Cups to the Stars: 2013 in Review – The Mix(es)

I wasn't actually sure this was gonna happen this time, but...I made a dance mix.  All the tip-toppest 2013 jams.  Decidedly, willfully less elaborate than past year-end blow-outs (2012 felt like an untoppleable pinnacle anyway, why try harder?) – it ended up being probably more involved than I intended, but in a happy-medium kind of way.  It's probably a much better dance mix for not trying to be all fussy and cute.

It was finished (in the form you see below) well before New Years, and I could have pretty easily posted it then; failed again, but there you are.  Instead, hear it is now.  Tracklist below but as always don't look if you wanna be surprised.  Just pop it on at your next dance party (for ≥1 persons.) It'll work, trust me:

Dumb Disco Ideas 2013 by Rossoflove on Mixcloud

1. Four Tet: Your Body Feels

2. Jeri Jeri: Lignou Mome (Mark Ernestus Ndagga Version)

3. The Knife: Without You My Life Would Be Boring

4. Dungeonesse: Show You

5. DJ Rashad: Let It Go 

6. Miley Cyrus: We Can't Stop

7. Justin Timberlake: Mirrors

8. Machinedrum: Gunshotta

9. Congo Natty ft. Rebel MC, Tenor Fly, Daddy Freddy, Nanci Correia: Get Ready

10. Lorde: Royals

11. Débruit and Alsarah: Khartoum

12. Kitty: Barbie Jeep

13. A$AP Rocky ft. Drake, 2 Chainz, Kendrick Lamar: Fuckin Problems

14. My Bloody Valentine: New You

15. Drake: Hold On We're Going Home

16. Jagwar Ma: Uncertainty

17. Major Lazer ft. Busy Signal, the Flexican and FS Green: Watch Out For This (Bumaye)

18. John Wizards: iYongwe

19. D E N A: Cash Diamond Rings Swimming Pools (Lou Teti Remix)

20. Daft Punk ft. Pharrell: Get Lucky

21. Robyn Thicke ft. T.I. and Pharrell: Blurred Lines

22. Classixx ft. Nancy Whang: All You're Waiting For

23. Disclosure ft. AlunaGeorge: White Noise

24. Disclosure: When A Fire Starts To Burn

25. Todd Terje: Strandbar 

26. Franz Ferdinand: Right Action

27. Chance the Rapper: Pusha Man

28. Breakbot: Break of Dawn

29. Cut Copy: Free Your Mind

30. Daniel Avery: Water Jump

31. The Arcade Fire: Reflektor

32. Chvrches: Gun

33. Factory Floor: Turn It Up

34. Sophie: Bipp

35. Marek Hemman: Hooray

36. Cayucas: High School Lover 

37. Lindstrøm & Todd Terje: Lanzarote

38. Ylvis: The Fox

39. Holy Ghost!: Dumb Disco Ideas

40. Kowton (Livity Sound): More Games

41. Ciara ft. Future & B.o.B.: Body Party (Remix)

42. Special Request: Body Armour

43. M.I.A.: Come Walk With Me

44. Demdike Stare: Primitive Equations

45. Omar Souleyman: Ya Yumma

46. Kanye West: New Slaves

47. Chrissy Murderbot: Waffle House

48. Four Tet: Unicorn

key points:

• makes doubly good on the four tet rule by not only starting (in what ended up being a semi-shoehorned-feeling way, unfortunately) but also ending with killa kieran

• "mirrors"/"gunshotta" team-up pretty sublime, imho

• my bloody valentine and drake (x2!) – a mash made in heaven! – who knew?

• twenty-thirteen twinsies two-pack of pharrell daft and pharrell thicke, followed by classixx ft nancy/disclosure ft. alunageorge – in both of these cases i found i could hardly dj one of these songs without the other all year.  so fitting to have them all clumped together here.  dumb disco ideas epitomized.

• BIPP!  there were almost no last-minute year-end-list discoveries here, either because i was just really on top of things this year or just felt happy to stick to my familiar guns, but so so pleased i cottoned on to this in time.  what a bipp!

• glad i could slot in that crowd-pleasing novelty smash by everybody's favorite norwegian comedy duo, lindstrom & todd terje.  wait, what?

• what's that kanYe?  I kan't hear ye! sourrey man!

theoretical revision/addition wish-list:

• Janelle Monae, "Dance Apocalyptic" (was really trying to fit this in around the jagwar ma/major lazer moment, but just couldn't make it work.  robbed.)

• Vampire Weekend (probably would've been a better choice than Cayucas.  oh well.)

• Paramore probably

• maybe Beyoncé ("Blow" I guess?)

• actually, you know?  I'm really pretty happy with it.  the main thing would be to shave off ~40 seconds so it would fit onto an 80 minute CD.  I did originally but then I decided to let "Unicorn" finish playing out/slowing down.

Oh yeah, I also made a Favorite Songs of 2013 mix.  Pretty limited edition for now, but maybe I'll make some more (/revise?) sometime.  I can make you a copy if you want:

1. Neko Case: "Man"

2. Veronica Falls: "Waiting For Something To Happen"

3. Vampire Weekend: "Unbelievers"

4. Cayucas: "High School Lover"

5. Caitlin Rose: "Menagerie"

6. Little Daylight: "Overdose"

7. DENA: "Cash, Diamond Rings, Swimming Pools"

8. John Wizards: "iYongwe"

9. Classixx: "All You're Waiting For"

10. CHVRCHES: "Gun"

11. Superchunk: "Me and You and Jackie Mittoo"

12. Saint Rich: "Young Vultures"

13. Kacey Musgraves: "Follow Your Arrow"

14. Cass McCombs: "Brighter"

15. Devon Sproule + Mike O'Neill: "You Can't Help It"

16. Lucius: "Tempest"

17. Tegan + Sarah: "Now I'm All Messed Up"

18. Paramore: "Still Into You"

19. Bleeding Rainbow: "Waking Dream"

20. Free Energy: "Dance All Night"

21. Bibio: "À Tout à l'Heure"

22. My Bloody Valentine: "New You"

23. Dungeonesse: "Soon"

DoDecaDance, or; YO2012O

OKAY, here it is.  the mix that nearly killed me, before i killed it.  Twenty-Twelve, in 80-minute dance party mix-up mash-up form.  i'd been equivocating between the above (kinda dumb) titles and then I remembered that it should just be called...

[i don't know about y'self, but] I'm Feeling 2012

i srsly agonized over this one, both before and after its very successful debut on new years eve.  upshot being a) i have zero psychic space/distance from it at this point however b) i think it's a darn good one. especially after being initially dubious about 2012 having really brought the goods (still feels a bit anemic on the mega-pop tip, but better than xpected, partly thanks to late-ish inclusions from bruno mars and katy perry, though not rihanna..)

felt a bit hip-hop dominated at times, and in initial drafts a bit uncomfortably profanity/misogyny-heavy (i slimmed back on that a bit, cutting out "bandz a make her dance" [a.k.a. "stripper-jamz a make him uncomfortable]" – and downgrading "amen" to instrumental form; also happily happened to use clean versions of "two reasons" and "young wild and free" which i emphatically prefer to the explicit versions anyway.  and danny brown's "grownup" is apparently only available in sorta-silly censored form? ha!)  still gets pretty narsty at times though.  (that angel haze, my my!)

so many moments i love on here, several of which already exist as long-form mash-ups ("thinking about daphni," "call me somebody (walter carly willyouse remaybe?)" – can't believe that one hasn't already been done.)  i need to do a longform edit of "i'm skanking" vs "inspector norse," already two of the most happy-making songs of the year on their own, which together achieve truly ludicrous levels of uplift.  [other mashtitles: "Locked out of Harlem," "2 Reasons to Topologize," "Plush Flutes (Pflutshtes)," "Taylor Swift vs. the indie records that are much cooler than hers," "JBiebs+Fiona4vr"]

h/ts in order to various year end lists, notably spin (for introducing me to/reminding me about katy, future, santigold, dj rashad, and especially mystikal!) and, for electronic stuff, resident advisor (bauer, s-type, pearson sound) and xlr8r (dubbel dutch, girl unit, and the excellent "vibrate" by dj slink which i didn't actually get to include.)  also to matt shuman for making me (re)listen to phedré.

oh, by the way...you might notice that there's rather a lot of hot chip on this mix.  ten songs in fact – every single track on in our heads (sometimes in remixed/demo form) except for one, "ends of the earth," which is on this sister mix instead... i decided not to duplicate anything from social smattering, which meant, sadly, leaving off le1f's "wut" and david byrne+st. vincent's "the one who broke your heart" – otherwise, nothing i was too sad about dropping, and allowed for some interesting alternate choices by artists represented there (d'eon, daphni, lindsy.)

so yeah.  enjoy!  share!  don't deny your heart!  put your hands together!  fuck up the fun!  and, call me...maybe?

you only 2012 once!  (or do you...)  

ASAP, Twelvy

0. Four Tet, "128 Harps"

0a. "2012 (It Ain't The End)" – Jay Sean ft. Nicki Minaj

0b. "2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)" – The Flaming Lips ft. Ke$ha

0c. "2012" - Richie Spice

0d. "Shaheem Reid Speaks" (from Rick Ross, Rich Forever)

1. Hot Chip, "Motion Sickness"

2. Azealia Banks, "Fuck Up The Fun"

3. Bonde do Rolê, "Pucko"

4. Evian Christ, "Fuck It None Of Y'all Don't Rap"

5. Mystikal, "Hit Me"

6. Four Tet, "128 Harps"

7. Hot Chip, "Night and Day"

8. Daphni, "Ahora"

9. Frank Ocean, "Thinking About You"

10. Pearson Sound, "Untitled"

11. Purity Ring, "Fineshrine"

12. Kanye West feat. [Big Sean, Pusha T and] 2 Chainz, "Mercy"

13. Pangaea, "Game"

14. Hot Chip, "Look at Where We Are" (Major Lazer vs. Junior Blender remix)

15. Girl Unit, "Club Rez"

16. Kendrick Lamar, "Swimming Pools (Drank)"

17. Meek Mill, "Amen" [instrumental]

18. Future, "Same Damn Time"

19. Rusko, "Somebody To Love"

20. Schoolboy Q, "There He Go"

21. S-Type, "Billboard"

22. Bruno Mars, "Locked Out of Heaven"

23. Bauer, "Harlem Shake"

24. M.I.A., "Bad Girls"

25. TNGHT, "Goooo"

26. Y.N.RichKids, "Hot Cheetos & Takis"

27. Jeremih ft. Fabolous, "Ahh Shit"

28. Santigold, "Disparate Youth"

29. Climax, "Usher"

30. DJ Rashad, "Twitter"

31. Angel Haze, "Werkin Girls"

32. MMM, "MMM Meets Tshetsha Boys"

33. Grimes, "Oblivion"

34. Traxman, "I Need Some Money"

35. Kanye West/Jay-Z/Big Sean, "Clique"

36. Squarepusher, "4001"

37. Katy Perry, "Wide Awake"

38. Nicki Minaj, "HOV Lane"

39. It's A Musical, "For Years and Years"

40. D'Eon, "Signals Intelligence"

41. Killer Mike, "Big Beast"

42. Chairlift, "I Belong In Your Arms"

43. Taylor Swift, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"

44. Kitty Pryde ft. Riff Raff, "Orion's Belt"

45. Hot Chip, "Now There Is Nothing"

46. Danny Brown, "Grown Up"

47. 2 Fingers, "Magoo"

48. Charli XCX, "You're The One"

49. Lana Del Rey, "Born To Die"

50. El Perro Del Mar, "Walk On By"

51. Miguel, "Adorn"

52. Dubbel Dutch, "Self Help Riddim"

53. Diamond Rings, "Day & Night"

54. Snoop Dogg & Wiz Khalifa ft. Bruno Mars, "Young Wild & Free" (Clean Version)

55. Zammuto, "Too Late To Topologize"

56. Trey Songz ft. T.I., "Two Reasons" (Clean Version)

57. Woolfy vs. Projections, "Cellophane"

58. Mykki Blanco, "Wavvy"

59. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft. Wanz, "Thrift Shop"

60. DJ Raff, "Digital Rain"

61. Fiona Apple, "Hot Knife"

62. Justin Bieber, "Boyfriend"

63. Mac DeMarco, "Cooking Up Something Good"

64. Taylor Swift, "22"

65. Best Coast, "The Only Place"

66. Drake [ft. Lil' Wayne], "The Motto"

67. Gotye, "In Your Light"

68. Phèdre, "In Decay"

69. Diplo ft. Billy The Gent and Long Jawns, "Butters Theme"

70. St. Lucia, "All Eyes On You"

71. fun., "Some Nights"

72. Skrillex ft. Sirah, "Bangarang"

73. Matthew Dear, "Her Fantasy"

74. Toddla T., "Body Good" (Agitated by Ross Orton and Pipes)

75. John Talabot ft. Pional, "Destiny"

76. The 2 Bears, "The Birds + The Bees"

77. Yeasayer, "No Bones"

78. How To Dress Well, "& It Was U"

79. Hot Chip, "Always Been Your Love"

80. Solange, "Losing You"

81. New Build, "Do You Not Feel Loved"

82. Sky Ferreira, "Everything is Embarrassing"

83. Storm Queen, "Let's Make Mistakes"

84. Django Django, "Default"

85. Barker and Baumecker, "Schlang Bang"

86. Kelly Clarkson, "(What Doesn't Kill You) Stronger"

87. Pop Levi, "Motorcycle 666"

88. Tame Impala, "Elephant"

89. Daniel Maloso, "Shera"

90. Carly Rae Jepsen, "Call Me Maybe"

91. Gotye [ft. Kimbra], "Somebody That I Used To Know"

92. Hot Chip, "Flutes"

93. Tiga and Matthew Dear, "Plush"

94. Todd Terje, "Inspector Norse" 

95. Wiley, "I'm Skanking (The 2 Bears Remix)"

96. Simian Mobile Disco, "Put Your Hands Together"

97. Hot Chip, "Don't Deny Your Heart"

98. St. Etienne, "Tonight"

99. Benoit & Sergio, "Lipstick & Lace"

100. Dragonette, "Run Run Run"

101. Lindstrøm, "Faar-I-Kaal"

102. Scissor Sisters, "Let's Have A Kiki" 

103. Hot Chip, "These Chains"

104. Tanlines, "All Of Me"

105. One Direction, "What Makes You Beautiful"

106. Avicii, "Levels"

107. The Very Best ft. Seye, "Kondaine"

108. Teengirl Fantasy ft. Romanthony, "Do It"

109. Hot Chip, "How Do You Do? (Demo)"

110. Nicki Minaj, "Starships"

111. Icona Pop, "I Love It"

112. Death Grips, "I've Seen Footage"

113. Ke$ha, "Die Young"

114. Psy, "Gangnam Style"

115. Ill Blu, "Clapper"

116. Rye Rye, "Boom Boom"

117. Hot Chip, "Let Me Be Him"/"Let Me Be Him (Joe's Dub)"

s'matter witchoo?

trying to be a DJ and so forth, i made this lil mix, as a sample taster for a dance party i was trying to have, entitled The Social.  i call the mixlet "A Social Smattering" – but Andrew later referred to it as "your social spattering mix," which i like even better:

A Social Smattering by rossoflove

i'm quite proud of it, esp for just a couple quick hours of work.  it may or may not be cannibalized later for a twentytwelve year-end mix... basically it's just a bunch of stuff i've been into lately, all of which happens to date from 2012:

d'Eon, "Transparency pt. II"
Le1f, "Wut"
Purity Ring, "Obedear"
Dominique Young Unique, "Hot Girl"
Bonde do Rolê ft. Ce'Cile, "Brazilian Boys"
Azealia Banks, "Esta Noche"
The Souljazz Orchestra, "Conquering Lion"
The Very Best, "Yoshua Alikuti"
Concept Neuf, "The Path (Sofrito Edit)"
Terranova ft. Khan, "Boogie For The Dollar"
Django Django, "Hail Bop"
Daphni, "Yes I Know"
Toddla T, "Take It Back (Agitated by Ross Orton & Pipes)"
Lindstrøm, "Vōs-Sākō-Rv"
The 2 Bears, "Get Together"
Sepalcure, "Hold On (Trevino Mix)"
David Byrne and St. Vincent ft. The Dap-Kings and Antibalas, "The One Who Broke Your Heart"
Scuba, "NE1BUTU (Radio Edit)"
Hot Chip, "Ends of the Earth"
Branmar, "Waiting On"
Rusko, ""Whistle Crew"
Smile, "Jean Michel"

download/soundcloud link here if the above doesn't work for some reason.  enjoy!

2011, all mixed up

In the past, I've had a policy of "saving" my emerging favorite favorite songs from an unfolding year – i.e. refraining from including them on mixes (or at least mass-distro mixes) and holding them back instead for a big bang-up year-end mix of songs. That delayed-gratification approach has resulted in some satisfying summing-ups which have stood up to time – notably, 2003's Such Great Heights [aka the duct tape mix]; Fun and Interesting: 2008 in Pop; and last year's H'010nanny! Other years I haven't made a year-end songs mix at all, or else I've made one that I didn't like much at that time and have forgotten about since (like the 2009 two-fer at the bottom of this post.)

This year, breaking my own rules willy-nilly, I made several mixes over the course of the year which did include most of my current-listening favorites – and what's worse I rejiggered the tracklists of these mixes and cherry-picked songs from them for use on later mixes – without necessarily ever settling on a finished stand-alone mix that I was completely happy with. (a similar process has happened with my year-end top ten lists this year – it's been that kind of year.) So in effect, I guess, my B3ST 0F 2oII M1XT@P3 has been a work-in-progress all year long.

Here are some tracklists – they may or may not exactly reflect the versions of mixes I may or may not have given you over the course of the year, but in the end why fuss; it's all good musik!

We Need a Mix*
1. Cults - Go Outside
2. Dom - Living in America
3. James Curd presents Ziggy Franklin - Shelter
4. Cornershop with Bubbley Kaur - Double Decker Eyelashes
5. Xylos - Not Enough
6. Britney Spears - How I Roll
7. Abigail Washburn - City of Refuge
8. David Wax Museum - Yes, Maria, Yes
9. The Kills - Nail In My Coffin
10. The Strokes - Taken For A Fool
11. Peter Bjorn and John - Dig A Little Deeper
12. Yelle - Comme Un Enfant
13. Zoey Van Goey - You Told The Drunks I Knew Karate
14. The Mountain Goats - Estate Sale Sign
15. About Group - There's A Way To End This Run Of Doubt
16. The Decemberists - Calamity Song
17. Deerhoof - Super Duper Rescue Heads!
18. Young Galaxy - B.S.E.
19. Revolver - Monk (Mini Mansions Cover)
20. Panda Bear - Slow Motion
21. Cut Copy - Need You Now (Architecture in Helsinki Version)

*titled in homage to the epic Okkervil River song which I liked [and whose title I especially liked, and took as sort of the thesis statement of their fascinating-but-not-quite-lovable album in my annoyingly non-linkable cowbell magazine article...come to think of it that album got weirdly and also unfairly shunted out of pretty much all year-end coverage i've come across, mine included...] but which I didn't manage to actually include on this or any mix...but equally as an appropriately descriptive/meaning-empty response to a slightly alarming feeling of having to do something with the already-overwhelming glut of sure-fine-yeah musical detritus that was accumulating in my 2011 headspace circa april, which must have been about when i made this.

i like the hipster/anti-hipster move of opening with two of the biggest blog hits of 2010, for the very sane reason that i was only just hearing/really getting into them. i also like lots of these songs, but ultimately the ones i really like the most are the ones that got pillaged for later editions...see below...

Summerville*
1. Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks
2. Beyoncé - Countdown
3. Mayer Hawthorne - Work To Do
4. The Cool Kids ft. Mayer Hawthorne - Swimsuit
5. Dennis Coffey ft. Mayer Hawthorne - All Your Goodies Are Gone
6. Sebastian ft. Mayer Hawthorne - Love In Motion
7. Pictureplane - Real Is A Feeling
8. tUnE-yArDs - Bizness
9. When Saints Go Machine - Kelly
10. Architecture in Helsinki - Contact High
11. Ford & Lopatin - World of Regret
12. Wild Beasts - Lion's Share
13. Rye Rye ft. Robyn Never Will Be Mine
14. Teddybears ft. Robyn - Cardiac Arrest
15. Nicola Roberts - Beat Of My Drum
16. Kissy Sell Out ft. MC Zulu - Turn It On
17. Austra - Lose It
18. Ada -Keep Me In Mind
19. Benoit & Sergio - What I've Lost
20. Allo Darlin' - Tallulah
21. YACHT - Shangri-La

*because what we really need most is a summer mix, and can't get much simpler cuz i didn't think i could really pull off the Mangumian po'etry of "Cum Trees in the Summerville Breeze" q.v. the ginkgos outside my Inman Sq. [but over the line] Somer sublet., which was the phrase in my head every time i biked up prospect street past the field (The Field!) etc.... anyhow this is more like it. Mayer Hawthorne and Robyn get to be MVPs even tho they hadn't (yet) even put out anything much new of their own in 2011... some versions of this also included Junior Boys' "Banana Ripple," which (like the rest of their album) i kinda like but mostly just don't know what to do with. the closing sequence is really the clincher; I played it to end our midsummer backyard pool Shlock Party, and I kept it for what is essentially a cannibalistic combination of the two above mixes:

Glow in the Dark, Arrow in the Heart*
1. Cults: Go Outside (Menahan Street Band Remix)
2. Beyoncé: Countdown
3. Mayer Hawthorne: Work To Do
4. Xylos: Not Enough
5. Young Galaxy: B.S.E.
6. Pictureplane: Real Is A Feeling
7. ANR: It's Around You
8. tUnE-yArDs: Bizness
9. Cornershop & Bubbley Kaur: Double Decker Eyelashes
10. When Saints Go Machine: Kelly
11. Architecture in Helsinki: Contact High
12. Wild Beasts: Lion's Share
13. Abigail Washburn: City of Refuge
14. Mark McGuire: Chances Are
15. Active Child: Hanging On
16. Hercules & Love Affair: Boy Blue
17. Ada: Keep Me In Mind
18. Benoit & Sergio: What I've Lost
19. Allo Darlin': Tallulah
20. Y∆CHT: Shangri-La
[packaged in a pink sleeve]

*maybe not my favorite lyric from "Kelly" (the whole thing really is brilliant, even perversely so), but it's certainly a potent summation of what the song feels like, and likewise the love of any good song or season or, sure, boy. when i made this it was just early fall and i was touring through the southland, so the working/burning title of this was dixieville. i could've jiggered it more (maybe swapping in a MayHawt album original for the Isleys cover from the EP, but it just didn't feel right) but decided to let it stand as-is as one-half of my "official" "best of 2011" mix-package, along with:

A Swastika In Your Cappucino*
1. Lana Del Rey: Video Games
2. Jens Lekman: Waiting for Kisten
3. Frank Turner: Peggy Sang The Blues
4. Wilco: Dawned On Me
5. Lykke Li: I Follow Rivers
6. Low: Try To Sleep
7. When Saints Go Machine: Add Ends
8. The Dø: Too Insistent (Trentemøller Remix)
9. Paul Simon: Love Is Eternal Sacred Light
10. Kathryn Calder: Who Are You?
11. Peter Bjorn and John: Dig A Little Deeper (Mayer Hawthorne Remix)
12. Cults: Walk At Night
13. Baby Dee: The Pie Song
14. They Might Be Giants: Cloissoné
15. Devon Sproule: The Warning Bell
16. Darren Hayman: I Taught You How To Dance
17. James Blake: Lindisfarne II
18. Gillian Welch: Hard Times
19. St. Vincent: Champagne Year
20. The Throne: Made In America (Ft. Frank Ocean)
21. Joan As Police Woman: Human Condition
22. Cut Copy: Need You Now (Architecture in Helsinki Version)
[packaged in a baby boy blue sleeve, though come to think of it maybe they shoulda been switched]

*probably is my favorite lyric from "Kirsten," which is equally the most brilliant, heart-wrenching and hilarious lyric of the year, even if the string parts do cannibalize his past work. not sure it's a great mix title, but it's a great image, mental or actual (i drew it on some copies.) i agonized over this for a long time in isolation, and i guess i'm pretty happy with it by now. might have actually been easier to slim down to a single disc of for-sure favorites, but i like having space to include things like "Add Ends" (a more representative and possibly of-greater-wide-interest WSGM selection) and "Cloissoné" (definitely the standout of the semi-let-downish Join Us) and "The Pie Song" (hard to satisfactorily integrate, but equally hard to safely ignore) and especially "Human Condition," which I'd mostly forgotten about but does include some truly poignant lines which have made me almost cry multiple times (the opening verse, basically.)

....and then... all the end of year lists and whatsits started coming out, and i went on my usual year-end catch-up downloading rampage, and started totally jamming out to all these awesome techno/hip-hop/weirdpop/rnb songs i'd mostly not even heard previously, plus a few poppier jams that hadn't quite fit in with other iterations. and, mostly, i just wanted to dance, and jam out. so i burned this one up quick, and gave it to some of you. it's a mix of my favorite songs in the history of the world ever, circa the last week of december 2011. and i would like it to be called:

Teeth Ring, Ears Click
1. Jai Paul: BTSTU
2. Purity Ring: Ungirthed
3. Miguel: Sure Thing
4. The Weeknd: The Morning
5. Kelly Rowland ft. Lil Wayne: Motivation
6. Jacques Greene: Another Girl
7. Jamie xx: Far Nearer
8. Adele: Rolling In The Deep (Jamie xx Shuffle)
9. Soulja Boy: Zan With That Lean
10. Big K.R.I.T feat. Ludacris & Bun B: Country Shit (Remix)
11. Azaelea Banks: 212
12. Ill Blu: Meltdown
13. Blawan: Getting Me Down
14. Don Omar ft. Lucenzo: Danza Kuduro
15. Modeselektor ft. Busdriver: Pretentious Friends
16. Lana Del Rey: Blue Jeans (Penguin Prison Remix)
17. Franz Ferdinand: No You Girls (Trentemøller Remix)

okay, i give up... maybe next year i'll just make some mix tapes for the sake of making some mix tapes, and leave it at that. or maybe i'll just make spotify playlists, once i figure out what that's supposed to be, exactly? i just joined, i'm intrigued...we'll see? well anyway, hope you like the music.

pickin' n' scratchin'

While we're on the subject of old, silly themed party mixes... how about this very special, very silly mix I cooked up this past May for the awesomely successful, never-to-be-repeated Spring Chicken Dance Party at the Roost (in West Philly.)


Penny vs. Penny

It's pretty self-explanatory. You may have realized, but then again you may not, just how funky chicken music can get. One thing I certainly didn't realize until I started putting this thing together, is that there is apparently an entire genre of Polish chicken techno music that exists on YouTube. (of course there is.) Tell me what it tastes like?

download it here

Chicken - Mississippi John Hurt
Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens - Louis Jordan
Bird Flu - M.I.A.
Super Chicken - Cee-Lo
I Move Chickens - Gucci Mane
Fry Dat Chicken - Ms Peachez
Crow Black Chicken - Ry Cooder
Truncated Life of a Modern Industrialized Chicken - Herbert
Chicken Grease - D'Angelo
Little Red Rooster - Sam Cooke
Ham 'n' Eggs - A Tribe Called Quest
Fried Chicken - Busta Rhymes
Chicken Noodle Soup - DJ Webstar ft. Young B
Chicken Dance - The Emeralds
Thunder Chicken - The Mighty Imperials
Chicken Strut - The Meters
Barnyard Boogie - Louis Jordan
Chicken Shack Boogie - Amos Milburn
Know Your Chicken - Cibo Matto
The Rooster - Big Boi
Do The Funky Chicken - Rufus Thompson
Chicken Half - Sugarman 3
Thousand Year Egg - Simian Mobile Disco
Chicken and Meat - Das Racist
Chicken Lady - Vitalic
?some techno thing?
Chicken Walk - Hasil Adkins
Chicken Dream Inside Egg - Pink Skull
random youtube chicken techno track #1 (Oli Chang?)
Chicken With Its Head Cut Off - The Magnetic Fields
random Polish youtube chicken techno track #2
Chicken Dance - Jack Fetterman and the In Hi-Fi Music Direction
Chicken Payback - The Bees
Chicken Soup With Rice - Carole King

oh, and I'm kinda bumming about not having included the thoroughly righteous Sly Stone song, "Chicken" – so you should listen to it here (and ignore the visual weirdness):


[h/t to Tom 'n' Jojo for hepping me to that one along with The Bees' "Chicken Payback"]

bonjour. bonjour. bonjour. bonjour. bonjour. bonjour. comment-allez-vous?

allo allo! about a year ago (sheesh!) j'ai DJed une trés swanky function pour le Gershman Y dans Philadelphia, part of le Jewish Film Festival, aprés d'une screening of le film Gainsbourg. which, by the way, i thought was pretty fun but also super weird and too long. hm, maybe i should give it another viewing. anyway. basically i played a whole heap of french musique, vintage et moderne, for theoretical (and to some extent actual) dancing purposes.

alors! le traque-listé c'est below. and you can download the whole dang (fairly silly, and, unsurprisingly, rather serge-heavy, but still super fun) set [1 hr 37 m] right here, parfait for your next froo-froo frenchy soirée [try right-clicking if it gives you trouble].

also, this joke/img is still pretty great:
Serge Gainsbourg, «Pauvre Lola»
Dimitri from Paris, «Sacre Francais»
Jane Birkin, «Orang Outan»
Serge Gainsbourg, «Requiem Pour Un Con»
Serge Gainsbourg, «Initials B.B.»
Clothilde, «Saperlipopette»
France Gall, «Jazz a GoGo»
Air, «Love»
Serge Gainsbourg, «Bonnie & Clyde» [Herbert's Fred and Ginger Mix]
Saint Germain, «Rose Rouge»
Phoenix, «If I Ever Feel Better»
Komeda, «It's Alright Baby»
Serge Gainsbourg, «Eurotico-tico» [Instrumental]
Charlotte Leslie, «Les filles c'est fait pour faire l'amour»
Stereolab, «Emperor Tomato Ketchup»
Cosette, «Idealisation»
France Gall, «Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son»
Holden, «Je Te Reconnais»
Serge Gainsbourg, «Cannabis»
Serge Gainsbourg, «Aux Armes Et Caetera»
Serge Gainsbourg, «Shu Ba Du Ba Loo Ba»
Francoise Hardy, «Tout Ce Qu' On Dit»
Serge Gainsbourg, «Mambo Miam Miam»
Stone, «Fille ou Garcon»
Johnny Hallyday, «Itsy Bitsy P'tit Bikini»
Johnny Hallyday, «Noir C'est Noir»
Frank Alamo, «Heureux Tous Les Deux»
Serge Gainsbourg, «New York USA»
The End, «Les Sambassadeurs»
Dimitri from Paris, «Le Rythme et La Cadence»
Daft Punk, «Crescendolls»
Vitor Hublot, «Aller Simple»
Cerrone, «Supernature»
Yelle, «A Cause de Garçons»
Les Rythmes Digitales, «Jacques Your Body» [Cassius Remix]
Johnny Hallyday, «T'Aimer Follement»
Daft Punk, «Around The World»
Francoise Hardy, «Je Veux Qu'il Revienne»
Justice, «DVNO»
Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin, «Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus»
Air, «Playground Love»
Francoise Hardy, «Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles»

l8 > never

so: i never posted my 2008>2009 new years mix, due to a couple of fairly minor production flaws that i have been meaning to correct ever since but never actually got around to until, well, today. in fact, it was almost entirely fixed as of sometime this past spring, but i only just got around to tidying up the final loose ends tonight, as a sort of warm-up/deck-clearing exercise prior to launching into 2010 mix (about which more soon! i'm excited!) in earnest.

it turned out to be almost entirely painless, and now i am proud to present to you, in its entirety, in two convenient halves, at 192kbps, rarely heard since its initial unveiling at the stroke of midnight on 1/1/2009, the official ross of love 2008 new years eve dance party mix: 2K8<3!!

first half
second half

download and enjoy! my tendency is to think of this mix as the weakest of my four year-end mashymixes to date (with '09 as second weakest), though that may be somewhat unfairly due to the too-long-standing glitch sitch (which has meant that i've probably not listened to it nearly as much as the others.)

listening now, i do think it has a lot of nice parts, scattered throughout and especially in the second half, but i'm not particularly fond of the opening section (always surprisingly tricky to do for these mixes, for some reason) and there are some (neglible) sound quality issues in various places (definitely a downside of the generally nifty traktor native mix feature, which i used for the last two years, but will not be able to use for this year's mix, because it's not in the new version of traktor that works on my computer.) though there is plenty of great music here, 2008 feels like a slightly weird, off year from this juncture (for instance: santogold shows up three times here; where has she been since? also, M.I.A.'s here four times, in various forms. sorry, that won't be happening in 2010.) anyway...still a very good, worthy mix - i'm happy with it, and particularly happy to have it as a finished piece.

here's a tracklist for ya:

first half
Ross of Love vs. Solange/Beastie Boys/Portishead/M83/Hot Chip/Lil Wayne vs. Ross of Love
Four Tet / Ribbons
Flo Rida / Low
Usher / In This Club
T.I. / Whatever You Like
Santogold / Creator
El Guincho / Antillas
Buraka Som Sistema ft. M.I.A. / The Sound of Kuduro
Benga / Night
Britney Spears / Womanizer
Sway / Say It Twice
Soulja Boy ft. A-rab / Yahh!
Jazmine Sullivan / My Foolish Heart
Keri Hilson ft. Lil Wayne / Turnin' Me On
Janelle Monae / Violet Stars Happy Hunting!
The Roots / I Will Not Apologize
Throw Me The Statue / Lolita
Jordin Sparks ft. Chris Brown / No Air
Ne-Yo / Miss Independent
The Knux / Cappucino
Jay-Z ft. Santogold / Brooklyn Go Hard
The Clash / Straight To Hell
T.I. ft. Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne / Swagga Like Us
The Very Best / Tengazko
Erykah Badu / Soldier
Black Milk / Losing Out
Rhymefest with Mark Ronson / Foolin' Around
Beyoncé / Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
Pop Levi / Never Never Love
Erupt / Click My Finger
Alphabeat / Fascination
Missy Elliott / Shake It Like A Pom Pom
Kid Rock / All Summer Long
Hercules & Love Affair / Hercules Theme
Sugababes / Girls
Kardinal Offishal ft. Keri Hilson / Numba 1
The Bug ft. Warrior Queen / Insane
Vampire Weekend / Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
Max Tundra / Which Song
Yelle / Ce Jeu
Dragonette / Marvelous
Spiss / My Slang
Madonna ft. Justin Timberlake / 4 Minutes
Busta Rhymes / Don't Touch Me (Throw Da Water On Em)

second half
Juvelen / Don't Mess
Ashlee Simpson / Boys
David Byrne & Brian Eno / Strange Overtones
Invisible Conga People / Cable Dazed
Kanye West / Paranoid
Kleerup / Thank You
Aeroplane ft. Kathy Diamond / Whispers
Hercules & Love Affair / You Belong
Diskjokke / Staying In
Was (Not Was) / Your Luck Won't Last
Neon Neon / Raquel
Midfield General / Disco Sirens
The Chap / Ethnic Instrument (Joakim Remix)
Pink Skull / Gonzo's Cointreau
Santogold / L.E.S. Artistes (XXXchange Remix)
Nomo / All The Stars
A. R. Rahman & M.I.A. / O... Saya
Rye Rye / Shake It To The Ground
Lindstrøm / Grand Ideas
Tittsworth / Haiku
Busy Signal ft. M.I.A. & Rye Rye / Tic Toc
Estelle ft. Kanye West / American Boy
Snoop Dogg ft. Robyn / Sexual Eruption (Fyre Department Remix)
Cloetta Paris / Beat Street
Cut Copy / Out There On The Ice
Rihanna / Disturbia
Fuck Buttons / Sweet Love For Planet Earth (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
Kelley Polar / Entropy Reigns in the Celestial City
Wiley / Wearing My Rolex
Rex The Dog / Bubblicious
Johan Agebjörn ft. Sally Shapiro / Spacer Woman From Mars
Alphabeat / Fantastic 6 (Radioclit Mix)
Hot Chip / Ready For The Floor
Air France / Collapsing At Your Doorstep
Barack Obama / "You Have Earned The New Puppy"
Young Jeezy / My President Is Black

the spirit of 2009 {mix yr accent}

presenting to the internet:

the fourth annual ross of love new year's eve dance party megamixtravaganza: 2009>>>2010 edition

you can download/hear the whole thing as one file here, or listen to it in four convenient chunks below (dl @ 1 2 3 4)


1.
Michael Jackson, "This Is It"
Four Tet and Burial, "Wolf Cub"
The Beatles, "Revolution 9" [Remastered Mono Version]
Neko Case, "This Tornado Loves You"
Animal Collective, "My Girls"
Phoenix, "1901"
BBU, "Chi Don't Dance"
Major Lazer ft. Mr. Lexx & Santigold, "I'll Make Ya (Hold The Line)"
Soulja Boy, "Kiss Me Through The Phone"
Soulja Boy, "Turn My Swag On"
Joker, "Digidesign"
Jessie James, "Blue Jeans"
Cam'ron, "I Hate My Job"
GS Boyz, "Stanky Legg"
The Lonely Island ft. T-Pain, "I'm On A Boat"
jj, "Ecstasy"
Solange Knowles, "Stillness Is The Move" [Dirty Projectors cover]
Grizzly Bear, "Two Weeks"
Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys, "Empire State of Mind"
Asher Roth, "I Love College"
The Big Pink, "Dominos"
Sleigh Bells, "Crown On The Ground"
Electrik Red, "So Good"
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, "Ballicki Bone"
Etienne Jaumet, "Mental Vortex"
Dorrough, "Ice Cream Paint Job"
Fever Ray, "Triangle Walks"
Amerie, "Why R U"
YΔCHT, "I'm In Love With a Ripper"
Miley Cyrus, "Party in the USA"
Phoenix, "Lisztomania"
Mayer Hawthorne, "Your Easy Lovin' Ain't Pleasin' Nothin'"
Maino ft. Swizz Beatz, "Million Bucks"
Nomo, "Bumbo"
Little Boots, "New In Town"



2.
Bangz, "We Jerkin"
New Boyz, "You're A Jerk"
Bernard Fevre, "Dali"
The Very Best ft. Ezra Koenig, "Warm Heart of Africa"
Forro in the Dark, "Perro Loco"
Ciara ft. Justin Timberlake, "Love Sex Magic"
The Sound of Arrows, "M.A.G.I.C."
The Whip, "Divebomb"
Emiliana Torrini, "Jungle Drum"
Jonathan Johansson, "En Hand I Himelen"
Jack Peñate, "Today's Tonight"
Animal Collective, "My Girls"
Fool's Gold, "Surprise Hotel"
Röyksopp ft. Robyn, "The Girl and the Robot"
Lady Gaga, "Paparazzi"
Gui Boratto, "Eggplant"
Matias Aguayo, "Rollerskate"
Kikumoto Allstars, "Last Train to Chi-Town"
Tiga, "Shoes"
Shakira, "Loba"


3.
Two Fingers ft. Sway, "What You Know"
Voodeux, "Just A Spoonful"
The xx, "Crystalised"
La Roux, "Bulletproof"
Cash Cash, "Party In Your Bedroom"
Permanent Vacation ft. Kathy Diamond, "Tic Toc"
The Dø, "On My Shoulders" (WILDLIFE! Remix)
Amadou & Mariam, "Sabali"
The Juan MacLean, "One Day"
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Zero"
Julian Casablancas, "11th Dimension"
Rye Rye ft. M.I.A., "Bang"
Sticky ft. Lady Chann, "Your Eye Too Fast"


4.
K.I.G., "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes"
Fake Blood, "Fix Your Accent"
Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow"
Britney Spears, "3"
Buraka Som Sistema ft. Deize Tigrona, "Aqui Para Vocês"
Annie, "My Love Is Better"
The Very Best, "Kada Manja"
Lady Sovereign, "Let's Be Mates"
Das Racist, "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" (Wallpaper Remix)
Fuck Buttons, "Surf Solar"
Joy Orbison, "Hyph Mngo"
Kelly Clarkson, " I Do Not Hook Up"
Caspa, "Marmite"
Camera Obscura, "French Navy"
Zomby, "The Lie"
Lily Allen, "The Fear"
Vistoso Bosses ft. Soulja Boy, "Delirious"
Major Lazer ft. Nina Sky and Ricky Blaze, "Keep It Going Louder"
Taylor Swift, "You Belong With Me"
Kanye West, "Yo Taylor!"
Beyonce, "Ego"

i think it's a record for most songs used [88, give or take a snippet] and shortest production time [i basically made the whole thing between say 10am on december 28th and 5am on december 30th, during which less-than-two-day period i slept zero hours, though i did get a hair cut, though i did go in post-new years to rejigger the last 10 minutes and tack MJ onto the beginning.]

i definitely don't think it's my greatest piece of work, though i'm not sure if that's a result of less time put in [in fact the making went pretty smoothly, with less glitchiness than in past years] or something about the suitability of the source material. i'm inclined to think it's the latter – 2k9 felt somewhat lacking in the dancejamz department, or maybe i'm just listening to too much fluid, non-click-tracked world music and not enough readily mashable teenpop/rap/electro (and remixes in general) these days.

anyhow, it did the trick, and there's still plenty to enjoy here, and just maybe make the butterflies fly away. (sorry i didn't manage to do the miley/jay/britney three-way thing... but "lisztomania" seemed like almost as much of a national party anthem this year, no?)

just a few moments i like in particular:
• the stone-faced silliness of "i'm on a boat" abutting the smiley-faced stoniness of "ecstasy," both of them equally lush rap pisstakes from seemingly opposite ends of the irony spectrum.
• solange and jay-z getting down with grizzly bear
[with bonus hipster/hip-hop brooklyn mindmeld points for the d-pros cover]
• asher roth's hipster-scorned misogyny juxtaposed with the big pink's hipster-approved version of same
• ciara and the sound of arrows' rather different conceptions of 'magic'
• the sublime synth tones of kikumoto allstars' "last train to chi-town," leading us out of a kinda rough patch, and even more so as they rub against the sublimely ridiculous "shoes"
• the sexxy perplexxy xx sneaking in there, but only for about 5 seconds because they're not a freaking dance act
• julian casablancas: "no one really cares or wonders why anymore/i've got music coming out of my hands and feet and gizzards!" nuff said.

as for the taylor/kanye/bk sign-off, well, i am kinda sorry about that (better maybe just to leave where we started off, with major lazer in the trunk piled six chicks deep), but it did seem like an obvious one and a good way to include the two most notable 2008 jams of 2009 (or was it vice versa.)

happy new year!!

--
p.s. i never actually shared last year's mix with you, did i? hm hm i'm gonna see what i can do about that now...

Merry MiX-mas! (and, um, cHappy cHaDJnukkah?)

'tis the season!

i DJed for three entirely different sorts of parties in the last week: a house dance party last saturday, a drag pageant after-party this saturday, and a congregational hanukkah party last night. all three were in west philly, all three were benefit events, and they were all a lot of fun and dancing, but otherwise very dissimilar vibes... and i played three quite different kinds of DJ sets.

at the house party, when my software DJ set up was effing up and i had to make-shift it with iTunes when it crashed every 15 minutes (oy oy oy stressache!!! but it worked out...) i played a fairly typical rossy mix of mid-to-up-tempo dance jams, electroni-pop flavored with some heavy soul mixed in and hip-hop sprinkles. left-field highlights incl. of montreal's "elegant caste," "i know what i know," "do wah diddy", and max tundra's batshit "orphaned." requests for kanye, fischerspooner, mgmt and 'retro.'

at miss west philly fabulous, the after-party kicked off in full-on diva-queen spectacle mode, with glitter raining from the ceiling fan as the winners of the pageant were crowned and trophied, and i played "you make me feel (mighty real)" > "hot stuff" > "gimme gimme gimme (a man after midnight)" > "hung up"... [some speaker/soundsystem issues but it got sorted soon enough.] i switched gears to hip-hop and booty beats before too long -- though not before i played don armando's second ave rhumba band's "i'm an indian too" and, of course, somebody had to come up to ask if it was by "an artist who identified as being of indigenous origin" or to that effect... [short answer: um...i'm not sure, i think they were mostly just latino and black... some interesting commentary on the issue here and here though...] tons of requests, more than i could keep up with, tho i tried: beyonce, rihanna, m.i.a., santogold, "no diggity," brothers johnson, kool and the gang, siouxsie/queen/u2 (none of which i had), young leek, busy signal, t.i., and j&mc to close it all out. i kept it pretty hip-hop/dancehall/bmore for a while (the bug, /rupture, ce'cile, rye rye!), but eventually i had to bring it back around to the diva anthems, starting with, i think, "please don't stop the music," then my two current favorite funky disco jams - eddie kendricks' "going up in smoke" and coke escovedo's brilliant, epochal "i wouldn't change a thing" - and then "i wanna dance with somebody" and cece p.'s "finally," into i think "sandcastle disco" woot woot! aw yeah.

and finally, at the hanukka hoo-hah (where i also served double-duty as accordionist for the klez band) i played completely different things from that. only one song overlap with what i played at either of the other parties. it was a sorta pan-ethnic (balkan/afrobeat/parisian/icelandic/bollywood/egyptian/malawian/motown) drums-and- horns-heavy globalized beat odyssey, ethno-techno, with some massive tunes courtesy of the currently unstoppable radioclit, and other travels, and some throwbacks, winding up back around with some old-school (for me) pop and 'lectro faves, and then another of my current obsessions (little boots' "stuck on repeat," which sounded kind of boring actually.) anyway, it was a lot of fun, and i finally got my setup working well enough that i was able to record the whole thing!!

so you can hear it!! - go here to download. it's mostly live; i just made some rough minor tweaks in garageband to nice it up a little bit.

here is the track list:
Kako Kolan Da Se Vijem - Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band
Quand Esct-Ce Qu'on Arrive - Balkan Beat Box
Broken Dreams - Basement Jaxx
Lets Get Wet (Louder Mix) - SoCalled
Bongo Song - Zongamin
One to One - Nomo
Roforofo Fight - Fela Kuti
First Down - Fatboy Slim
Fantatic 6 (Radioclit Remix) - Alphabeat
Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan - Matmos
Le Rhythme et La Cadence - Dimitri From Paris
There's More to Life Than This - Björk
Jimmy - M.I.A.
Tamenouni Enek - Mohamed Hamaki
Sister Betina - The Very Best
Cobrastyle (Radioclit Remix) - Teddybears
Circles - Soul Coughing
Take Me To The River - Talking Heads
Strange Overtones - David Byrne and Brian Eno
End of the Road - Gladys Knight and Pips
Psychedelic Shack - Temptations
Caveman Boogie - Lesette Wilson
Stuck on Repeat - Little Boots
Spare Parts Express - Orbital

my only regret is that i didn't manage to work in ricardo villalobos' fizheuer zieheuer, which would have been a more fitting comedown/finale. (listen to it there on youtube and interpolate it in in your mind.) the big huge honking standout is that radioclit alphabeat remix, which sounds absolutely nothing like the original (which i also love a fair amount) - i think all they took from it was the "whoo whoo!" - but may be the most happy-making piece of music i've heard all year. it just effervesces. sing it with me: ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah! ah-ah-ah ah! ah! ah! (disco-disclosure: i bugged out to that same track, in the same space, on friday night, as spun by a certain dj ginkgo, a fellow with whom i shall have to have some words...)

so there you go, a little holiday present for you all... enjoy enjoy! and dance dance dance!

more to come too... all of this DJing has got me suddenly really-excited about 2008 music. fueling my fire these days, in particular - in addition to radioclit - are rye rye and yelle, two break-out upstarts (from baltimore and bretagne, respectively) who seem not to be getting the typical amount of love from the predictable places... not sure why that would be. many thanx to xtorrent too, which i've just gotten to start working again.

anyway, the plan now is full-speed-ahead on making a new years mix for '08 - i'd been feeling kinda iffy about it but now i'm pumped. my current thought is that i may also do a stand-alone, unmixed best of 2008, with some track overlap but intended more for listening than dancing per se. my top ten tracks list is coming into focus. (just gotta figure out how to integrate some recenter lovelies.) stay tooned for that.

and in any case, i fully hope to have a maxi-mix ready for revellers in plenty of time for new years - by next sunday, at the latest (and likeliest.) so get hyped for that too.

bubble pop electrik

or, if you're not down with the miami aesthetic steez (these were actually posted around somewheres, no thanks to me):


had a hot gig last night. great party - really good turnout (for a thursday?) thanks, apparently, to a gal from drexel with an extensive facebook friendlist. but also to my friends! a whole bunch of 'em! thanks for coming out guys!

and i was pretty pleased with my deejaying, although it has also spurred me into lots of ideas for ways to improve (modifications to my setup - working from just a laptop and a dinky audio interface is appealingly portable, but i realized that it would be advantageous to add my mixer to my mix; i'm enjoying figuring all this out for myself as i go along - and also things to work on and think about.)

i recorded my set (so easy to do with traktor!), or at least 2 1/2 hours of it (i missed the beginning.) if my reconstruction is correct, here's what i played before that:

dot allison - mo' pop
cornelius - another view point
kaada - thank you for giving me yr valuable time
evie sands - i can't let go
donny hathaway - the ghetto
dee dee warwick - rescue me
alex gopher - destokage massif
the tough alliance - a new chance
metro area - soft hoop
sambassadeur - kate
james brown - mother popcorn
the juan mclean - give me every little thing (b-dude complained about me cutting off maceo's solo)
temptations - cloud nine
afrika bambaata - looking for the perfect beat (12")
yaz - situation
luke vibert - cash'n'carry acid
phoenix - if i ever feel better...

and that's around when the dancing really got going. listen for yrself - this'll be up for download for the next 7 days or 100 d/ls (yeah right):

ross of love @ bubblehouse, 3/6/08 [part one] (a single m4a file, 1 hour 40 minutes)

there is a [part two] (just under an hour), but i think i'm gonna keep it to myself (unless you ask real nice) - it's a bit sloppier and borrows from existing mixes a fair bit, and the place had mostly cleared out by this point - but it went like this:

justin timberlake - what goes around...
prodigy - out of space
keith mansfield - young scene
lucky soul - add your light to mine
el-p - lazerfaces warning (rjd2 rmx)
isley brothers - it's your thing
snoop dogg - drop it like it's hot
jean knight - mr. big stuff
sway - products
amy diamond - what's in it for me
cassie - is it you?
isley brothers - love the one yr with
squarepusher - come now my selector (sweet - this played out over the next two tracks)
lauryn hill - lost ones
outkast - ms. jackson
beck - nicotine and gravy (ryan the booking dude rocking out)
strokes - is this it?
jamie lidell - what's the use?
blur - to the end (ryan loves this one too)
lucky soul - lips are unhappy (yay for rava)

nothing engraved yet, but it's looking like i may be playing bubblehouse every thursday night, at least starting in april, since the next three thursdays are busy with texas, purim, and texas. (currently debating what to do about the hot chip tickets i have for april 10th...and the ny and dc shows are souledout...doh!) if so (and if they ask me), i may decide to call it "bubble pop electrik" - not bad rite? but what's the call on naming yr night after a song that's not really very good, even if the genre's about right?

oh, p.s. - as you may have noted from the flyer, "bubblehouse" is now a genre of music. (not just an mmw jam - though i gotta remember to play that sometime.) it's the fusion of bubblegum and house. y'know. that exists, they just forgot to call it that. (it's like, "handbag house" or something. nava says handbag girls are annoying to dance with.) can a mix be far off?

'007 is sleeping in heaven

i think that about wrap(s)ed it up for capp(s)ing it off, 2007-wise. well ready to be done with it. well chuffed. the only thing that's missing in terms of replicating my round-up ritual from last year is a list of mixes - well, as it happens there's really only one that i care to mention (just didn't hear that many this year), and i have retroactively tacked it on to the end of my albums list. as for the mixes that i made (the ostensible subject of this blarg, remember?), they were few, but they made me happy at least: popsical/summertime, the theoretically-still-in-progress love is the dancer, and the nostalgia-trippin' supast*rdeejays, which i will finally get around to slapping up here, next post i promise. (also: marriage is hot..., musician plugs ii, and two volumes of ladies love for my sis.)

i just saw my idolator ballot today...well, for the first time since i wrote it, i suppose. (nevermind the results for the poll as a whole; they're as boring as they're supposed to be, which goes for the editorials as well.) my favorite part is that i got the chance to vote for rumble in the jungle, a compilation of early 90s british ragga/jungle which was possibly my only actual "favorite reissue" of 2007 (that actually came out in '07.) i don't think i ever managed to mention it here or anywhere but it contains some of the most exciting, life-affirming music i can think of, so much so that i broke down and ordered the thing at full price after just listening to the sound clips on the soul-jazz website (just listen them!)

was also glad to see that i saw fit to vote for "stay my baby" and "oh my god," even though neither made the new years mix. meanwhile, my essentially off-the-cuff comments said roughly what i needed to say in my lengthy apropos-of-albums commentary a couple posts ago, and more besides, but in only two paragraphs. "indecisiveness is a good thing."

finally, definitely the most fun part of the whole idolator pop thingummy is their collection of commissioned annotated mixtapes. which is dangerously engrossing (if you're me), and makes me want to hear them all, though i'm a little curious whether they all actually work that well as mixes. needless to say, i already made mine and annotated it, both in hyper-extensive fashion (the annotations took me nearly as long to complete as the mix itself, i think.) maybe you even looked at it. (you should at least listen to it - much more fun!) but i didn't really give you the track list in a very accessible fashion, so here it is again, without the interruptions. goodnight goodnight two-double-oh-seven. time to get away.

[1] cassie: "is it you?"
fantasia: "hood boy"
amerie: "gotta work"
amy winehouse: "you know that i'm no good"
sharon jones: "tell me"
the budos band: "ride or die"
[2] katharine mcphee: "love story"
dizzee rascal: "pussyole (oldskool)"
dj khaled, ft. pretty much ehrrrbody: "we taking over"
ashley tisdale: "he said she said"
justice: "d.a.n.c.e."
britney spears: "piece of me"
low: "hatchet"
aesop rock: "none shall pass"
nelly furtado: "say it right"
[3] gwen stefani: "the sweet escape"
tracey thorn: "it's all true"
hilary duff: "dreamer"
lcd soundsystem: "get innocuous"
matthew dear: "pom pom"
nôze: "love affair"
will.iam: "heartbreaker"
roisin murphy: "let me know"
[4] escort: "all through the night"
aly+aj: "like whoa"
rihanna: "please don't stop the music"
the chemical brothers: "a modern midnight conversation"
gui boratto: "beautiful life"
von südenfed: "fledermaus can't get it"
[5] bonde do role: "solta o frango"
calvin harris: "the girls"
muscles: "sweaty"
dan le sac vs. scroobious pip: "thou shalt always kill"
armand van helden, "nyc beat"
[6] sophie ellis-bextor: "me and my imagination"
stanton warriors ft. sway: "get 'em high"
m.i.a.: "xr2"
cornelius: "wataridori"
simian mobile disco: "love"
modest mouse: dashboard
fujiya and miyagi: ankle injuries
r. kelly ft. t.i. and t-pain: "i'm a flirt (remix)"
burial: archangel
[7] miley cyrus: "see you again"
candie payne: "one more chance (mark ronson mix)"
spoon: "you got yr cherry bomb"
the ark: "absolutely no decorum"
tegan and sara: "back in your head"
sally shapiro: "he keeps me alive"
[8] lethal bizzle: "police on my back"
shop boys: "party like a rockstar"
dude 'n nem: "watch my feet"
björk: "declare independence"
aberfeldy: "do whatever turns you on"
pop levi: "pick me up - uppercut"
skye sweetnam: "ghosts" (with tim armstrong)
[9] avril lavigne: "girlfriend (remix ft. lil mama)"
sugababes: "about you now"
paramore: "misery business"
the veronicas: "untouched"
maxïmo park: "our velocity"

get ice.

this right here is my last summer mix. of the summer. i promise.

it's parts three and beyond of what you've already heard so far. it's a bonus disc for Popsical (there's room for two in that sleeve - it's a twin-pop!) it's extremely straightforwardly summery. it...s compulsively continuous-mixed, but it may not be a dance mix, exactly. it's all over the place.

i'll have more to say later. and i'll make a track-separated version for the cd. here's what you get:

1. Summertime, Summertime (Time to Smile Re:face) - the Jamies ft. Four Tet
2. Happy Summertime - R. Kelly ft. Snoop Dogg
3. Summertime - Beyonce ft. Ghostface
4. Summertime - DJ Jazzy Jeff ft. the Fresh Will Smith
5. SummerLove - Justin Timbalake ft. Stat Quo
6. Dear Summer - Jay-Z ft. Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, etc.
[+ Morning Sunrise - Weldon Irvine]
7. Summertime - Sublime ft. the Pharcyde
8. Umbrella (the Summerbrella ThatzmyJAM Lolly Brolly Remix) - Rihanna ft. Jay-Z, Keak da Sneak, Mims, Usher, Lil Jon, Ludacris, Clipse, Birdman, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, T-Pain, Cassie, Lil Mama, T.I., DJ Webstar, Young B, DJ Unk, Fat Joe, Lil Wayne
9. Oh My God - Mark Ronson ft. Lily Allen
10. Summer Night on Hammer Hill ["This Song is Like, uh, 'Heat Wave'?"] - Jens "The Vandel" Lekman ft. Martha Reeves + the Vandellas
11. Her Breasts Were Still Small - Tribeca
12. Vacation (The "Vitamin C is the Cure for the Summertime Blues" Remash) - Vitamin C ft. Eddie Cochran
13. The Funk Soul Surfer - H.R. Lovemuffin vs. BeachBoy Slim
14. Summer Samba - Walter Wenderly
15. Nice Day - Persephone's Bees
16. Computer Camp Love - Datarock
17. Real Summer - Future Bible Heroes
18. Don't Falter - Mint Royale ft. Lauren Laverne
19. Heavy Metal Drummer - Wilco
20. Do It Again - Steely Dan/The Beach Boys/The Chemical Brothers
21. Summertime - The Zombies

now usually i don't do this, but, uh...

Rihanna: "Umbrella (Remix ft. Jay-Z, Keak da Sneak, Mims, Usher, Lil Jon, Ludacris, Clipse, Birdman, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, T-Pain, Cassie, Lil Mama, T.I., DJ Webstar, Young B, DJ Unk, Fat Joe, Lil Wayne)"

a.k.a. Still Summer Still Now, section II

um, enjoy!

happy summertime, knickers!

still summer, still now [part one, or sumthing]

better put this up before it's not anymore. just take a listen. not sure why it looks like the german flag...

It's Summertime - the Jamies
[vs. Smile Around the Face - Four Tet]
Happy Summertime - R. Kelly ft. Snoop Dogg
Summertime - Beyonce ft. Ghostface
Summertime - DJ Jazzy Jeff ft. the Fresh Will Smith
SummerLove - Justin Timbalake ft. Stat Quo
Dear Summer - Jay-Z ft. Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, etc.
[Weldon Irvine - Morning Sunrise]
Summertime - Sublime ft. the Pharcyde

...to be continued




p.s. i'm a premium snapdrive member now, so the old mp3 links should work again. including the springles mincepod, which i should prob. replace with this about now. also means you can download this, here.

valentine's passed

o valentine's. like any holiday, or i guess any annual occurence, it can end up as much about the past as the present, a familiar, evenly-spaced milemarker for easy reference. there was the valentine's that i saw beck at maxwell's (and lost some love for him), and the valentine's that hannah and i broke up, and the valentines i made for rabi. well, as it happens, those were all the same year (two-thousand-and-three, wouldn't you know, maybe a harbinger for that sea-change year of years.) i'll tell you more about that later. then there was the one when ester and i had watched american splendor and played poker, and then one when i was in sri lanka - i can't remember whether i had flowers sent or not. in high school i recall making blue-green chocolate chip cookies and passing them out with hugs, playing "my funny valentine" with brushes on the cookie tin.

in my senior year of college, i made little 3" cd-rs valentines for maybe eight or ten of my loves, each with customized artwork and a personally tailored (and non-overlapping!) little thematic mix. (i remember: movies for lillie, boys for ester, frenchyness for laura, tic-tac-toe for kat) they are destined to go undocumented, or at least not fully, but with hope they are still being enjoyed. (like some other things, those were inspired by rabi's 3" valcds from the previous year - i've still got mine somewhere.)

well, a year ago i quietly made this little mixtape for myself. it was the post-post after-the-fact realization of a concept i'd come up with maybe even a year earlier, when i still might have needed the catharsis; at this point i made it more from a sense of obligation to my past and to the idea. i guess it's a similar sense that inspires me to put it here now. anyway the titular "past" is that aforementioned '03 massacre, or more properly its aftermath, and i parlayed uncertainty about how/why to apostrophize the title into a not inappropriate ambiguity.

Title: a ghost of valentine's past
Format: 60-minute cassette
Date: 7 february 06
Packaging: labelled in lower case with a blue pen; short enough to fit on the front of the card.

side one
["she said always remember never to trust me..."]
your ex-lover is dead - stars
let it die - feist
pearl - new folk implosion
summer's gone - aberfeldy
a little bit more - jamie lidell
if not now, whenever - the books
the delicate place - spoon
modern girl - sleater-kinney
the suitcase song - nellie mckay

side two
a fond farewell - elliott smith
this time it will - jeff hanson
out of time - blur
when the angels play their drum machines - hefner
the only answer - m. doughty
dearly departed - daedelus
love love love - the mountain goats
if you ever need a stranger to sing at your wedding - jens lekman
there will always be - adem

so. it tells its own story well enough, which may or may not be mine. if nothing else, it presents a certain image of my listening habits at a certain point. (if i made it last february, i'd certainly been saving up many of the songs for close to a year; i know at one point "i summon you" was slated for this, but then it was deployed to october instead.) as you might expect: these songs are so sad and beautiful.

around the same time, but later, and delivered belatedly as i recall, i made this; not so much a valentine's mix as a valentine in mix form, for angela:

Title: The Vulpine Valentine
Format: 90-minute cassette, plus extra bonus 90-minute cassette ("Bonus Beats Me")
Date: February 2006
Packaging: construction-paper-covered slip-case (formerly a condom box) with a heart and banner on one side and a lovestruck fox on the other (see below), containing two cassette cases, with the tracklist of the primary mix in typewriter and colored-pencil rebus-style drawings on pink index card.

"a term - is't endearing?" (side one)
1. my angel rocks ))<>(( back and forth - four tet
2. angela - john vanderslice
3. she's an angela - they might be giants
4. thank you for sending me an angel - talking heads
5. good weekend - art brut
6. let me go home - camera obscura
7. heartbeat - annie
8. what i'm trying to say - stars
9. flowers - cibo matto
10. secret heart - feist
11. ways + means - m. doughty
12. love is an arrow - aberfeldy
13. l'amour et la morte - (the real) tuesday weld
14. if you find yourself caught in love - belle and sebastian
+ cheese grater - ed's redeeming qualities
"everytime i see you it's happy something" (side two)
1. every time she turns around it's her birthday - manitoba
2. digital love - daft punk
3. sleep like a dream - tears in x-ray eyes
4. good dreams - superchunk
5. she goes to bed - jason falkner
6. pillow - capitol k
7. here in the night - kelley polar
8. in a star orbit - rebecca gates
9. sleep late my ladyfriend - harry nilsson
10. sunday morning - margo guryan
11. sunday kind of love - etta james
12. in the lost and found - elliott smith
+ easy to love - edith frost

mmmm... a very nice mix, i think. it hits that balance of songs chosen for being appropriate to the mix but also for just being fantastic songs. which is to say that just about all of the songs are both. this tape also tells a little story, over its two sides - which is also our story ("good weekend," more or less) - about going out dancing, going to sleep, and waking up. there's also the part at the beginning about angels, and a group of songs about saying "i love you," which is a pretty good subject for a song.

here's the fox, by the way:

the second cassette ("Bonus Beats Me!") went a little something like this:

FRIENDS OF MINE - of montreal/FOLDING DIRTY LAUNDRY - radioinactive+antimc/ONE CEX - cex/YOU (BETTER LET ME LOVE YOU x4) TONIGHT - richard x f. tiga/JUST CAN'T GET YOU OFF MY MIND - spinners/JULIE (RMX) - jens lekman/ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES - los lobos/DISTORTED ANGEL - elvis costello+attractions/(THE ANGELS WANNA WEAR MY) RED SHOES - hem/WALK AWAY RENEE - billy bragg/UPSIDE DOWN - yo la tengo/NO SKY - guided by voices/RAZORBLADE - the strokes/WALK AWAY - franz ferdinand/NOW AND SLEEP - daedelus/I BUILT THIS CITY (MICHAEL MAYER MIX) - baxendale/NO FUN - vitalic/U DON'T KNOW ME - armand van helden/SUGAR (GIMME SOME) - trick daddy f. ludacris + cee-lo/TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS - danger mouse and gemini f. j-zone/WE GOT PANACHE - princess superstar/I'M A SLUT - bis/SUBURBIA - pet shop boys/SIDE STREETS - st. etienne/ON THE WAY TO THE CLUB - blur/PUNK AS FUCK - american analog set/SNOW - jesse winchester/SNOW SHOWERS - trembling blue stars/THIS LITTLE UKELELE - stephin merritt

this was a much looser and obviously wide-ranging mix that only lives up to the promise of "beats" about half the time. a couple "significant" songs; the rest just whatever seemed like a good idea. the first part of side two (basically all the techno and hip-hop stuff) was one of my earliest attempts at live-to-cassette continuous-mixed djing, and was done on the fly and i think in one take. [i only regret not putting "our little angel" instead of "distorted angel" (because it's a really nice song that i haven't already used on a bunch of mixes, and maybe other reasons), and maybe i regret using that dm+gemini song, although i guess it's interesting that danger mouse and cee-lo are sequenced together like that.]

so. none of these are just straight-up valentine's day, love-themed mixes. and neither is the li'l mix/podcast i put up yesterday that you're probably (hopefully?) listening to now, which is probably called "genrephilia" (it's not called "this boombox loves you," that's just a message from the boombox.) it might seem like it, and it is in part, but it's doing double duty in order to set up a series of posts which i guess is commencing with this one (though the others will be different) about various things i've been listening to and thinking about, but mostly about genre, that fave bugbear of mine, each of which will take up one of the songs from the 'cast as its "keynote," if you will. in the order listed, which is to say the reverse order from the mix. (just to make you more confused, though it will all come out right in the end.) i'm being a cock-eyed optimist by saying this, but i'll hope to get them all or mostly up by the end of this weekend. let's just assume that, unlike christmas, the valentine's season starts on the day itself and extends for a while after.

most of my mixes, like most pop songs, are already basically about love anyway. which makes sense; it's both practical and fun, with lots of interchangeable approaches to the same few familiar situations. recently, both gold star for robot boy and liquid crystal slivers are overtly love-themed, the former prob'ly more appropriate for valentine's, as the latter's somewhat somberer. [v's day is about happy love, i'm pretty clear - not necessarily happy romantic love, especially if you haven't got it at the moment; in that case you can substitute broader, general, elemental, humanward love. which happens to be the special province of mr. ross of love.]

if i had made a lovey-dovey mix, it probably would have wanted to have some of the songs from those, and the others documented above - it just would have been somewhat boring and redundant, generally - and certainly some of the things from this next, which still contains most of my favorite love songs despite being five years old now (!) [lately i've been thinking "you send me" might be the ultimate.] it's not a mixtape, although it has become one; it was a radio broadcast that we have a cassette recording of. it's sort of embarrassing to listen to, not just for the usual reasons but also because i think i'm being obnoxious and a little bit nasty towards alyssa in our bantering. hopefully i'm not like that anymore.

Title: Reality is Lubricated, special Valentine's edition
Format: two-hour radio show (also on 120 minute cassette)
Date: 14 February 2002

tracklist courtesy of reminced archives:
Oooweeoooh! Oooh! Oooh! [i.e. "Welcome to Tokio Otis Clay" by Clinton; our theme music]
“Grandpa” Myron (Mike) “The Moose” Cantor - As Time Goes By

Blur - Tender
XTC - I’d Like That
Björk - Like Someone in Love
[flubbed announcement - mic set on cue] [radio silence]
Paul Simon - For Emily, Wherever I Will Find Her
[apology to the listenerhip, repeat of set rundown]

The Old 97’s - Question
The Beach Boys - God Only Knows
The Kinks - Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy

The Fairways - Close to Me
The Pixies - La La Love You

The Sam Cooke - Medley: Try a Little Tenderness/(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons/You Send Me (live)
Prince - Kiss
[clarification from Alyssa about it being a song about sex]
Randy Newman - Falling in Love
[A n ODE to WSRN]
Joni Mitchell - A Case of You
Plastic Fantastic Machine - Love is Psychedelic
Jeff Magnum - I Love How You Love Me

Joe Jackson - Be My Number Two
R.E.M. - At My Most Beautiful
Pain - One-Legged Girl
[a little show here for people from Alyssa]
Kings Of Convenience - I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From
Pizzicato Five - Baby Love Child

The Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else But You
[apology to all the non-{Moldy Peaches Fans} in the audience]
The Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)
Joe Henry - Scar
The Shins - New Slang (When You Notice the Stripes)

Buddy Holly - True Love Ways
The Yo La Tengo - The You Can Have it All
Jonathan Richman - When She Kisses Me
Ella Fitzgerald - Something’s Gotta Give
Chet Baker - My Funny Valentine
The Big Star - I’m In Love With A Girl
[Alyssa's declaration of love]

Nat King Cole - The Very Thought of You
Billy Bragg - Valentine’s Day is Over

so that's that! somehow, amazingly, neither that show nor any of the tracklistings i posted above include the elvis costello rendition of "my funny valentine," which is an absolute staple of the season for me. me being me. (as is listening to that billy bragg song on the 15th.) ["mfv" is admittedly sort of a silly song (in particular the lyrics to the middle-eight) - but it's still great.]

however... it is on "genrephilia"!:

12 my funny valentine Y elvis costello

so there you go.

2006 Year-End Mincetacular, pt. 2a: Mixies

didn't you notice i'd forgotten about something? i encounter mix[tape/cd/mp3]s distinct enough a form from artist albums - and i was sufficiently tuned into them this year - that they deserve their own list. (also that way i had more room on the albums list.) for officialish, non-discriminatory purposes (like j'n p), night ripper is still my ostensisble #2 AotY.

sans plus adieu:

1. Night Ripper by Girl Talk
!!!!!!!! oh man. what is to be said. i'll admit it's not as consistent as one would want. my sister and i, studying it carefully on a drive to new york, realized there's a significant dip in quality after the first five or six tracks, from which it doesn't fully recover until around track 10 - the beginning of several longer-form interweavings built around "hollaback girl," "1, 2 step" (two of the best traxx of the millennium, easy), "kryptonite," and, um, "oh" (ludacris and ciara are all over the mix, from the get-go - not that that's a bad thing.) it's still an open question for me whether its astonishingly durable pleasurability is due simply to a truly profound level of sheer pop factor (such a density of hooks that the "novelty" apparently never loses its potency), or to something more subtle and structural (and indeed, i've found i enjoy it all the more as its familiarity increases.) either way...holy geez. it's not often you find this much happyment crammed into such an unassuming package. [oh yeah, shame about the artwork - ò if that.]

2. DJ-Kicks by Henrik Schwarz
this series seems to keep getting better and better. (four tet's installment was easily my favorite thing he did this year, which isn't saying a lot despite appearances - more later.) i'd never heard of this schwarz fella, but he seems to be doing something closer to what i'd theoretically like to do than anyone i'm aware of. to wit; elucidate the rapport between modern, electronics-based dance music and (almost inevitably, vintage) soul. he emphasizes the groove-based, cerebral and spiritually impassioned elements of that kinship (that might sound contradictory, but he does) - whereas i'd like to draw out more melodic, humanistic, pop aspects (something along the lines of this crossed with girl talk, actually) - but he does it in such a perceptive and compelling way - i think it's fair to say the results are breathtaking.

3. Soul Sides, Volume One (compiled by Oliver Wang)
definitely more of a mixtape than a compilation, if you catch my drift. the numero group's eccentric soul series continued to unearth some serious marvels this year, and i've found plenty to enjoy on the two-volume atlantic unearthed as well, but neither approached the personability of this trawl through soulmasta o-dub's personal vault of favorites, even if it doesn't all carry the cachet of the ultra-rare. honestly, it's worth it for the opening track alone, the truly stunning "i'll keep my baby warm," which i feel guilty about including on a mix of my own (but i finally just did it anyway.) it may lack the creds of being a true-school vinyl collector, but on balance i'm happy enough to let good folks like oliver do the dirty work and reap the benefits by buying their cd comps. especially when the fruits are as tasty as this. (and volume 2 is apparently in the works!)

4. Rainbow-Styling by Ross of Love
by which i actually mean both of the dj mixes i made in a digital format this year, only one of which is actually titled rainbow-styling, but both of which fit nicely on one cd-r and, i imagine, complement each other ok. you might say ¡OhSiX! is the more fitting choice, considering the amount of self-love it's been generating, but these two similarly, and perhaps more accurately, reflect my personal dvlpmt as a livingroom dj, and as a listener, in 2006. both were mixed "live" on my cd decks and turntable, and edited using garageband. r-s is comprised of "normal" dance music, whatever that means [favorite moment - xtina vs. lindstrøm, c. 14:03-15:20]; the other track (which i've been calling "soul vs. dancepop, vol. 1") is a stab at the cross-pollinating agenda mentioned above [reasonably successful although i do get distracted genrewise; the thelma houston/ciara mash is perhaps representative.] in some sense, i guess this is the apex of my achievement for the year. so i hope that means it's good. anyway...i just really like listening (and dancing!) to it. okay? [trizzzacklistings here, btw.]

5. Space is the Place (for Dancing) by Jube
wanna give a shout-out to the ilx dj thread, even though i'm evidently not cool (and/or electro-savvy) enough for them (unless somebody ever responds this, in which case perhaps i am), since it's recently been of a source of some inspiration, and hopefully not too much procrastination (thanks in part to many dead YSI links.) that's where i found this nifty trippy mix, aptly billed as "a lengthy excursion to the dance cosmos." in addition to a lovely, relaxed overall flow, i like how it's not afraid to get poppy at times despite its generally more minimal vibe (although i still think nobody can rock that j-tim track like me.) it introduced me to some choice cuts ("yes boss" and that kate bush rmx) and also clinched my love for "never be alone." still can't figure out which track is responsible for the keyboard bit that comes in at around 55:00, but that's a highlight too. well, right on. (jeffery mac's much lauded meditations in dub is indeed quite nice too.)