Mix plug

My bout of extreme indulgence, and a three-week break from posts, is over with the completion, brass section please, of the latest mix. Copies are being burnt, the artwork (in-Design with a bit of P-Shop help from Tom) printed and the product posted out to mates. Partner and children perhaps breathe a sigh of relief as I return to something like participation in family life.

From the outset the aim was to get as many tunes on as possible – I wanted 40, ie – one every couple of minutes, but found it impossible to apply that to every tune so had to settle at 31. As late discoveries demanded inclusion (Actress, Addison Groove, Evelyn Evelyn) there was the usual brutal finale where established favourites and erstwhile dead certs failed to fit a coherent pattern and ended casualties of the 80-minute limit. Technically I finally eschewed any ‘real’ mixing via the mixer at all – feeding .wav versions of all the digital files into the archaic Sound Studio with Midi recordings of the vinyl, and blending thereafter. Although the purist me in says this is a continuous sound mix and should be one file, I took on previous groans that this format was not so-user friendly for those who like to flick-through and broke it up into four sections, usually with ambient or piano tunes.

It has its dance moments at the start but then varies in tone, mood and intention. The usual generic inconsistency (hauntologic in Moon Wiring Club straight into hypnagogic in Neon Indian) meets oscillation between old and the new (LFO and even FSOL get in there, although the latter’s offering, discovered in a Pinnacle clear-out box on a promo for their Archives stuff which I’m not sure was ever released, is dare I say proto-dubstep). But conflicting sounds were placed together for a reason. Doing a mix like this is a pleasure because it leads me to old vinyl and CDs as well as the Most Played from the last several months’ additions to the iTunes library. It’s a snapshot of that process rather than any specific type of mix. Among the favourites are Ata Ebtekar’s dark homily Saint Homayon, Evelyn’s fairground-freak pastiche Campaign of Shock and Awe, Gum Takes Tooth’s nihilist rock-out Tannkjott, and the finale from Souvenir (from Tommy Touch’s 2002) Touch Tones 7-inch series.

I may eventually do a one-track version and upload to Soundcloud or post a Ram but you want the object in your hands. Email me with address if you want to feel and smell the polypropylene sleeve and glossy paper. But in the spirit of sonic curation here's four recent interesting mixes.
Blissblog’s Wyrd Bliss Mix:
Transpontine’s South East of the Thames Border Infection Mix:
Toys and Techniques’ Trade Test Colour Films Mix
A Guy Called Gerald Fact mix: