Wednesday, May 23, 2007
(5:30 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Unmixed Mixing
I just sat down to try to put together a mix CD for someone. I realized that my mix CDs tend to be pretty formulaic. Around the third or fourth track, I usually start a grouping of low-key, "depressing" songs, then I'll have another group of more quirky songs, and I'll normally end with a fairly short, sad song, followed by a really long concluding number. The classic ending sequence for me is Regina Spektor's "Somedays" followed by Sigur Ros's "Track 08" (from the parentheses album). This homogeneity seems to come from my over-emphasis on "flow" when producing a mix.My favorite songs to put on mixes, other than the ones already mentioned, are as follows:
- Pedro the Lion, "Magazine" (from Control)
- Bjork, "Joga" (from Homogenic)
- Pavement, "Zurich is Stained" (from Slanted & Enchanted)
- Wilco, "Radio Cure" (from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
- Modest Mouse, "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" (from The Moon and Antarctica)
- Pulp, "TV Movie" (from This is Hardcore)
I was going to continue the Zizek parody with a riff about how the shift from the mix CD to the iPod perfectly encapsulates the decline of symbolic efficiency in our "post-Oedipal" era, but instead I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
UPDATE: This is the list I came up with. This is a challenging one, because it's intended for someone to whom I copied over all my mp3s about a year ago -- as a result, only one of my old standbys appears.
- Maurice Ravel - "Valses nobles et sentimentales: I. Modere, très franc"
- Saint Etienne - "Lose That Girl"
- Bjork - "Joga"
- Sonic Youth - "Pattern Recognition"
- Andrew Bird - "Cataracts"
- Damien Jurado - "Smith 1972"
- Feist - "I Feel It All"
- Flaming Lips - "Flight Test"
- Gorillaz - "Sound Check (Gravity)"
- The Shins - "Spilt Needles"
- Modest Mouse - "Bankrupt on Selling"
- Joanna Newsom - "Only Skin"
