Never Ending Internet Mix Tape

a musical exquisite corpse. look it up.

05/25/2012 • 6:55 pm 0

Vol 10 / Trk 15 / Don’t Give Up


32 seconds into “Don’t Give Up” is the sound of a tambourine shaking exactly twice, then going silent. The tambourine starts back up later as a percussive track throughout the rest of the song, but this stray moment is quite clearly the work of a human being making a small but delightful error. Here’s my thesis statement: this moment is the climax of this volume. The last 14 tracks have been a slow but steady determination to show how musicians control their power of machines and instruments. Track by track we’ve shown more of that power—Yann Tiersen kills on the harpsichord; only H-bombs rival the destructive capacity of Caribou’s drumming; even Múm knows when to replace the glitchy samples with actual singing.

It wasn’t hard to pick out Lake to follow No Kids; we’re back to the sound of a handful of people playing live in a room, and—like us neverending mixers—excited to hear what comes out of it.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 10,

05/14/2012 • 10:47 pm 0

Vol 10 / Trk 12 / What Do You Think Will Happen Next?


What I love about “Les Jours Heureux” is that it pretty much catapulted us into the next volume. Not literally, of course, but I have to admit that I was feeling in a rut with regards to electronic music. It was really nice to hear something so human and warm—and jaunty! Never forget the jaunty—even though I wager Mr. Woodford would himself say that his leap ended up being further than perhaps he anticipated.

But no matter. My favorite mixes are circular, rather than linear. They force you to listen for details that’ll come back later, little notes or melodies or time signatures that might be easily forgotten and uncovered several listens later. “What Do You Think Will Happen Next?,” aside from its awesomely on-target title, brings back around the cosmopolitan good humor of Yann Tiersen, the curious horns from Efterklang and the joyous victory of Holy Fuck. I’m glad to be able to use one of Final Fantasy’s most cheery songs and thrilled that we’ve entered yet another uncharted sea for the Neverending Mix.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 10,

04/26/2012 • 11:39 pm 0

Vol 10 / Trk 08 / Alike


While I love the party time Mssrs. Smigielski and Caribou threw down, I found myself more and strangely attracted to the previous two tracks for the ways they seemed to approximate shifts between black and white to CMYK. “Yeti” is kind of at the far end of the scale—it’s Technicolor, possibly on shrooms—but something about the way the others shifted from crackling hesitation to bursts percussion and instrumentation drew me in. Meeting in the middle led me to “Alike” and its blossoming widescreen color. Efterklang doesn’t try to balance genres; they’re a band that seems to beg you to not use that word to describe them. Here, everything is a delicate balance: fragility and confidence, horns and drums, hooks and catharsis. Why I couldn’t follow the blistering fun of “Yeti” with something even more frenetic and playful is beyond me. I must be getting older.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 10,

04/05/2012 • 9:56 pm 0

Vol 10 / Trk 04 / Thank You Caroline (Andy Votel mix)


I was born without the gene that censors self-doubt, so I’ll start by saying that I’m not entirely certain this is the right track to follow Mouse on Mars. But after two days of ransacking my house for an appropriate response, this one worked its way to the top. Mainly because I was both repelled by and attracted to the way that “Butterflies” felt like several songs in one. While I liked the idea of finding something that would isolate a portion and move into a more streamlined theme, I also liked the idea of finding something equally complex.

So I turned to the guys who put the “yeesh!” in “pastiche,” The Avalanches. Whole subcategories of music criticism have been created to discuss how they’ve twisted the entirety of pop music around their fingers. But while their songs are usually hyperkinetic and hyperaware, when in the hands of a skilled remixer, they turn into something else entirely. Hence this Andy Votel remix, which strips away any impulse at sampling and focuses on live instrumentation. True, a lot of the band’s sense of pure joy is gone, but in its place is a more straightforward groove, turned downward in the same way as every track I’ve ever seen him get his hands on. And just when you find yourself wanting a change, the track revs up for the last 90 seconds into something that resembles a jam, albeit one for vaguely dour librarians.

In other words: it may not be a smart choice, but I love that it’s a smart track.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 10, ,

03/11/2012 • 5:40 pm 0

Everything That Converges Must Rise / Vol 09 / 031112

I think I can safely speak for Mr. Smigielski that we’re very happy we expanded to a quartet of authors for this volume. It’s been great to get some fresh perspectives and voices to help keep things moving forward. Or sideways. Or upside down. Though not our most consistent volume, I think it strikes a fine balance between evolution and adventure, passing from cool Europop to sample-heavy strangeness to lockstep Krautrock to somber indie electronica and ending up at twitchy R&B.

We welcome any interpretation of meaning you may want to apply to the resultant volume—my own is that this is a mix that reflects a difficult winter. Not necessarily weather-wise, but emotionally and mentally. It’s frequently cloudy and darkens easily, it sometimes lacks a strong human warmth and it often prefers a serious fragility to the cheer and pleasure we’ve seen in past volumes. On this, a day where we get the gift of more sunlight, my hope is that the next volume will shake off the gloom and embrace the joy of spring.

m. joosse

Download the Mix as a 93 MB zip file.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files. Email us if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01. Got it Together Again by Saint Etienne feat. Nathan Bennet
02. Let’s Call it Off by Peter Bjorn and John
03. Little Bit by Lykke Li
04. By Your Side by CocoRosie
05. Bats in the Attic (Unravelled) by King Creosote & Jon Hopkins
06. CMYK by James Blake
07. Ice by Patten
08. Mexican Grand Prix by Mogwai
09. Paradise Walk by Neu!
10. New Rock by Buffalo Daughter
11. Smoke by Cornelius
12. Be Good to Them Always by The Books
13. Alienation by Lali Puna
14. Rock My Boat by Dntel feat. Mia Doi Todd
15. Portofino by Teengirl Fantasy
16. Osaka Loop Line by Discovery

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 09

02/18/2012 • 3:49 pm 0

Vol 09 / Trk 13 / Alienation


Though I appreciate the twitchy glitchiness of “Be Good to Them Always,” I want to see a smidge more humanity. Thus I went to Lali Puna, one of the few girl-fronted bands who can successfully combine pop-song allure with electronic alarm.

“Alienation” is sort of a little sister to the Notwist’s “Consequence,” a track I very nearly used here but pulled away from due to my having championed it on mixes and in conversation for a full decade now. Both are the emotional climaxes on their respective albums, but where “Consequence” rides a dizzyingly haunting melody and jockeys for the title of Saddest Song I Own, “Alienation” absorbs patterns of noise and additional instruments to blossom into something quite beautiful. I love those sounds—typewriter keys, striking matchsticks, plucked strings—but they’re no match for the breathy vocal and piano and the almost-hidden guitar. Why have I not been talking about this for years too?

I promise my contributions to the next volume won’t be so German.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 09,

02/02/2012 • 10:21 pm 0

Vol 09 / Trk 09 / Paradise Walk


Somewhere between the mechanical menace of Mogwai and the, well, shit-ass weirdness of Patten lies “Paradise Walk,” certainly the krautiest of all the krautrock in my library. Which is only really Neu! and Can, so maybe that’s not saying much. I first heard this album—recorded in 1986, bootlegged in 1995, and officially released in 2010—last year in New York, and it’s always retained that wide-eyed wonder of wandering a massive city. It’s a pretty awesome coexistence of order and chaos, with samples and disembodied voices and the occasional windchime gliding over and under and through that wonderful drumbeat. When the synth line rises from the murky depths…I don’t know, it sounds like pure hope.

P.S. This one’s for you, Epp.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 09,

01/13/2012 • 8:20 pm 0

Vol 09 / Trk 05 / Bats in the Attic (Unravelled)


King Creosote is like an insomniac uncle, tinkering about the garage in the middle of the night. He’s amassed dozens of albums and home-recorded hundreds of tracks—the coastal Scottish equivalent of John Darnielle—and released them on CD-Rs and 7”s on his own label. He began cleaning up his sound around 2004 and last year reached what may be the pinnacle of his career, a collaboration with electronic artist Jon Hopkins. Few traces remain of the scrappy, ragged DIY quality of old songs re-recorded over and over to make his whole discography yet more serpentine. But in place of that is the definite sound of a man getting older and being surprisingly okay with it, ready to trade in the four-track for the two-car.

I labored over 10 or so KC tracks from the last decade, any of which would’ve been great but led us down wildly divergent paths (the mopey singer-songwriter, the droning guitar player, the happy accordion folkie, the sampling-heavy weirdo, etc.) In the end, I couldn’t pass up the grown-up-edness of this track, a Hopkins-remixed version of the highlight from Diamond Mine. Its melody and optimism bloom gradually, like the spring always around the corner.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 09, ,

01/04/2012 • 10:12 pm 0

Vol 09 / Trk 01 / Got it Together Again


As I’m sure I’ve said before here, I usually like to kick off a mix with something that blows away as much of the audience as possible. Start with the fireworks, set the bar high, scamper away gleefully. But damn if I wasn’t infected by Mixel Pixel’s low-key charm and co-lead singing. It’s hard to turn your back on that and aim for the rafters when there’s something so pleasant happening at eye level.

“Got it Together Again” is a cover of “another unfinished song” by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra (the quote marks are Lee’s, from the tribute album in his honor). It’s, perhaps in every sense of the word, a true ditty: brief, delightful, catchy as anything, riding a slight electronic hum and thumping bassline. Saint Etienne turns in possibly its most straightforward song ever and brings along a German singer doing a rather dry American accent and wonderful harmony. And before you know it they’re off to the pub (or the Coke machine) and that’s that. Coming off a volume with a decidedly European bent, it’s nice to at least pretend to be American for a couple of minutes.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 09, ,

12/06/2011 • 5:34 pm 0

Vol 08 / Trk 14 / Barnacle


Silly me. I chased my own tail for three days looking for the right song to follow EMA, going through piles of CDs to find a suitable complement. But the first time I played “California,” there was a voice deep in the back of my head going, She sounds like Lovers. Go get Lovers. I didn’t listen to it until I sat frustrated with all of my other options. Not surprisingly, it worked the best.

So here’s Lovers and, Carolyn Berk’s voice aside, it doesn’t have much to too much to do with EMA. My favorite mixes are the ones which echo what came before instead of be strictly linear, so I didn’t want to pass up the chance to help Mr. Smigielski close this particular loop or offer some warm voices and renewed optimism. And speaking of optimism, I wanted to note that this is my 50th posting to the NEIMT. Here’s to the next 50.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 08,

11/28/2011 • 8:41 pm 0

Vol 08 / Trk 12 / Leak at the Disco


The XX’s minimalism is their secret weapon—it can come across as slacker naivety, but it provides a lot of space for the listener to live in. You hear every instrument, every note, every word without pretension.

Baxter Dury has that same kind of minimalism, and though everything’s cranked up a few notches, he makes sure it’s all still crystal clear. The bass is the first thing you notice, but then you hear the intake of breath by the background singer at the chorus, the wonderful chord change by the guitars, the mechanized drumbeat, every rotor blade sound. Even his thick Cockney speaking voice shows that this is a guy who doesn’t give a shit if you think he’s talented or just cheeky.

I’m well-aware that Dury’s narrating style is something of an acquired taste, though again, don’t let it cause you to overlook something special—in this case, some acutely interesting lyrics (“The Chiswick disco had a leak of egos, and I waded through it like an oil spillage…”) If you’re looking for an even better example of this storytelling, with an even more addictive bassline, seek out his 2005 track “Cocaine Man,” a stone-cold classic of English indie rock.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 08,

11/19/2011 • 5:42 pm 0

Vol 08 / Trk 10 / Bad Street


I’m glad we’re veering in a more organic direction, because let’s be honest: I was getting as tired of typing the phrase “synth-pop,” as I’m sure you were reading it.

So in this world tour of…that phrase…we finally arrive at the New York version. Twin Sister is equal parts ZE Records disco, Talking Heads urbane punk, Debbie Harry seduction, and Santigold playfulness. Technically, Hooray for Earth are from the same city, but while that band sounds like it’s being broadcast from a zeppelin over Manhattan, “Bad Street” is ground-level, gliding along narrow streets and breezing through packed intersections. It incorporates brief glimpses of soul, funk, Hair-style singalongs, and more, like passing storefront AM radios on a sunny afternoon. It’s another winner from this year, and a track I hope will make your iPod’s designated “walking through a city” mix.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 08,

11/15/2011 • 8:46 pm 0

Vol 08 / Trk 08 / Matter of Time


One of the first synth-pop bands I got to know was New Order. Not the hip “Blue Monday”-era New Order—that came later—but the post-hiatus “Crystal”-era New Order. Get Ready is one of my favorite albums of the last decade, and what I liked most was that every song on that album took its sweet time getting to where it was going. Usually there was a minute-long instrumental buildup before the vocal started, then three or so minutes of fairly basic groove, then another minute-long instrumental outro. All of this had a calming effect, with each track unfolding gradually, causing the album as a whole to feel quite lived-in for its hour-long runtime. As a result, there didn’t have to be much experimentation on the band’s part; each track followed the same basic template for success.

I mention all of this because The Chain Gang of 1974’s Wayward Fire is a similar album, with many songs passing the five-minute mark thanks to that same relaxed wind-roll-unwind structure. “Matter of Time” is definitely not a groundbreaking song. It doesn’t do anything unusual in that same ground between Chromatics and Cut Copy we’ve been exploring this volume. But it’s a whole lot of fun, with everything sounding massive and glittering-clean. Sometimes the wish to play a song for everyone trumps every other need.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 08,

10/31/2011 • 9:34 am 0

Vol 08 / Trk 06 / Bring Us Closer Together


I hate to keep pulling from my “Best of 2011” iTunes folder, but I suppose it’s a good problem to have when hunting for quality mix tracks. There’s been a lot of excellent synth-pop released this year, including Hooray for Earth’s True Loves, which is chock-full of songs I’m certain Mssrs. Rhys and Bip would approve of. True Loves has an awesome low end, rumbling and powerful enough to anchor the often-airy vocals. Every song has a different set of nice touches, and on “Bring Us Closer Together” those include shakers, tambourines, buzzsaw effects, miner sounds, soul-singer background vocals, clipped guitars and a hook so epic it stretches beyond the horizon line.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 08,

10/30/2011 • 6:35 pm 0

Vol 08 / Trk 04 / Claudia Lewis


Over the course of several albums, M83 has evolved into a maximalist king of synth-pop, piling on layer after layer to create a virtual ‘80s reality that draws you in like a black hole. You don’t have to watch YouTube videos or read hyperbolic reviews to experience memories of your own: “couples skate” in a darkened roller rink, riding your bicycle on your street at sunset, driving with the windows down, and so on. In other words: it’s the soundtrack of the specific memory of being young 20–25 years ago and hearing Tears for Fears or Howard Jones come on the radio. I have no idea how people significantly younger or older than me react to it, but for me listening to M83 has the same effect as trying to think back to that time period and finding that all my memories are hazy and faded, like a picture out too long in the sun.

The brand-new Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming contains a slew of five-star songs, so it was difficult to narrow it to just one. But “Claudia Lewis” has just the right mix of heat and frost, checking off the ‘80s to-do list with ease: funky bass, programmed drum, ringing guitar, synths cascading off each other, whoa-ohs, doot-doots and the stray cowbell. On previous tracks and albums, I feel like the main emotion evoked was of wistfulness. Here, there’s a sense of power, like the whole world is laid out in front of you and you can go anywhere you want. Not a bad metaphor for this mix either.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 08,

10/19/2011 • 10:24 pm 0

Vol 08 / Trk 02 / Never Known Love


Hats off to Mr. Smigielski, who started off this volume with a bang. Drive is indeed an incredible film, with confidence and style everywhere, with a soundtrack that’s truly a thing of wonder. It’s a perfect complement between tone (‘80s icy coolness) and setting (the vast anonymity outside Hollywood), which sets the stage for a strong, strong start here.

“Nightcall” and much of the score remind me of a film reel unspooling at a frame rate that’s slightly off, like we’re moving in slower motion, deliberate but focused, like your whole life is made up of those money shots in Michael Bay films just before the heroes join the action. So that’s where “Never Known Love” comes in, smoothing out Kavinsky’s quirks but keeping the focus on chiming guitars and little percussive touches that bounce off the beat. While I usually try to abide by John Cusack-in-High Fidelity’s rule of making sure the second track always ups the ante set by the first, I wanted to go with something more like a thoughtful slow jam that strengthened the mood.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 08,

10/10/2011 • 5:33 pm 0

A Lineage / Vol 07 / 101011

The best part of seeing these volumes put together at their end is to trace a line through 15 tracks and see how different the last is from the first. We travel a lot of musical ground in these volumes, so the beauty always comes when the little changes between tracks cascade through the rest of the mix, creating a new line that travels in a new direction we weren’t anticipating only a couple of tracks before. We end up crossing our own tracks sometimes, but always in pursuit of the next great song out there. I guess that means it’s a silly straw more than a line, but weren’t those always more fun to drink out of?

It’s been a blast spending a lot of time in the ‘80s, then picking that line back up 30 years later and seeing what had changed. It’s made this volume maybe the most cohesive so far, and certainly one that demonstrated why Mr. Smigielski and I love music so much.

m. joosse

Download the Mix as a 74 MB zip file.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files. Email me if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01. Dance Stance by Dexys Midnight Runners
02. Love -> Building on Fire by Talking Heads
03. Be Stiff by Lene Lovich
04. Rattle My Bones by The Suburbs
05. What People Do For Fun by Martha & the Muffins
06. Warrior in Woolworths by X-Ray Spex
07. Mack the Knife [live] by The Psychedelic Furs
08. Inconvenience [12” version] by The Au Pairs
09. Funky Instrumental by Bush Tetras
10. Watch the Lines by Mother & the Addicts
11. Year of Explorers by The Magnificents
12. In Fact, You’re Just Fiction by Robocop Kraus
13. The Architect by dEUS
14. Atlantis to Interzone by Klaxons
15. Dawn of the Dead by Does it Offend You, Yeah?

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 06

10/10/2011 • 3:56 pm 1

Vol 07 / Trk 15 / Dawn of the Dead


“Dawn of the Dead” is built on a melody that sounds like a European ambulance siren, a steel drum, and a grunting background chorus—three things that have no real place in pop music. Yet this band, with its name that should also be tossed out for bad taste, seems to make them all work together. And not only that, but make it all sound truly fantastic.

I’m not completely certain this is the best possible follow-up to “Atlantis to Interzone,” but I feel pretty good that it’s the best possible conclusion to the volume. It has a certain finality to it, whether via the broken relationship described in the lyrics or the zombies of the title. As we’ve incorporated a lot of synthesizers into the last third of the volume, I wanted to end it in a slightly more humanist and warmer place, ruminating on what’s come before and ready to travel to whatever comes next. And perhaps the presence of the steel drum will inspire Mr. Smigielski to make it an all-Hawaiian volume.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 07,

10/05/2011 • 10:20 am 0

Vol 07 / Trk 13 / The Architect


Surprise! Bet you came here thinking this was going to be an LCD Soundsystem track, right? How could it not be, with those glorious cowbells, guitars, and snotty chants? Aesthetically, that would’ve been the wise choice. But it wouldn’t have been as emotionally fulfilling for me. Plus, I’m convinced that most everyone who checks in on this mix is already overly familiar with That James Murphy Sound, so I would rather try the shock of the new instead of the comfort of the familiar.

So may I present “The Architect,” simultaneously the best ode to Buckminster Fuller ever made, and the greatest thing to come out of Belgium since Stella Artois. dEUS (caps accurate) has been kicking around Europe since the mid-90s but came to America only occasionally. This 2008 gem was not released here, which blows my mind a little, as it could easily top critics’ lists or soundtrack a car commercial. It’s one of my all-time favorites, starting with that wonderful Fuller soundbite (“Nevermind that outer space stuff, let’s get down to earth”), building into the chanting chorus and electronic flourishes, and a perfectly understated use of tambourines. If this doesn’t get us all—Mr. Smigielski included—up and dancing as we run wildly toward this volume’s finale, nothing will.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 07,

10/03/2011 • 8:14 am 0

Vol 07 / Trk 11 / Year of Explorers


Since Scotsmen are a dour folk, anytime you can wrestle a happy-sounding track out of them, you have to pair it with a second before things get moody. Recorded in 2005, released in the UK in 2007, and brought to the US in 2009, “Year of Explorers” is as informed by the fun and tasteful recklessness of the ‘80s as “Watch the Lines,” though more overtly anthemic.

Wait, that’s maybe the word I was searching for: anthemic. Scottish bands make killer anthems—songs that sound like kings, songs that sound important. Which is why many of them are so clearly influenced by the ‘80s, when the stakes of saving the state of pop music were life-and-death. And which is why I like almost every one I encounter.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 07,

About the NEIMT

Every couple of days, one of the NEIMT authors will post a song that is in some way a reaction to the previous song posted by another author. Every 15 songs will be packaged up with cover art and presented for download as a complete mix. The only rule is that no artist can appear more than once in the same volume.

Subscribing

The best way to be informed of NEIMT posts is to subscribe in the field in the upper right. You can also follow the page on facebook. We longer maintain an email list. Email is dead to us. We'd love to hear your feedback in the comments of this blog, but if you'd like to contact the NEIMT directly, email to: robb (at) agrayspace (dot) com.

Previous Incarnations of the NEIMT

You can still see the old mixes at neimtarchive.blogspot.com. Some of the old download links might still even work.

About Copyright

We freely admit that this blog is probably a violation of artistic copyright law. We put together these mix "tapes" as way to share great music in a way that encourages artist support and utilizes grassroots promotion by purposefully violating those copyrights. We would like to imagine that no artist in their right mind would oppose such altruistic intentions despite its bureaucratic insubordinance.

Join 623 other followers

The Authors

NEIMT Archives

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 623 other followers