Mr. Smigielski came to me in the winter of 2010 with an idea to build a mix with multiple participants, pushing and pulling against each other’s diverse tastes and interests to create an audial document in real time. How could I not be excited? It was a challenge that I’d never seen before. So we started, with no idea where it would go. With our friend Epp, we moved through volume after volume, and picked up Mssrs. Klops and Woodford along the way. We saw our number of followers build and our traffic increase. We even had an app made.

The mix took a lot of twists and turns, and perhaps inadvertently reflected life itself. In the last few months, one of us moved to London; one of us moved to Chicago; one of us turned in his notice that he would be leaving the mix; some of us found our relationships to music changing; and all of us found ourselves insanely busy with careers, lives, and other priorities. When we stopped to take stock of everything, we came to the conclusion that the end of this volume was the right time to put the Neverending Mix on hold for the foreseeable future.

I can speak for all of us when I say that it’s been an incredible experience working on this project. We hope the NEIMT introduced you to a new band or song, made a new connection to something you already loved, or got you to make your own mixes. We hope it changed, even just a tiny bit, the way you interact with music. It did all of those for us. We might be back someday, maybe in a different form or with new writers, but we’ll always be out there devouring music, thrilled by its possibilities, curious about the neverending roads it will take us on. We’ll see you out there.

m. joosse

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The tracklist is as follows:

01. Sitting Still, Talking About Jets by the Detachment Kit
02. Odessa by Animals as Leaders
03. Screams of Joy by Lungfish
04. I Built Myself a Metal Bird by Silver Mt. Zion
05. How Near How Far by …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
06. Out of My Mind by Dope Body
07. Silencer by mewithoutYou
08. List of Demands (Reparations) by Saul Williams
09. Kung Fu by the Dirtbombs
10. Little Bit of Feel Good by Jamie Lidell
11. Free by Graffiti6
12. Good Music by Colorama
13. Believe E.S.P. by Deerhoof
14. Long Flight by Future Islands
15. Blinders by Geographer

As with past volumes, when I’m assigned their final tracks, I tend to go for ones that sound epic—a single take, a sunset, a long sigh. “Long Flight” put me in a reflective mood, and I wanted to return to some of the slower tempos from earlier in the volume. I like Future Islands and their off-kilter, dark new wave sound, so it was difficult to parse a response down from a vast library that’s been invaded and conquered by new wave-influenced bands year after year.

Or perhaps I just didn’t know where else to go. This volume has been, to say the least, erratic. It was driven almost more by personal whims than a desire for consistency. In many ways, that’s been proof of our unofficial motto around here: follow the music, post from the gut, do what feels appropriate. If this volume has meandered down a river, perhaps I consider “Blinders” to be the time when the dock finally comes into view.

m. joosse

I have a weird relationship with singers. There’s a thin and ill-defined line between what I think of as unacceptably pretension and compellingly pretensions when it comes to the human voice. Eddie Vedder? No thanks. David Bowie? Yes please! I seriously doubt either gentleman lathers up in the shower singing Call Me Maybe by growling like a dog, or  in a voice that constantly sounds like it’s on the verge of tears but that’s how they sing for us, the audience.

Samuel Herring, the lead singer of Future Islands, is full of shit. Seriously. His voice is 100% stage—angry at times, then sad, then just plain spastic—it is an invention. But it’s an invention I like. Is that a british accent? Is he narrating a Shakespearean play? I really don’t care—it’s cool, and it moves me. It’s a lie, but all good truths are.

b.klops

The best response I can muster at the moment is Deerhoof’s Believe E.S.P. Deerhoof—a quartet that originated in San Francisco—has a reputation of being a bit unpredictable, and largely difficult to classify. Debuting as a noise band, evolving into discombobulated pop, and self-identifying as a band without a plan, they’ve mastered reinvention over the last twenty years.

The heavy, leading bass sticks in my head for days after I play this track. Though a definable rhythm differentiates it from its predecessor, both share an undeniable energy, and bolstering confidence. It just needs a little more cowbell.

Happy New Year. Here’s to a new beginning.

t. woodford

Graffiti6’s pop meets Northern soul with this Edwyn Collins-produced Welsh gem from this past summer. It’s young, it’s dumb, it’s…pretty self-explanatory. I heard last week that the word “earworm” got added to the dictionary in 2012. I assume the photo underneath is of Colorama.

m. joosse

It took me awhile to answer Jamie Lidell—not because it’s too much of a curve ball but because I LOVE Jamie Lidell. Smooth move ,Woodford. I dig it.

Graffiti 6 is new to me. I’d love to share some interesting story about the band’s history or an insight into this record but I have no idea—and the cursory glance at Wikipedia doesn’t turn up much. What I do know is that this track is catchy as hell and shares the same soulful spirit as Little Bit of Feel Good. I dare you to listen to this just once. I dare you.

What the hell is going on in this volume? Actually I think the answer is simple. What is dynamic, push-and-pull rock and roll but the aural embodiment of teenage sexual angst? No one can live like that forever and I think thanks to Mr. Lidell our little NEIMT volume just got laid. The tension has lifted, and suddenly everything is a little easier.

b.klops

I’ve slaved over his catalog for the last couple of hours, discovering a few songs that tie our rather disjointed volume together. I ultimately decided to respond to Kung Fu a little more directly, and leave the heavy tracks behind us. I could draw a few direct comparisons between this track and the previous, but I’d rather leave a bit of the discovery to you.

Though Little Bit of Feel Good doesn’t tell his whole story, Jamie Lidell is a beatboxing, one-man, soul-inspired machine. If I were to build on Mr. Joosse’s analysis of the human and the mechanical, I would offer a layering of human and human to create a faux-mechanical sound. I particularly appreciate the saxophone solo a couple of minutes into this track that creates a nice moment of ambient blues. It’s a great loop that leaves me wondering where this volume is off to next.

t. woodford

As is becoming the norm, Mr. Klops leaves me curiously flabbergasted with where this volume is going. But I’ll try something different this time and respond to his one track only, instead of the cumulative direction of the mix. It’s going to take us further away from the heaviness of the first half, but let’s see what happens.

The vocal similarities between Saul Williams and Mick Collins are there, and there’s an interesting line about Collins as an African-American, but there are only a couple of songs I can think of by Collins’ band The Dirtbombs that could follow “List of Demands.” “Kung Fu” is one of them, and I’d like to think that after the mono-quality previous track, this one explodes in full stereo (and does some nifty fuckery between channels). It’s also the best Bauhaus homage/theft I know, using the singularly awesome backbeat from “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” as a propeller into the bulk of the song where fuzzy Detroit guitars squall. It’s another interesting combination of the human and the mechanical, which I suppose I’m inadvertently turning into a theme lately.

m. joosse

mewithoutYou is a tough act to follow. I’m g0ing to veer here a bit, away from the dramatic swings in dynamics and toward a more straight forward rock song.

When I read T. Woodford’s declaration of Aaron Weiss as a poet I immediately thought of my favorite rock poet—Saul Williams.

Saul is vicious. And smart. And vicious. William’s music hits hard, sometimes musically, always lyrically. His 2007 record The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! completely floored me when I first heard it. At first because of it’s genius re-imagining of my all-time favorite record and then because of William’s deft hand at revealing subtle truths about race and wealth.

William’s is very active politically—an outspoken member of Occupy Musicians and a war protestor. Which made his decision to license this song for a Nike ad campaign quite controversial. I’ve decided to suspend my judgement—because it was that Nike commercial that first turned me on to Williams, and because List of Demands quite simply kicks my ass in.

b.klops

Aaron Weiss is a poet. Often, I catch myself on the train listening to tracks he’s written on repeat, while reading, deciphering, interpreting, and responding. The depth throughout his career is proficiently astounding.

I discovered mewithoutYou and met Aaron in the same day, at a festival a stone’s throw from my hometown. On stage, he was such a big personality—emotional, impassioned, and demonstrative. In person, he was the antithesis—meek, gentle, and submissive. There was something honest about this experience that I’ll never place.

This blend of personalities is also persistent in the music. Spoken word blends into an emotional bellow. A fuzzy bass offsets an affable riff. White noise wouldn’t work without a wall of sound. Quiet compliments loud, and one thing leads to a more thorough appreciation of the next.

Truth to tell, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to post this track, and tonight feels apt.

t. woodford

THIS was the track I wish I’d posted the last time. But alas, it only came into my possession two days after that post. Sorry, B.

A general rule I live by is that anything involving J. Robbins is worth a listen. He hits a sweet spot pretty much every time, always with an emphasis on crunch and melody. You can pretty much always identify one of his songs if you encounter it in passing. In recent years, he’s expanded his palette a bit—whether this has anything to do with the remnants of emo going away or the DC-Baltimore axis mutating is almost beside the point; it’s still quite nice to see a guy change things up.

So that’s where Dope Body comes in. I read a description of the band as “sludge-punk” and another as “bro-rock,” neither of which I’d normally associate with Robbins. What I love about this track—and the great majority of their new Robbins-produced album—is that he uses his sound as a base to build on, not the end result. So above his trademark ADD bass is a pummeling drum, throaty growl and skull-rattling guitar. And a semi-automatic cowbell. Above all, the melody is still vital, even if it’s pleasingly menacing. Hopefully this volume doesn’t veer into screamo territory, but if we do, at least I had a good time getting there.

m. joosse

Given that I named …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead as my runner-up in the tension/energy game it only makes sense that I fall back on them now.

The album this track comes from, Source Tags and Codes, is one of Ptichfork’s rare “10 out of 10″ rated records. Perfect—according to them—and me. There is not a note out of place, a lyric that falls flat. I listen to this record a few times a year and every time I have to rise from the couch and pretend to be the singer, or the guitar. It’s just too perfect an expression of teenage angst and rock energy. How Near How Far lies smack-dab in the middle of this epic LP and in my opinion is the quintessential …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead track—smart, heavy, deliberate.

b.klops

“A song by Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra comes on like a thunderstorm. The skies darken, things creak in the stillness, someone remarks on the ominous mood and suddenly the world erupts in a calamity of lightning and upheaval. When you think the world is saturated with such unrest, it peters out and the world seems more alive than before.”

I strongly identify with this analogy, and feel this track is its epitome. From the exhilarating, invigorating intro to the nearly hysterical climax, it is stark, charged, raw, heavy, saturated, meditative, and unpredictable—like any good thunderstorm.

I’m excited at the possibility of exploring more despondent, droning post-rock as we delve into this volume.

t. woodford

Mr. Klops, I love you but you’re bringing me down.

I had a visceral reaction to “Odessa,” and not in a good-want-to-barf way. That sound of math rock melding into nü-metal is painful. I can sort of appreciate the precision musicianship, but it’s been bled of heart and light and melody. It’s the sound of doors closing and walls appearing ever tighter. And aside from all that, it contains nothing that I admired about the Detachment Kit track—a slow burn, space between notes, raw emotion, an understanding that it was created by humans.

So I submit my own version of song-as-monolith, a recently dusted and polished track from Baltimore’s Lungfish, recorded in 1999 but finally given release in 2012. The slower—no, wait, I want to use the word ‘deliberate’ instead—tempo allows it to unfurl, giving you time to create peaks and valleys out of almost-imperceptible changes in the repetition. The drums pound rather than pummel, the multitracked vocal echoes across the valley. I respect the request to go heavy in this volume, but my version of heavy must be warmer and more organic.

m. joosse

I LOVE this curveball. Craij did an awesome job of setting a very new tone and path for this volume in contrast with the few I’ve been involved in to-date.

I had the (perhaps dubious) honor of living in Washington D.C. at the turn of the millenium and for a time was SO. INTO. EMO. Yeah, yeah, I know—”post-hardcore” or whatever makes you feel better. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I once wrote an article to Pitchfork.com complaining about a Dismemberment Plan show. Fer real.

It was a phase though. The energy and tension of the late-nineties post-hardcore stuff eventually transformed into the energy and tension of post-electronic music for me. But sometimes, when a deadline is looming, I need to ROCK OUT. A little …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead will usually do the trick, but sometimes I need more. And when I need that blast of pure unadulterated rock energy I reach for Animals As Leaders.

Animals as Leaders stands at the vanguard of a sort of post-post-hardcore. Solidly influenced by the Fugazi-generation of grind and stomp but with a big dash of “real” metal and a solid tablespoon’s worth of mathy bleep influence. Odessa almost sounds like a videogame soundtrack for the first few bars thanks to some amazing sampling-pedal acrobatics from guitarist Tobin Abasi. At exactly :39 that facade strips away and Animals As Leaders thoroughly rips your face apart. The odd time changes, the guitar acrobatics, the precision drumming…damn. Damn.

As long as we’re putting our jetpacks on we might as well strap some missiles to that puppy.

b.klops

craij

You know that feeling you get when you realize you’ve been on autopilot? You’re at work, but don’t remember the commute. Or, you’ve been shuffling your collection of music, yet can’t name the last three artists that were played. I believe, by building slight inconveniences into your day, you can reduce your tendency to zone out. For example, I’ve changed all my clocks to military time temporarily, so it forces me to stop and think for a moment. Or, by retelling stories I’ve heard throughout the day, I’m compelled to listen more carefully. Little things.

That’s what this volume is all about, in my books. Realizing you’ve been stuck in a mid-summer night’s dream, and trying to reign in reality. As spring fades into summer, and summer bleeds into autumn, I’m realizing the seasons provide a bit of stability around an otherwise temporal bubble. It’s time to wake up.

From genuine to forced idealism. From honest-to-goodness Americana to a gentle fuzz and hum. This volume has been interesting, distracting, thoughtful, and above all, fun.

I know I’m blathering, and I’m probably reading into this more than my colleagues. On an emotional level, I’ve really enjoyed putting this one together. Fellas, here’s to the future. Here’s to a bit of improvised stability. And, here’s to carrying on.

t. woodford

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The tracklist is as follows:

01. Gobbledigook by Sigur Ros
02. You’re Not Supposed To by Field Music
03. Maple Leaves by Jens Lekman
04. All Wash Out by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
05. River by Akron/Family
06. Think That You Might Be Wrong by Great Lake Swimmers
07. Who Loves The Sun? by The Velvet Underground
08. The Boy With the Arab Strap by Belle and Sebastian
09. Cheating the Game by James Yorkston and the Athletes
10. Kites are Fun by Free Design
11. Laugh and Be Happy by Randy Newman
12. Yard Work by Lambchop
13. The Swimmer by Ladybug Transistor
14. Mountains by Sparklehorse
15. Fuck This Place by Frightened Rabbit

I couldn’t tell if I was affected by Mr. Woodford’s Sparklehorse post and knowledge of how that story ended, or just felt that this volume needed an epic downer for an ending. Either way, all the songs I’d earmarked for this post had appropriately titled songs: “Plane Crash,” “Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend,” “Too Old to Die Young,” etc.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Need something huge-sounding? Hit the highlands and chat up the first indie band you meet. And no one does epic downer better than Frightened Rabbit, a band that was born bearded and furrow-browed. On this, possibly their scrappiest song of their career, they’ve brought along Tracyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura, making this a Scottish version of the Justice League.

“Fuck This Place” is thinner than most FR songs, only because you can pretty much hear every layer. At the back is a field recording of a rainy street corner; in the middle is rough and tumble percussion that I think Mark Linkous would appreciate; to the front is a rather regal brass section that swells softly. All wrapped in a lovely duet that builds in emotional plaintiveness before fading out in a rush of fuzz and hum.

It’s closing time on Vol 11. I’m left feeling a little weighted down by the music. Take me home.

m. joosse

Mountains is a beautifully choreographed dichotomy between Dangermouse and the late Mark Linkous. It was penned under the stage name Sparklehorse, wherein Linkous was the singer, multi-instrumentalist, and mastermind.

Speaking of dichotomy, it strikes me that the vocals of this track hide behind a thin film of white noise, while the heavy, industrialized guitar emits a weary squall consistently and thoroughly over top. Though lo- and hi-fi are constantly at odds, this track eloquently blends them into a seductive, narcotic, almost sleepy patter. It begs me to consider my heavy heart, if only for a moment.

It’s going to be alright.

Dichotomy aside, I admire the outro as thoroughly as the rest. A smattering of electronic blips and bleeps to remind you of the other life Linkous led, which is subtly present herein—electronic, ambient, and celestial.

If you haven’t heard the album from which I plucked it, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, I strongly encourage you to—tonight. It is simple, yet brilliant. You won’t regret bringing it into your Saturday night.

t. woodford

Gary Olson’s voice is undeniable and the way this song shifts from pop, to Bacharachian jazz and back again is effortless. And it’s that shift—from the jangly guitars to the minor-key bridge and back that convinced me The Swimmer was the perfect choice. Emotional depth, a ray of sunshine, AND you get a horn section and so much recorder. So much.

b.klops

Sorry guys, I don’t buy it. Being happy because you’re happy—it’s nice and all, but it’s not real life. It strikes me as unsubstantial and kind of boring. Call me cynical or post-millennial or overly pragmatic, but isn’t it far more rewarding to see the sun emerge from behind a cloud than to see a fully blue sky? Besides all that, I think there was a lot more indie pop to explore before moving on to another sub-genre. So I filed away the horn-heavy tracks and the simplified lyrics and decided to try and refocus the volume a bit.

Lambchop is one of the great American bands of the last 20 years, effortlessly wandering between country, rock, jazz, R&B, and much more. “Yard Work,” an unreleased-in-the-US track, finds them in an uptempo mood, musing over the state of Kurt Wagner’s grounds. It takes a couple of listens, but many smile-inducing elements start to announce their presence. Like the background piano lines, the “ooh wah hoo” chorus, the vibes, the oddball references to CBS and the Pointer Sisters, the brushed drums. Outside of “Up with People” and “You Masculine You” and maybe two others, this is one of the happiest tracks in Lambchop’s vast, vast catalog. As a representation of joy, it’s the kind that grows on you, until you didn’t realize you were smiling already.

Honestly, that aforementioned cloud isn’t meant to rain on a parade, just maybe show it in a different light.

m. joosse

I’m going to be honest with you, mixtapers. I’ve got nothing close to Free Design in my collection. I’ve been thinking about it for days, totally racking my brain, and I can’t seem to come up with anything comparable. This one might be a little more thematic in its connection, but I’ve decided to embrace it.

Here, I present to you the king of unpretentious, happy-as-hell, family-oriented music. Ladies and gentleman, the incomparable Randy Newman.

If you’re unfamiliar with Mr. Newman’s discography, you haven’t seen a Disney-Pixar film in the last decade. (I’ll bet you never thought you’d see a reference to A Bug’s Life on NEIMT. But, there you have it.) Newman has been nominated for twenty Academy Awards, three Emmy’s, five Grammy’s, is a member of the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, and was inducted as a Disney Legend. More appropriately, he’s responsible for nearly thirty years of innocent discourse in the soft-rock scene, and is responsible for one of my favorite phrases in recent history…

Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

t. woodford

I LOVE Free Design. I love the arrangements, the jazz-influenced time signatures, the harmonies, and perhaps most of all the completely innocent, unpretentious, happy-as-hell lyrics. Not every free design track is so bright yellow in emotional color but even their more melancholy numbers possess a childlike innocence to the lyrics—which can make them sting even more—but often they’re celebrations of love, the seasons, and family. After a short stint in the late sixties to early seventies Free Design disappeared until being name-checked by like-minded early 2000′s acts like Pizzicato Five. This renewed interest flooded the market with trip-hoppy remix records—avoid these—if you like what you hear I strongly urge you to find a copy of Kites Are Fun or You Could Be Born Again, throw on some headphones and melt like an ice cream cone in the sun.

b.klops

Mr. Smigielski’s going to sit out the next couple of rounds, so we’ll move full speed ahead into the volume’s final third. Or is that half speed? Frankly, this sweetly relaxed end of summer thing we have going here is too nice to give up. Nothing in my collection speaks to this time of year quite so well as James Yorkston and the Athletes’ Moving Up Country, a folksy masterpiece from the wilds of Scotland. It’s soundtracked my starts of falls and sunny winter days every year for the last decade like a trusted and comfy chair. Recently given a re-release for its 10^th anniversary, it came with a disc of demos and live-in-studio versions that were quite illuminating.

“Cheating the Game,” in its original form, is acoustic, warm, bright and crisp. This demo is rawer in all senses—the electric guitar (almost never heard on the original Moving Up Country) borders on jangly, which I say Stuart Murdoch and co. would approve of; the percussion is moved further to the background; and there’s plenty of room to breathe and move around between the bass (which Lou Reed would like) and the slide guitar (which Great Lake Swimmers would like). It’s exactly what you want to find in an unearthed demo: the sound of musicians loose and spry, capturing the start of something gorgeous and colorful before more order sets in, revealing a side of them you always hoped you’d be lucky enough to hear one day.

m. joosse

I’m afraid this may be too obvious a response, but then again, maybe that’s its saving grace. I spent a few hours perusing my collection, before realizing I couldn’t shake The Boy With The Arab Strap from my subconscious. It’s really not unlike Who Loves The Sun?—catchy upbeat tempo, with a sweet, yet full-bodied trajectory.

What I really like about this track, and most other Belle & Sebastian tracks for that matter, is its persistent duality. From the outset, it sounds optimistic, albeit a little cautious. When you dig a layer deeper, you quickly uncover references to prison, chaos, racism, and a city that doesn’t quite fit you. There’s some debate as to whether this track is a societal commentary on the city of London (sorry, Mr. Smigielski), a scathing reference to Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat, or a readjustment to society after recovering from distant isolation.

Because there is no clear answer, I leave it to your interpretation.

t. woodford

Geez! Sorry for the wait people. Between work and a mix of projects I let my self get more than a little behind. I promise all you loyal NEIMT-ers it won’t happen again.

I wanted to retain that feeling of the sitting summer sun that Mr. Joosse established with Great Lake Swimmers but turn up the tempo a notch. Who Loves The Sun is my very favorite kind of pop, melancholy lyrics accompanied by pure rainbow-coated sweetness.

b.klops

I wanted to follow “River” with something equally upbeat, but something kept pulling me away to the gorgeous lushness of this Great Lake Swimmers track. It sounds like a lot of summery things—open windows, lightning bugs wandering by, standing in a river—all of which inject a certain amount of peace into this volume. Its airiness is elegance personified; it brings back the delight of the indie pop I saw earlier and marries it to the graceful Americana that we’re just starting to delve into.

The heat’s broken, dusk is coming, let’s turn the lights down low so they burn a soft yellow instead. Let’s move to the floor and close our eyes and sway together.

m. joosse

Perhaps its simply the swelter of the midwest summer and the unending drought in the air, but I could not shake the buzzy campfire imagery every time I listened to All Washed Out. There’s something distinctly American about it. And by American I mean Appalachian. And by Appalachian, I mean to suggest it’s like a scene out of the soon to be made Wes Anderson version of Coal Minor’s Daughter.

To build on that mystique, I offer up the Akron/Family. No one in my mind delivers the atmosphere of cicada buzz and country sweet melodies quite like them. Yet it never veers into parody and always maintains a unpredictable, modern edge.

r. smigielski

Life’s been tough over the past couple of months—devastating lows paired with incomparable highs. Unexpected change intertwined with ugly anticipation. I’ve lived through the full spectrum of human emotion, often on a daily basis.

As I find myself approaching the end of this period of fazed hesitancy, I enjoy a certain calmness in both Maple Leaves and All Wash Out. They’re both undoubtedly pop. The latter comes from a perspective of unreserved reflection, and accepted defeat. I have to admit that it’s somewhat comforting.

For the first time in weeks, I’m relaxing in my living room. This track is playing on repeat, with an undertone of fireworks sporadically sounding off in the background. I realized about ten minutes ago that Alexander perfectly sums the collective feeling of the nation. “Free is something to believe in.”

Enjoy your independence.

t. woodford

I’m a little shocked Jens hasn’t graced the NEIMT already. 3 solid albums, (though I’d argue You’re So Silent Jens—the compilation this cut is pulled from counts as a forth) a slew of amazing EPs, some remixes and the best live show I’ve seen in years—it’s time the guy received the NEIMT bump.

This version of Maple Leaves is a subtle remix of the original 7″ version recorded primarily to replace some obvious samples that might have landed the increasingly popular singer in some legal trouble. I have  You’re So Silent.. on vinyl and I’ve managed to wear a short skip in this track. Just. Perfect. Pop.

b.klops

How do you solve a problem like Iceland? Something about that island and its quirky bands—I don’t know. The Sigur Rós track was indeed delightful, and I had the perfect follow-up in mind: Björk’s “In the Musicals,” which amped up the oddness with a hefty dose of Looney Tunes batshitery. But alas, my external HD is fried at the moment so I can’t get to it. And besides, we’ve gone 11 volumes without repeating an artist, so why start now?

That brought me to the dreary north of England, where a number of bands have fought against rainy winters to produce tight and wonderful albums. The most inventive of these is Field Music, who grow more interesting with each passing year. Two brothers and their friend create complex songs that rope in a capella harmonies, ‘70s-style soft rock, chamber pop, ‘80s Fairlight synths, string sections, handclaps, cowbells and much more. “You’re Not Supposed To” is from a 2005 single, and perhaps doesn’t quite echo “Gobbledigook”’s wild joy as it smoothes out its edges and streamlines it, like coal under pressure, to create a compact, sturdy, shiny diamond of a pop song.

m. joosse

There is something delightfully rubbery about this incredible song. It’s mostly a frenetic wash of rhythm and textures, yet the acoustic guitar and vocal exist in some half speed counter universe. It’s more like a really deft remix than it is a song that was written purposefully this way. It’s very organic feeling, however with its Animal Collective-like background vocals, it’s still hanging to elements of the sampling universe we’ve just emerged from. I really can’t of a better way to build on Vol 10 and infuse this next volume with a rush of blood to the head and heart. Oh the places we’ll go.

r. smigielski

I’m a big fan of Volume 10. There’s a nice breeze flowing through this latest edition of the Never Ending Internet Mixtape—a shaft of sunlight hitting the living room floor. It’s a happier, friendlier than the last volume, sunny, but not-yet summer. It’s the beginning of spring. There is still the occasional storm but it’s always followed by that perfect rain-smell 70 degree day. Setting our clocks forward an hour is finally paying off—there’s just a bit more daylight to play with.

b.klops

Download the Mix as a 93 MB zip file.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files.  Sendspace was undergoing maintenance so I opted for CloudApp for this one. Email us if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01. Quitter’s Raga by Gold Panda
02. They Made Frogs Smoke ‘Til They Exploded by Múm
03. Catching Butterflies with Hands by Mouse on Mars
04. Thank You Caroline by The Avalanches
05. I Think It Is Beautiful That You Are 256 Colors Too by Black Moth Super Rainbow
06. Let’s Build A Fire by +/-
07. Yeti by Caribou
08. Alike by Afterklang
09. Smile Around The Face by Four Tet
10. Les Jours Heureux by Yann Tiersen
11. Lovely Allen by Holy Fuck
12. What Do You Think Will Happen Next? by Final Fantasy
13. Clowne Towne by Xiu Xiu
14. I Love The Weekend by No Kids
15. Don’t Give Up by Lake
16. I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From (Röyksopp remix) by Kings of Convenience

I like the idea that as this volume of the Never Ending Mixtape draws to a close our choices are returning to something a bit more distilled, stripped-down. My instinct was to push it even further—something acoustic, maybe even an a cappella. What I found is something I think sits in this mix even better. Kings of Convenience are masters of stripped down acoustic pop and with just the subtlest mix of beats and edits from Royskopp this remix is a nice distillation of everything we’ve heard this chapter of the NEIMT: straight-forward songwriting, smart electronic flourishes and a bittersweet emotional duality.

b.klops

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

It’s just fascinating where this has gone. We’re coming close to the end, and in a totally different sphere then we began. Yet till a totally linear progression. You can trace every step to where we are from where we began. Fascinating. If there were a thread that I think might be woven through this particular volume. It’s restless naiveté. It really came through the last couple of tracks, but really it’s been there all along. All the songs feel like they were composed by some brilliant ingenue, ignored by their parents, trapped in a room full of instruments, old records and a Wes Anderson film crew. Fascinating.

r. smigielski

I’m working on a hunch, a feeling, and a free association here. As I listened to the Final Fantasy track (<3 by the way) I could hear the faintest song in the back of my head. Something that shared What Do You Think Will Happen Next?’s off-kilter timing and layered arrangement. It was something upbeat but ultimately melancholy, sophisticated but captured on a crude tape machine, it was….my…cell phone ringtone.

Thankfully, being the sophisticated post-goth that I am, my cell phone ringtone is Xiu Xiu’s brain-crushing Clowne Towne.  I love Xiu Xiu completely. They are perhaps the only band that I like the way you liked bands when you were 13—with everything, nonsensically. And perhaps that’s because Xiu Xiu makes you 13—by sharing every dark thing, every sadness, every odd thought of their own you are instantly best friends, family, blood brothers. Though lyrically I’m throwing us off track with this—musically, spiritually it feels on the same page—and I’m hoping it’s a bold answer, literally, to What Do You Think Will Happen Next?

b. klops

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

So I’ve been in a bit of denial this week. Two songs ago, the mix was playing right into the hands of a particular song I’ve been hanging onto for a little while. A song I love dearly and hoped to use in the mix eventually. And it looked like it was finally going to happen.

Then Yann Tierson showed up. With all it’s Frenchy quaintness, and doe eyed Amelie smirk. It’s lovely. Just not where I thought we’d be. So I waited for inspiration to strike. And it struck exactly where I started.

Having relistened to the last two tracks, I noticed an interesting theme emerging that I hadn’t before. They are increasingly singular in their melodic focus. They are essentially songs of a one track mind. Songs with perfect melodies. So perfect that complicated structures of chorus’, verses, and bridges are not necessary. The song is content to meander in and out of it’s one idea, milking it for all it’s worth, relishing it’s highs and lows.

It’s a theme that’s been hinted at before but only now do I think it’s the station we’ve actually arrived at. And my original track fits perfectly. Enjoy.

r. smigielski

I’ve spent the last few days circling a handful of disparate tracks in an attempt to match the catchy curiosity and meandering optimism of Smile Around the Face. After curating a small selection, trashing it to refocus my energy, only to find myself with the same list again, I’ve realized there is no magic bullet. To that end, I’ve decided to pull the trigger anyway with Les Jours Heureux.

Yann Tiersen—more notable for his soundtrack for the film Amélie, than his ability to incessently break violin strings on stage—is a French minimalist who organizes a mandolin, piano, violin, accordion, and guitar into energy, passion, personality, indulgence, and curiosity. While I abhor the brevity of this track, I appreciate the focused intensity as I struggle through inner conflict.

t. woodford

Hebden has an uncanny ability to adhere to song-form just enough to keep you smiling while meandering down so many twisted avenues and near-formless spaces that when it’s all over you often wonder how you’d ever explain what you just heard. Is it space-jazz? Mushroom addicted rave music? Smile Around The Face is Hebden at his poppiest, which is still weird as hell, but this track is just catchy enough, just technicolor enough, just happy-with-a-tinge-of-sad enough to keep this mix on track.

b.klops

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

An interesting transition is afoot. Where we once may have been exploring two songs exiting in simultaneity, now if feels more like two genres coexisting.

The introduction of a more classic sensitive indie boy sound led me up and down my collecting, looking for the perfect song that paired that with the fuzzy, layered found sound with cut and paste beats things we’ve been circling wonderfully for several tracks now. After much laboring and sampling, I finally struck gold with probably the most obvious choice, Caribou. A one man empire that’s made killer record after killer record completely mining the gold in the hills of the exact genre pairing I just described. This particular tracks has a wonderful single minded focus but layered with a myriad of instruments (holy bagpipes!) play through a transistor radio. So good.

Sometimes finding the perfect song feels like climbing up a waterfall. And sometimes it doesn’t. Interested to see where this current takes us.

r. smigielski

+/-’s ambidextrous personality begins with their moniker, extends into displaced song structures and lyrical extremities, and lands somewhere in the thematic elements of their artwork. It persists at every level of the American indietronic trio.

As an independent case study, Let’s Build a Fire eloquently describes this ambidexterity. On one hand, we have the aesthetic of an old-fashioned arrangement that is riddled with crackly faux-vinyl skips, a lonely horn solo, and muted vocals. And, on the other, we’re presented with a fuzzy guitar on top of warm vocals, creating a structure that supports a full band with a swinging horn section.

The heart of the track lies within the subtle, yet appropriate, transition between the two. While it feels like a compositionally consistent track, if you heard each part of the song in isolation, you wouldn’t assume they belonged together. Yet, the meat of the track seems to get its livelihood from the muted undertones in the intro and outro.

Like any good movement, +/- proves that no one would ever be able to truly appreciate the latter without the former.

t. woodford

I honestly woke up with this song in my head this morning. Few bands have a more consistent output both in mood and quality than Black Moth Super Rainbow. This is music you can see. We’re standing in a field. The year is 1976. Through the soft-focus filter on the end of our Super 8mm camera we see an attractive young girl, backlit by the setting sun, blowing the seeds off a dying dandelion.

Or we’re at my house trying to remake Kid A on my Commodore 64.

b.klops

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

In lieu of a coherent write up, I give you free word association while I listen to this absolutely mesmerizing track by Mouse on Mars, from their indispensable Idiology.

0:17 The amuse bouche amuses.

0:35 The flies tango. Wish me well.

1:00 The chords do calisthenics.

1:23 The cat wants to deal me in.

1:30 Miles Davis lies. Down at nap time.

1:55 The voices are buying me airline miles.

2:10 Yo yo ma drinks Bloody Marys.

3:00 Kitchen acoustics and low kicks.

3:31 Miles doing coke on my afghan.

3:49 My High score beats up your honors student.

4:25 New Orleans funeral parade outside my window.

5:08 Out suddenly. Suddenly out.

r. smigielski

There’s nothing like a bit of serendipity to start off the volume; prior to Mr. Immer’s post, I had Gold Panda on repeat for a week straight in an effort to inject a bit of optimism into my day-to-day.

Although Múm generally tends to broadcast more of a quiet confidence than anything else, something about the Icelandic ensemble reminds me of the first day of Summer. Maybe it’s the glitchy experimentation wrapped in soft, often indecipherable pronunciations. Perhaps it’s the intentionally awkward transitions between catchy non-vocals, and instrumental ephemera. More than likely, it’s a distant memory of a weekend roadtrip to Logan Square with an old friend to see a band from another continent play tracks that we often enjoyed with our windows down in the peak of the warmer months.

Whatever it is, They Made Frogs Smoke ‘Til They Exploded, emits an air of optimism—as well as a hint of schizophrenia—around an otherwise dismal season.

t. woodford

Ah, the dubious honor of setting the tone for a new volume of the illustrious Never Ending Internet Mixtape. Let’s hope I don’t screw this up.

Ever hear a song that sounds exactly like you? I’m not talking about lyrics that resonate with your spirit or current life condition—I’m talking about music that sounds like the inside of your brain. For me, Quitter’s Raga is that song. Everything is just a little off, a little psychedelic, a little manic. The uh, “lyrics” are pure nonsense but still manage to get stuck in my head for days after I listen to this track. Every track on Gold Panda’s Companion is beautiful, but none capture the sheer hyperactive-3rd-grader-just-recieved-a-Nintendo-for-Christmas energy that lies in my heart the way Quitter’s Raga does.

b.klops

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