“Once he was showing me a book of twentieth-century art he liked, and there was a picture of an automated sculpture called Dead Birds Fly Again, a thing that whirled real dead birds around and around on a string, and he smiled and nodded, and I could see he felt the artist was a spiritual ancestor of some kind.” —William Gibson, “The Winter Market” (The cover art is by Joseph Cornell, another artist, albeit a real one, who figures in Gibson’s fiction.
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A compilation of lesser-known, but great, first-wave shoegazer songs (1987 through 1993.) I hope you have plenty of jams around to kick out; they’ll be in the next county by the time this one’s over. PLAY LOUD. (Yes, the first 25 seconds are supposed to sound like that. It’s part of the song.)
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Another* Post-Punk Mix.
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Here’s a bunch of our favorite Christmas music, all packaged up for you to download & play. There’s some crooning, of course (gotta have Nat singing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”) but also fun pre-war novelty songs, big-band jazz, and killer surf instrumentals.
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A venture into the Major Arcana. The name comes from an early Delany novel, but you’re free to think of other towers and their falls. The music will assist you by raising crescendoes and crashing them down, and painting the aftermath of collapse.
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“By summer 1977, punk had become a parody of itself. … The vanguard that came to be known as “post-punk” saw 1977 not as a return to raw rock-’n-roll but the chance to make a break with tradition, and defined punk as an imperative to constant change. … [They] dedicated themselves to fufilling punk’s uncompleted musical revolution.” —Simon Reynolds, from Rip It Up And Start Again
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Silver Lining has all the beats that were missing from last year’s mix, mostly in the form of microhouse / tech-house / minimal / pick your favorite electronic nano-genre. But fear not — even if your name’s not Dieter and you don’t go clubbing at Tanz-Zentrum in Berlin, you may find something to like here. (Over 30% vocal content guaranteed.)
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This is a continuation of the shameless personal exercise in nostalgia I began in my “80–82” compilation. “1983” picks up where that one left off: September 1982, when I arrived at college. It covers only one year, up until September 1983, because there was so much great music we listened to, that it became clear that each year would need its own CD.
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Special all-ambient mix, replete with drones, static, hum as you hurtle through the night. For your refreshment, a brief yet sumptuous snack of melodies and beats will be served at mid-flight.
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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.
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