Mux214: March 2017

Download or stream.

1. Dirty Projectors - Offspring Are Blank (Swing Lo Magellan)
2. Carly Rae Jepsen - Boy Problems (Emotion)
3. Friendly Fires - True Love (Pala)
4. Chvrches - Empty Threat (Every Open Eye)
5. Black Lips - Cold Hands (Good Bad Not Evil)
6. Ty Segall Band - The Bag I'm In
7. Viet Cong - Silhouettes (Viet Cong)
8. LVL UP - She Sustains Us (Return To Love)
9. Midlake - We Gathered In Spring (The Trials of Van Occupanther)
10. Ryan Adams - We Disappear (Prisoner)
11. The xx - Replica (I See You)
12. Tobacco - Street Trash (Fucked Up Friends)

TRT 39:47

2017 music: Ryan Adams, The xx

Mux214: March 2017

Download or stream.

1. Dirty Projectors - Offspring Are Blank (Swing Lo Magellan)
2. Carly Rae Jepsen - Boy Problems (Emotion)
3. Friendly Fires - True Love (Pala)
4. Chvrches - Empty Threat (Every Open Eye)
5. Black Lips - Cold Hands (Good Bad Not Evil)
6. Ty Segall Band - The Bag I'm In
7. Viet Cong - Silhouettes (Viet Cong)
8. LVL UP - She Sustains Us (Return To Love)
9. Midlake - We Gathered In Spring (The Trials of Van Occupanther)
10. Ryan Adams - We Disappear (Prisoner)
11. The xx - Replica (I See You)
12. Tobacco - Street Trash (Fucked Up Friends)

TRT 39:47

2017 music: Ryan Adams, The xx

Mux150: July 2014

If you think the sequencing sucks, blame the World Cup. At least I can finally take goddamn "Supersymmetry" off my to-be-muxed giant list of random songs. Boom.

1. Death In Vegas - Girls (Scorpio Rising)
2. Friendly Fires - Pull Me Back To Earth (Pala)
3. Disclosure - White Noise (feat. AlunaGeorge) (Settle)
4. Aesop Rock - No Jumper Cables (Bazooka Tooth)
5. Justin Timberlake - Tunnel Vision (The 20/20 Experience Part 1)
6. EMA - When She Comes (The Future's Void)
7. Boris - Vanilla (Noise)
8. Weekend - Scream Queen (Jinx)
9. Tony Molina - Don't Come Back (Dissed And Dismissed)
10. Superchunk - Martinis On The Roof (Indoor Living)
11. Arcade Fire - Supersymmetry (Reflektor)
12. How To Dress Well - What You Wanted (What Is This Heart?)

Rookies: Death In Vegas, Tony Molina

2014 music: Boris, EMA, How To Dress Well

Mux140: February 2014

[Released early into the wild since it was finished early and because Mux139 is terrible. Have already listened to it a dozen times in my car. I'm actually in that dangerous territory of basically having the final tracks and sequence for Mux141, but at the rate I'm ripping new songs, the end product could be wildly different.]

Tradition dictates that first-of-the-month muxes are dated, since otherwise this would be Mux140: Jack The Ripper given how much stuff I've yoinked from yet-to-drop albums via Soundcloud and YouTube videos. At least the quality of rips these days is pretty damn good.

Because of the ripping and running, I had an embarassment of riches to choose from versus scraping the bottom of the barrel for the last few. At one point I think I was debating just tossing out a two-hour mux, but that betrays my Rules and all. So I guess I've spared you a semi-hardcore breakdown with Rollins Band and Rage Against the Machine.

And any day I can toss on some Professor Murder is a good day. "Charttjunk" also has the best guitar solo of 2014 thus far.

So yeah.

Boom.

1. Kevin Drew - Good Sex (Darlings)
2. Real Estate - Talking Backwards (Atlas)
3. Thee Oh Sees - Toe Cutter Thumb Buster (Floating Coffin)
4. Japandroids - For The Love of Ivy (Gun Club cover) (Celebration Rock)
5. Professor Murder - Dutch Hex (Manhattan Version) (Professor Murder vs. The Magazine Culture)
6. Liars - Mess On A Mission (Mess)
7. Friendly Fires - Running Away (Pala)
8. Chvrches - Recover (The Bones of What You Believe)
9. Broken Bells - The Changing Lights (Live Acoustic) (Untitled 2014 Album)
10. Washed Out - Don't Give Up (Paracosm)
11. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Chartjunk (Wig Out At Jagbags)

TRT 40:50

2014 music: Broken Bells, Kevin Drew, Liars, Real Estate, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

Mux121: Winter's Last Stand

Propers to JET for helping me shape the end of this.

I also broke my rule of not having a band on two muxes in a row, since Wiping out Thousands put out a great minimalist single, "Evening" (grab it here) that is a far cry from 120's "Hips." They've got a show coming up at the Entry on the 24th, so if you've got five bucks and a free Sunday nite, come and check them out.

Oh right: Boom.

1. Iggy Pop - The Passenger (Lust For Life)
2. Japandroids - Evil's Sway (Celebration Rock)
3. The Men - Half Angel Half Light (New Moon)
4. Wolf Parade - Grounds For Divorce (Apologies to the Queen Mary)
5. Neil D. Voss - Africa (The New Tetris*)
6. My Bloody Valentine - New You (MBV)
7. Wiping out Thousands - Evening (Single)
8. Friendly Fires - Pala (Pala)
9. Dog Bite - Prettiest Pills (Velvet Changes)
10. Wild Nothing - Nocturne (Nocturne)
11. Spoon - Vittorio E (Kill The Moonlight)
12. Kurt Vile - He's Alright (Childish Prodigy)

TRT 48:02

Rookies: Dog Bite, Iggy Pop, Neil D. Voss
*Yes, I happen to have the entire The New Tetris soundtrack ripped at 128 kbps, so if you want it, shoot me an e-mail. Way too good for a Nintendo 64, which I believe didn't even have a dedicated sound chip.

Mux119: Oregon Dreamin'

Blame all volume disparity on the geniuses who mastered Local Natives and MBV so ridiculously low.

Boom.

1. Friendly Fires - Skeleton Boy (Friendly Fires)
2. Justin Timberlake - Suit & Tie (Single)
3. Kanye West - Street Lights (808s and Heartbreak)
4. LCD Soundsystem - Too Much Love (LCD Soundsystem)
5. Chromatics - At Your Door (Kill For Love)
6. Oneohtrix Point Never - Betrayed in the Octagon (Rifts)
7. Frightened Rabbit - Holy (Pedestrian Verse)
8. Local Natives - Mt. Washington (Hummingbird)
9. Bloc Party - This Modern Love (Silent Alarm)
10. Sleater-Kinney - Buy Her Candy (Dig Me Out)
11. Tame Impala - Be Above It (Lonerism)
12. My Bloody Valentine - Who Sees You (MBV)

TRT 47:15

Rookies: Tame Impala

Mux084: September 2011

Boxed.

1. Yacht - Utopia (Shangri-La)
2. Dom - Damn (Family of Love EP)
3. Fucked Up - The Other Shoe (David Comes To Life)
4. Black Lips - Dumpster Dive (Arabia Mountain)
5. Friendly Fires - Show Me Lights (Pala)
6. Metric - Satellite Mind (Fantasies)
7. Sleater-Kinney - The Drama You've Been Craving (Dig Me Out)
8. Sonic Youth - 'cross The Breeze (Daydream Nation)
9. Titus Andronicus - A Pot In Which To Piss (The Monitor)

While my love of The Monitor is well documented, my most-recent listen involved some phantom criterion that made "A Pot In Which To Piss" really stand out. For as much self-loathing there's packed into The Airing of Grievances and The Monitor, I found the song strangely uplifting at the time. If nothing else, I love the lyric, "And there's a white flag in my pocket never to be unfurled."

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

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 Radio 010: Night 2

Download or stream off drop.io.

1. Radiohead - Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box
2. !!! - Must Be the Moon
3. Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up
4. Daft Punk - Da Funk
5. Soulwax - NY Excuse (Nite Version)
6. The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing
7. Annie - Heartbeat
8. Chromeo - Fancy Footwork
9. Friendly Fires - Skeleton Boy
10. The Knife - Neverland
11. LCD Soundsystem - Beat Connection (Album Version)
12. Royksopp - Follow My Ruin
13. DJ Shadow - Midnight in a Perfect World
14. Justice - Phantom Pt. II (Soulwax Nite Version)
15. Junior Boys - Last Exit (Fennesz Mix)

Mux017: January 2009, the reissue

I'm just going to keep making these as I toil on this ungodly-long section of the Arc shot list.

Hmm, I wonder what this link is...

1. The Magnetic Fields - Take Ecstasy With Me
2. The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno
3. The Kills - Last Day of Magic
4. Frightened Rabbit - The Twist
5. Mount Eerie - Voice In Headphones
6. Modest Mouse - Broke
7. Hot Chip - One Pure Thought
8. Friendly Fires - On Board
9. WHY? - A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under
10. Animal Collective - Brothersport
11. The Dodos - The Season
12. Max Tundra - Which Song

Mux018: February 2009, the reissue

Listening to old music in preparation for the dreaded year-end list.

Dropped.

1. Friendly Fires - Jump In The Pool
2. Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor
3. MGMT - Kids
4. Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
5. Lykke Li vs. The Field - Dance, Dance, Dance In My Field (The Hood Internet Remix)
6. Thom Yorke - Atoms For Peace (Four Tet Remix)
7. Max Tundra - Fuerte
8. Digitalism - Pogo
9. Franz Ferdinand - Lucid Dreams (Album Version)
10. Flying Lotus - Auntie's Lock / Infinitum

Mux018

A little semi-electronic flavor. Download Mux018 via drop.io. The tracks:

1. Friendly Fires - Jump In The Pool
2. Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor
3. MGMT - Kids
4. Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
5. The Hood Internet - Dance Dance Dance In My Face (Lykke Li vs. The Field)
6. Thom Yorke - Atoms For Peace (Four Tet Remix)
7. Max Tundra - Fuerte
8. Digitalism - Pogo
9. Franz Ferdinand - Lucid Dreams (Album Version)
10. Flying Lotus - Auntie's Lock / Infinitum

Mux017

Like any good procrastinating casual-hipster, this is culled from an eclectic group of Best of 2008 albums and the like. And also the Pitchfork 500 book I got for Christmas.

Download the zip via drop.io:

1. The Magnetic Fields - Take Ecstasy With Me
2. The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno
3. The Kills - Last Day of Magic
4. Frightened Rabbit - The Twist
5. Mount Eerie - Voice In Headphones
6. Modest Mouse - Broke
7. Hot Chip - One Pure Thought
8. Friendly Fires - On Board
9. Why? - A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under
10. Animal Collective - Brothersport
11. The Dodos - The Season
12. Max Tundra - Which Song