Up On The Hill

in fits & starts, April 2006 – December 25 2007

Up On The Hill has been a tough mix to complete. It seems I’ve always known what music fits on it, even if I can’t quite explain why; but the hard part has been finding the right ordering to make the mix flow, and the transitions not seem arbitrary. I really have worked on this off and on, every six months or so, for a year and a half.

The first few tracks came quickly (and formed the matrix the rest accreted around), the last few took shape soon after that, but everything in between got ripped up and rearranged more times than I can count. I was re-ordering and replacing tracks up till the last minute on Xmas day when I had to start burning discs. I hope it worked out.

So what is it about? Hard to say. Jazz, both modal and fusion (from the days before that became a dirty word), and some other songs that meant a lot to me as a teenager; and some more recent music that drifts in the direction of spooky late-night jazz. Melancholy, nostalgia, absent friends, pianos…

At least six of these songs still break my heart whenever I hear them.

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Track List

  1. 00:00 Sufjan Stevens — “To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament”
  2. 01:38 Herbie Hancock — “Maiden Voyage”
  3. 09:26 Steely Dan — “Aja”
  4. 17:11 Thomas Dolby — “Airwaves”
  5. 22:04 Brian Eno — “Everything Merges With The Night”
  6. 26:00 Cortney Tidwell — “Society”
  7. 29:34 Madeline Peyroux — “Between The Bars”
  8. 33:07 Elysian Fields — “Parachute”
  9. 38:39 Fleetwood Mac — “Hypnotized”
  10. 43:06 Santana — “Aqua Marine”
  11. 48:20 Jean-Luc Ponty — “Ethereal Mood”
  12. 52:15 Led Zeppelin — “That's The Way”
  13. 57:50 Nick Drake — “Three Hours”
  14. 62:49 Trespassers William — “Eyes Like Bottles”
  15. 64:14 Valium Aggelein — “Hier Kommt Der Schwartze Mond”
  16. 67:57 Rickie Lee Jones — “Coolsville”
  17. 71:31 John Coltrane Quartet — “Tunji”

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