JDK's The Best Mix Ever (2010 Edition)

I compile one of these humbly-titled mixes yearly. Granted, not much has changed since last year, but I think I hit a good sequencing stride in the first third.

Download or stream TBME2010 at my public Dropbox.

Tracks:

1. Rogue Wave - Endless Shovel
2. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
3. Why? - Fatalist Palmistry
4. Broken Social Scene - Cause = Time
5. Radiohead - Kid A
6. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened
7. A Place To Bury Strangers - To Fix The Gash In Your Head
8. Lightning Bolt - Dead Cowboy
9. Wolf Parade - I'll Believe In Anything
10. Frightened Rabbit - I'll Believe In Anything
11. High Places - From Stardust To Sentience
12. Jay Reatard - Oh It's Such A Shame (Blood Visions cut)
13. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
14. Joy Division - Transmission
15. The National - Abel
16. Smog - Teenage Spaceship
17. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
18. Liars - The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack

Also, I'm not sure if it's too heavy-handed or not, but ending with "Maps" followed by "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack" was oh-so deliberate. Because of, you know, the Karen O / Angus Andrew romance. The songs put back-to-back is some high concept, call-and-response shit.

It also seems that "Kid A" has dethroned "The Tourist" and "Fog" as my favorite Radiohead song. Well, as the obvious truth is, I can only fit X songs on an 80 minute CD-R, and I only go with one song per band. "Kid A" is sort of my flavor of the season, since I'm in the process of sort of covering it and, lyrically, it's fairly brilliant.

Hell, while I Postscript this to death, I might as well toss up a few excellent cuts or alternates that were very painfully excised from my original giant iTunes playlist:

• The Antlers - Bear
• The Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)
• Battles - Race Out
• Beach House - Gila
• Bibio - Fire Ant
• Boards of Canada - Roygbiv
• Born Ruffians - Kurt Vonnegut
• Brian Eno - By This River
• Crystal Castles - Vanished
• Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
• The Get Up Kids - I'm A Loner, Dottie, A Rebel...
• Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
• Health - In Violet
• Japandroids - Wet Hair
• Jay Reatard - Nightmares
• The Joggers - Every Other Word
• Junior Boys - Last Exit
• Joy Division - Shadowplay
• LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Crass Version)
• Lightning Bolt - 2 Towers
• Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
• Modest Mouse - Gravity Rides Everything
• My Bloody Valentine - When You Sleep (or) Sometimes
• The National - All The Wine
• No Age - Teen Creeps
• Pavement - Gold Soundz (or) AT&T (or) Cut Your Hair
• Portishead - The Rip
• Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot
• Spoon - The Ghost of You Lingers (or) I Summon You
• The Thermals - A Pillar of Salt
• TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
• The Walkmen - The Rat
• Weezer - No One Else (or) Say It Ain't So
• Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater

JDK's The Best Mix Ever (2009 Edition)

My taste in music is constantly shifting. If nothing else, on any given year I'll listen to thousands of new songs.

So here are my current favorite songs ever. Note the list tends to skew toward current fare - mostly because I didn't start listening to good music until 2004.

Unfortunately, this beast is over 100 MB, so you'll have to brave the dark waters of Megaupload to download it.

JDK's The Best Mix Ever (2009 Edition) by jdkentala

And thus:

1. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
2. The Walkmen - The Rat
3. Guided By Voices - Teenage FBI
4. Why? - Fatalist Palmistry
5. The Thermals - A Pillar of Salt
6. Jay Reatard - Nightmares
7. Broken Social Scene - Cause = Time
8. Mission of Burma - That's When I Reach For My Revolver
9. The National - Slow Show
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
11. The Microphones - The Moon
12. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened
13. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - In This Home On Ice
14. Wolf Parade - I'll Believe In Anything
15. Frightened Rabbit - Head Rolls Off
16. Smog - Teenage Spaceship
17. Rogue Wave - Endless Shovel
18. Radiohead - The Tourist

Saturday: All the albums I listened to plus my eight most favorites. Sunday: Notable albums that didn't make the top-eight cut.

Mux039: November 2009

I'm going out of town from Halloween until the 9th, so consider this the official chunk of the Pitchfork 500 month-starting mux. And yes, I legitimately like a Weezer track off Raditude, which is surprisingly better than The Red Album. But there's nothing nearly as good as "Pork And Beans."

But anyways--

Download via drop.io.

1. Broken Social Scene - KC Accidental
2. The Exploding Hearts - Modern Kicks
3. Weezer - (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To
4. Guided By Voices - Chasing Heather Crazy
5. Les Savy Fav - The Sweat Descends
6. A Place To Bury Strangers - Keep Slipping Away
7. David Byrne and Brian Eno - Strange Overtones
8. Elliott Smith - A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free
9. The Dismemberment Plan - The Face of The Earth
10. Okkervil River - For Real
11. Smog - Dress Sexy At My Funeral
12. Wilco & Feist - You And I

Mux024: July 2009 [Reissued on January 11, 2017.)

Update: This mux has been (permanently) reposted for download.

Doing things a bit differently this time. I'm pretty picky about between-track transitions, so I thought I'd pull a JDK Radio and smush it all together. I also accidentally stumbled upon some beat-matching near the end, so hang it there for an awesome crossfade. [Spoiler alert: It starts at 32:57.]

Download or stream.

1. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nevermind)
2. Hole - Violet (Live Through This)
3. Wavves - So Bored (Wavvves)
4. The Undertones - Teenage Kicks (Teenage Kicks)
5. Dinosaur Jr. - I Want You To Know (Farm)
6. The Chills - Pink Frost (Kaleidoscope World)
7. Sonic Youth - Antenna (The Eternal)
8. Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move (Bitte Orca)
9. Massive Attack - Teardrop (Mezzanine)
10. Smog - Teenage Spaceship (Knock Knock)

TRT 42:33