior Kickstart (UK version)
7. Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc.
8. LCD Soundsystem - Losing My Edge
9. Why? - Sanddollars
10. Dan Deacon - Slow With Horns / Run For Your Life

Additions to the best albums of 2009 (thus far)

A lot of great new music recently. New additions in bold.


Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion


Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career


Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains


Dan Deacon - Bromst


Fever Ray


Franz Ferdinand - Tonight


Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest


Japandroids - Post-Nothing


Sonic Youth - The Eternal


The Thermals - Now We Can See


Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship

Mux001 flashback

How strange of me to reference my first muxtape without supplying said muxtape? Here's the download link at drop.io. And here are the tracks:

1. Wolf Parade - Language City
2. Cut Copy - Saturdays
3. Ted Leo - La Costa Brava
4. My Bloody Valentine - Off Your Face
5. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
6. The National - Slow Show
7. Destroyer - My Favorite Year
8. The Joggers - Back To The Future
9. Pavement - Cut Your Hair
10. The Hold Steady - You Can Make Him Like You
11. Spoon - Finer Feelings
12. Dan Deacon - Pink Batman

That's a solid line-up. Probably because it was my return to mixes after moving out of Chicago, where I was the unofficial music guy at the Post-Production Center. (And, you know, having two years of new music to compile.) While I kept my still-current rule of never repeating a song on a series of mixtapes, back then my only restriction was that a mix came in under 1 hr. 20 mins. so I could burn it to CD and rip it on the work computer. That was in the dark ages before thumb drives - how novel!

I'm glad muxtape added the rule of a max of twelve tracks. For one thing, it weeds out anything not in the top tier of songs. And second, twelve tracks usually rounds out around forty-five minutes, and I usually don't do anything that requires continuous music for more than that time.

Favorite albums of 2009 (thus far)

I like making lists about music. Here's another! And, like the last one, it's alphabetical. Too soon to call favorites, really, other than saying that Grizzly Bear and Cymbals Eat Guitars are probably my two most-played on the list.


Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
In brief: Woodsy; visually evocative; he has a dreamy voice


Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
In brief: Initial player-hating refuted by an IL-MN drive listen; infectious electronic-pop-something


Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains
In brief: Modest Mouse meets Built To Spill meets Broken Social Scene; epic


Dan Deacon - Bromst
In brief: Insane, mathematically-pleasing arrangements; lots of good mallet instruments


Fever Ray
In brief: Hypnotic; it's The Knife


Franz Ferdinand - Tonight
In brief: Experimental in the right places; forget the haters, the electro-freakout end of "Lucid Dreams" bumps


Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
In brief: A Grizzly Bear album without any weak, skippable songs


The Thermals - Now We Can See
In brief: Good old mid-tempo guitar rock; love singer Harris' vocal enthusiasm and cadence


Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country
In brief: Transportive, like a non-violent Street Horrrsing

Mux020 (Sort of) and muxes of old

I'm in Chicago with my iMac, and since all my MP3s on my PC, I can only listen to my latest mix/mux/whatever on my iPod without having the ability to rip the files. That said, here's a sort of IOU for this mix; that is, unless you have the files and can compile it yourself.

Mux020: April 2009
1. The Thermals - A Pillar of Salt
2. Max Tundra - Will Get Fooled Again
3. Lykke Li - I'm Good, I'm Gone
4. The Juan Maclean - No Time
5. The National - Secret Meeting (Remix)
6. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Stay Alive
7. The Kills - What New York Used To Be
8. Handsome Furs - Radio Kalininbrad
9. Phoenix - Countdown (Sick For the Big Sun)
10. Peter Bjorn and John - At the Seaside
11. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Share
12. Dan Deacon - Get Older

And, surprisingly, the vast majority of my mixes are still up. Here are the permalinks, and I've checked a few of the Mediafire/Megaupload zips that, also surprisingly, still work.

• Mux003
  
• Mux004 and Mux005
  
• Mux006
  
• Mux007 and Mux008
  
• Mux009
  
• Mux010
  
• Mux011
  
• Mux012
  
• Mux013
  
• Mux014, Mux015, and Mux016
  
• Mux017
  
• Mux018
  
• Mux019

Mux019: March 2009

Before I bury it, here's a reminder that my feature film, Transmissions, is available to stream and download at this blog and right below this post.

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It's been a while since I threw down a mix. Or just a month, really. But before I tackle this enormous glut of music I just downloaded, here are some good tracks from other pretty-new stuff. Download the mix here. The tracks:

1. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
2. Junior Boys - Hazel
3. Phoenix - 1901
4. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Today's Lesson
5. The National - So Far Around The Bend
6. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Dull Life
8. Swan Lake - Widow's Walk
9. The Thermals - Power Doesn't Run On Nothing
10. Dan Deacon - Snookered