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

Without getting too self-referential, I will mention that posting the last track of the first volume of my NEIMT career has been an interesting endeavor. I feel compelled to respond to the previous track, but I also feel a bit of responsibility toward a summation of the rest of this volume.

With that, I present you with Osaka Loop Line. It has many interesting elements that have surfaced throughout this volume. Electronic fuzz. Whitespace that tends to hold the track together. Twitchy samples in an otherwise layered, minimal environment. A touch of romance. Above all, a nice place to pause.

Gentlemen, it’s been real. I look forward to seeing where future volumes take us.

t. woodford

b.klops

Right now, this song is conjuring up in my mind the final scene in Children of Men. Go with me here. Not really because of it’s literal reference to a “boat” but in it’s humanity rising up within a glitch tech context. A river of hopeless static brought on by a future ridden with despair. Yet inside this boat remains a soul-laden hopefulness. Thoughts of freedom, birds in the sun, and wind in the trees. None of which is a part of this sonic industrial landscape. There is a unmistakable current lifting us from horror, into a foggy but enlightened future.

r. smigielski

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

It’d be a shame to go down the path of highly visual songwriting without referencing the Books. Hailing from New York City, this duo defined an experimental genre that’s been described as Folktronica, or perhaps more aptly, a sound collage.

The Books made a name for themselves by removing sampled voices and compositions from their original contexts, and crafting them into new emotional compositions. Moments of contemplation, understanding, excitement and refinement are cataloged, transformed and infused with new meaning, creating aleatoric, yet highly controlled experimentation.

Over a backdrop of electric guitars, eclectic samples, and incessant clicking, Nick Zammuto reveals hidden melody in Be Good to Them Always by singing in concert with the Books’ familiar sampled voices. This duet tends to take the edge off phrases like “you are doing something the whole world is doing” and “this great society is going smash.”

t. woodford

Oh Cornelius. How long I have loved you. Through every weird-ass turn, Beach Boys inspired pop, Sonic Youth-esque noise rock, and his very own post-kraut weirdness. Every flavor perfect and alien.

I can’t think of another artist with a more sensitive ear for detail, and when he fills his long, repetitive krautrock compositions with his signature production work it sounds unlike anyone else in the game. There’s something highly visual about his songwriting. A tiny burst of color here, a perfectly-rendered but oddly out of place photo-realistic flower there; it’s the musical equivalent of Jeff Koon’s Easyfun-Ethereal paintings.

And I like how he pronounces the word ‘smoke.’

b.klops

Loving where this is going. Krautiness. The essence of music that is equally minimal and maximal. Both direct in its focus but going nowhere in particular.

And who knew one of the best purveyors of modern Krautiness would be three Japanese ladies, playing wildly eclectic unpredictable rock music, that while guitar centric, is so full of electro flourishes, counter melodies, and atmosphere galore.

This track from Buffalo Daughter’s first record has been a favorite for a long time. The guitar sounds shimmer and crunch at the same time. And the drum texture is just lovely. A round smooshy kick thump balances beautifully with one of the thinnest snare pops on record. This track is incredibly directed, driving at one speed the entire time. It’s not going anywhere but I’m along for the ride regardless.

r. smigielski

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

The last couple of tracks have been decidedly difficult to follow. They represent experimentation in layered, minimal and textured environments, carried out over a career. After much deliberation, I settled on a track that pushes Mogwai—a band traditionally known for pairing lush soundscapes against uproarious white noise to create often entirely instrumental compositions—out of their comfort zone and into a totally unchartered creative space. This track represents a similar kind of experimentation as the last few, only confined to a simple five-minute expression.

The heart of Mexican Grand Prix pits a hushed intonation against intrepid robot-speak, creating a certain kind of refined intensity that wouldn’t exist if either of the vocal tracks was heard in isolation. I appreciate the subtle balance of the electronic- and organ-induced rhythm that kicks off the track against the clapping layered into the synth- and guitar-heavy post-rock fade out. The flawless layering and consistently subtle texture makes the exercise feel effortless, yet refined.

This track is as much about push as it is about pull, and definitively proves that Mogwai are more than just Scottish slow-burn post-rock kings.

t. woodford

Sorry for the wait gents, but seriously—how do you follow James Blake?

London-based electronic producer Patten is truly an enigma. Like a real enigma. No photos of the man exist, he answers interview questions in URLs and other people’s YouTube videos.

His new record GLAQJO XAACSSO has been receiving mixed reviews, most of which claim the record is too off-kilter to be enjoyable. His methods are similar to James Blake’s—samples chopped and stretched into an entirely new emotional space. Perhaps Patten is a little looser in his technique but I’ve always found the results exciting, otherworldly and strangely calming. Ice, the GLAQJO XAACSSO captures the Patten sound perfectly.

b.klops

For me, James Blake is literally an enigma. A critically acclaimed artist that, for the most part produces music so impossibly stripped down and minimal, it’s barely recognizable as music at all. Every minute is the beginning of a pop song. Instruments layer in. But never coalesce. Pure texture and emotion. It’s quite an achievement.

The Wilhelm Scream, a haunting case in point. An absolutely tortured treatise of soulful minimalism. I encourage you to look it up, and listen to it with the lights off. A good wind down the day experience. It was almost my selection for track 6. But I feared it might bring us to a screeching halt right when we should be picking up steam. So I give us CMYK. A bewildering remix/mashup of  Aaliyah and Kelis, but distorted and rearranged so much, all that we have left is uniquely James Blake.

I’ll only add, that the addition of two new authors to the mix train has already changed the dynamic considerably. In a refreshing way. Mr. Joosse and I can perhaps beat ourselves up a little less over whether or not we are posting the most perfect next song and enjoy this new diversity.

r. smigielski

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

At first blush, By Your Side has a nice kind of romantic resonance. Though, if you dig a layer deeper, a sense of desperation begins to surface, which transitions into a much more emotional plea. The tense of the phrase “all I wanted was to be your housewife” reveals the true intention of the track, and builds on the if described in the previous track. To that end, I’m left wondering whether this is commentary on a relationship gone sour, or a simple longing for on opportunity that was never posed.

While the subtle layering and beautifully-articulated emotion remains, the sunny swagger and romantic disposition of the first few tracks begins to fade.

t. woodford

Got it together Again? Let’s Call It Off?

On a personal note I had an ex-girlfriend who’s tiny lapdog was named “Little Bit.” Oh, the memories.

And, pro-tip: throw this jam on a mix tape and you will make out, son.

b.klops

Got it together Again had a wonderful sunny swagger and romantic disposition to it. It’s deft combination of co-lead vocals, electronic hum and warm toned classiness, proved to be a really hard combination to build on. Once, again the second track of each volume is one of the toughest to post. It requires an ability to understand the zag is track 1 building from the previous volumes zig. There are so many options. More synthyness? Warm grooviness? Vintage Americana?

Hopefully this track satisfies at least the last two—being a great example of something fairly American sounding coming from a bunch of swedes.

r. smigielski

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

Mr. Joosse commented at the last volume how interesting it was that the last track usually differs so much from the first in each volume. And I now find it equally interesting at how generally consistent this one was throughout. Perhaps he and I were just perfectly happy to lounge in this lush synth pop territory for a while and use up all the tracks, i’ve been obsessing over for years now.  Heck, I didn’t get to use nearly half the tracks I had set aside along the way. I can only hope we keep on the path and create a sister volume with number 9. However I am sure we will take a left turn here pretty soon, and ending up digging up equally fertile ground elsewhere. We always do.

I hope you dear reader, fully understand how absolutely GOLD this volume is. The hits just keep coming for fifteen tracks straight. Nary a hint of mediocrity any where in its vicinity. I know we say this every time, but this volume just might be my favorite one yet.

r. smigielski

Download the Mix as a 126 MB zip file.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files. Email us if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01. Nightcall by Kavinsky
02. Never Known Love by Thieves Like Us
03. Night Drive by Chromatics
04. Claudia Lewis by M83
05. Dream Cars by Neon Neon
06. Bring Us Closer Together by Hooray for Earth
07. Feel the Love by Cut Copy
08. Matter of Time by The Chain Gang of 1974
09. Still Sound by Toro Y Moi
10. Bad Street by Twin Sister
11. VCR by The XX
12. Leak at the Disco by Baxter Drury
13. California by EMA
14. Barnacle by Lovers
15. Sinking Feeling by Mixel Pixel

So many things all coming together with this last track in a most satisfying mix thread. The male female vocals ala The XX. The narrative of Mr Baxter. The mix of organic and electronic instrumentation from Cut Copy. The quirk of Bad Street. The love-lorn longing of M83 and the Chromatics. And the sweet hummability from the stand out Barnacle. All wrapped in the bow of warm optimism that Mr. Joosse longed for.

r. smigielski

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 50^th posting to the NEIMT. Here’s to the next 50.

m. joosse

A narrative vocal style. Heavy atmospherics. Minimalist, analog-at-heart instrumentation. EMA straddles an interesting line between naked raw emotions and cooler than hip detachment – all swimming beneath a sea of fuzzy, white-out static. EMA has made a sound out of making the absolute most out of almost nothing. Lone piano notes pierce and drone their way through 4 minutes of rambling beauty about displacement, alienation, and frustration. This is one of the few artists to emerge on my radar in 2012 and actually leave a lasting impression.

r. smigielski

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

Frankly, I don’t know how Mr. Joosse does it. Responding with a reply song in a day or sometimes in a matter of hours. I have spent the better part of a week listening to Bad Street and three solid contenders for the next track, paralyzed by indecision. I kept hoping that percolating on it for another day would make the choice suddenly obvious. Only to uncover other possible contender. So with this I am just jumping in going with my gut.

The Mercury Prize winning The XX are the synth pop band only the “aughts” could produce. Combining traditional organic instruments with mechanical beats and synth touches, they produce some hauntingly beautiful pop that is perfect for the dreamy quality of the mix thus far. And VCR is proof positive. I feel like it delivers on the 80′s urban vibe in spades. When I listen to it I can only imagine walking the rain soaked streets of NYC late into the night.

r. smigielski

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

r. smigielski

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

The only track for the longest time I thought I could post was Fascination by Alphabeat. A track that has an identical melodic undertone. It is a simply breathtaking track that Mr. Joosse exposed me to a couple years ago. It is sublime. Go find it.

But I couldn’t possibly post that. That would be like Joosse responding to himself. I have more self respect than that. So I give this really great ditty by Cut Copy. Wonderful 80′s references that start off a little rock pop but end up a whole lot synth pop.

Again, sorry for the delay. Let’s get this mix going again.

r. smigielski

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

Things have taken a bright and shiny stainless steel turn here. We’ve made to through the desert and landed in sunny and crisp LA. This is what happens when “super” frontman Gruff Rhys teams up with Boom Bip to make an album about the life of John DeLorean. We get to ride around in dream cars. Now let’s see if these bastards can do 90.

r. smigielski

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

Sometimes when a song has the ability to perfectly encapsulate it’s theme/title, real synesthesia is palpable. I hear this song by Portland’s Chromatics, and I immediately imagine myself driving through the warm Mojave desert at night. The dashed lines of the road visible in my headlights syncopate with the beat as blueish black desert brush whisks by my peripheral. I am perhaps on the way to get “my baby” and bring her back home. I’ll probably have to rough some dudes up in the process. They probably had it coming. So it goes.

r. smigielski

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

You see there is this little sleeper hit of a movie out right now called Drive. It’s really amazing. Beautiful, romantic, violent and musical. That’s right. It’s got the most memorable use of music and soundtrack since… The Royal Tenenbaums probably. Created by Cliff Martinez, whose pretty much done every great minimalist transcendent score in the last 10 years, the Drive score and soundtrack are poised to really revitalize the role of music in movies. It feels like 1992 and I just saw Pulp Fiction. In addition to the score by Martinez, the soundtrack has five original songs that just ooze the best attributes of the 80′s. Synths. Reverb. Great pop melody. See the movie. Hear the music. And enjoy the ride on wherever Vol 8 takes us.

r. smigielski

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?

“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

I’m a real sucker for dance music that’s played like rock music. Music that is undeniably hedonistic and unselfconscious but with the passion, anger and presence of punk rawk.  The Mercury Prize winning Klaxons give us a delicious dose of it on 2006′s Atlantis to Interzone. Stuck inside all of it’s bombast are some nice juicy details—in-unision harmonized vocals, rave inspired sirens and samples and a very undisco, abrupt composition change at the 1:00 mark. Enjoy where this takes us.

r. smigielski

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

Via Urban Dictionary:
To “Robocop” is to bet with complete assurance that you will complete a task to the point that if you fail you must shave your own head to look like Robocop’s for a period of no less than 24 hours (reverse monk in case you don’t know what his hair looks like)

To “Kraus” is to do something amazing, and brilliant at the same time.

Not sure where those definitions get us. But this is one of those bands that I’ll admit I really only noticed at first because of it’s name. It’s both ridiculous and awesome at the same time. Maybe that’s what the definitions are telling us. On top of that this track is amazing, brilliant and so assured of itself that it just might shave your head just for looking at it funny.

From their 4th LP, German post punk rivivalists Robocop Kraus play In Fact, You’re Just Fiction with a combination of brainy compositional flair and thugish danceability. I mean this song could have gotten to the heart of the matter instantly but ends up waiting a full 3 minutes to bring out the big anthem potential, meandering their way through a variety of verses, bridges, codas and builds. And bless his noodley appendage for it.

r. smigielski

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

Amidst visions of multicolored Cosby sweaters, let’s shift gears slightly. I have tried but alas cannot let the pursuit of sweet, sweet ridiculous horns dictate the aesthetics of this mix. The depth of my musical well just can’t continue the supply to meet the demand. At least not in a manner that would maintain the bubbly fun we are having. Perhaps, they’ll come back in the reprise.

I am leading with my gut here in also switching to a track more electronically focused than previously explored. But I think it maintains the overall tonal continuity. In that it makes me want to dance. And I don’t dance.

r. smigielski

I may be many things, but “guy who stops the party” isn’t one of them. So I’ll hold off on more experimental tracks for a while and see where this ride takes us.

“Funky Instrumental” is a wordless version of “You Can’t Be Funky,” arguably the best and most remarkable track Bush Tetras produced in their short lifespan. Released on one of the band’s few EPs, it’s produced by The Clash’s Topper Headon and designed by future sleeve design superstar Neville Brody. To my knowledge, this is the only Bush Tetras track that features a horn line—I can find no credit anywhere of who’s actually playing it here. But no matter. Like its original, it finds a wonderful groove and ends abruptly, making it endlessly replayable.

m. joosse

I’ll admit my confusion. Not sure how we got to Mack the Knife from Warrior in Woolworths. I get the impression Mr. Joosse is testing me somehow. Horns? Sure. Timeline relevance? okay. It’s all jangle and hustle. But no pop. No fun. I’m not ready to give up on fun yet.

Regardless, I can appreciate this as a place to continue the narrative. So how about the Au Pairs. Finally, right?! I bet you were wondering when that card might get played. I particularly like how this track toes the line between the early post punk vibes (monotone vocals & jangly guitars) and gothic-dancism with it’s precision percussion/samples and dark “siouxsieness”.

And yes horns continue to thread through the mix. Though I am fearful of where this horn fetish will lead us. “You mess with the bull, you get the horns”.

r. smigielski

This track goes against type for three reasons:

1. It’s crazy-dark, taken from a ‘20s opera written by Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht, turned into a happy-go-lucky Bobby Darin cover, then returned to the bleak European winter by the Psychedelic Furs. To my knowledge, they never had any other covers in their repertoire. Recorded at a Peel session, this version is only available on Should God Forget, the first comprehensive Psychedelic Furs compilation made, from 1997.

2. This was the first Psychedelic Furs track I ever really liked. I asked for, and received, this compilation for Christmas that year. I must’ve seen some commercial or read some review that said this was an essential purchase, so on the list it went. I didn’t know the Furs and I definitely hadn’t seen Pretty in Pink yet. (Yeah, yeah. I bloomed late.) So the band’s context and poppier songs were still ahead for me. For whatever reason, I gravitated to this song above all others on the compilation, and it sounded like nothing else I was liking at the time. I had no idea how out of character it was for the band—raw, primal, groovy as fuck. It may be the only time they ever achieved this level of atmosphere and is definitely the only time they ever sounded this menacing and confident.

3. I realized while listening to the X-Ray Spex track that my tendency is always to go faster. Whatever Mr. Smigielski puts forth, I somehow feel like I need to pick up the tempo, even when it’s already fast and reckless. I suppose I do this because my default mix setting is getting up and running right away. So I wanted to try slowing it down significantly and seeing what would happen after. This track is unhinged and relaxed, taking its sweet time getting to a wonderfully trippy drum solo and full band outro. With a sax—the official mascot of Vol 07—winding its way in and around and behind everything else.

m. joosse

What can I say? What People Do For Fun is a mesmerizingly good song. And those are distinctly hard to follow up.  I hang my head in shame that it was completely unknown to me. Songs that good should be written into our DNA.

In the vein of pseudo-adolescent snarkisms from the era, I had little choice but to break out one of my all time favs, X-ray Spex. What they lack in spindly new wave instrumentation, they more than make up for with rambunctiously goofy but equally genius use of horns in punk rock music. And Poly Styrene’s voice is utterly unique and she remains one of my favorite vocalists.

Admittedly this post was delayed by the sheer task of deciding which ONE song from the Spex I was going to use, knowing full well I could never dip back into that well again. This isn’t necessarily my favorite but it’s up there and I felt it would lead us in interesting directions.

Mr Joosse, you’ll run my well dry of this era soon enough.

r. smigielski

The Suburbs are one of my favorite examples of a band I had to stumble into—no one around me told me they had existed or that they were the missing Minneapolis link between Prince and The Replacements. Their albums are sorely underrated and, as Mr. Smigielski’s seen, now hard to find. So I wanted to follow his example and utilize another powerhouse you’re not likely to have heard of.

Martha and the Muffins were Canada’s entry in the post-punk Olympics, and had filled out by 1983’s Danseparc album to incorporate warmer guitars and polyrhythms alongside their original spindly synthpop sound. Though I wanted to employ a track with horns, and though there are horns elsewhere on Danseparc, “What People Do For Fun” doesn’t have any. But it makes a fine companion to “Rattle My Bones,” with its Talking Heads guitar, automaton chant, rubbery bassline, and combination of childlike rhymes (“Eeny meeny miney mo”) and adult content (“they dance until two, fuck until four”). It continues pulling this mix square into the realm of that most excellent of pop music: the serious fun.

m. joosse

As soon as I heard Be Stiff, I pretty much I knew how I wanted to respond. It has a awesome new wave swagger to it while also being spotty with flourishes that are outright goofy. In the best possible way. From the in-unison chanting to the saxophone counter melody, the song just can’t help from being equally cool and nerdy.

Thus I give unto the mix a hell of a tune in Rattle My Bones. It’s absolutely infectious in it’s rhythm. But not without it’s own nerdiness with it’s cringe-worthy “neck connected to the hip bones” lyrics and boogie-woogie piano solo. But none of it matters with a party jam this good.

I also recognize that it’s been a ridiculously long time waiting for this post. I only had this song in MP3 as a muddy live version that I just couldn’t hamper the quality of the NEIMT with. I searched all over the interwebs for an MP3 of the original, only to be ultimately foiled (thanks Arcade Fire). So I ordered the out-of-print CD version. It still hasn’t arrived in the mail. So I did what I should have done a week ago. Asked Mr Joosse. Enjoy.

r. smigielski

Somewhere between Talking Heads and Devo lies this 1978 version of “Be Stiff,” the latter’s famous single. Liner notes in the Lene Lovich best-of I pulled this from call the original a “label anthem” for Stiff Records. Stiff was something of a music world B-team, full of almost-weres, also-rans, and oddballs of the late ‘70s and ‘80s. Lovich was one of Stiff’s most visible weirdos, though with her sound it’s clear she was never planning on overtaking Siouxsie Sioux in anything but the crazy-hair-vocal-tic department.

Like most from the label, she came and went pretty quickly, and I didn’t really discover her until a few years ago. According to Wikipedia, Stiff loved Devo’s song so much that they asked a number of their acts to cover it in the same afternoon and in their own styles. Lovich’s version is a lot of fun, the franticness of the original replaced by a joyously gruff backing chorus, an electric piano, and a Roxy Music sax solo. Like what “Love -> Building on Fire” was to post-punk, this track is to the Devo original: softer and warmer. Instead of being angular, you might say it has charmingly rounded corners.

m. joosse

I cannot predict where Mr. Joosse wanted to go with first pick, and I am trying hard to avoid the “track 2 wtf” moment. Sometime’s I think the second pick has more power in defining the threads ultimate direction than the first. Because the second determines the context of the first. It refines it’s direction. From there it is all about pushing it forward. But right now it’s about steering the ship. Unless of course track three chooses to ignore track two’s steering. Which has happened in the past.

Anyway, at this time I will simply bestow upon the mix one of the finest spindly art songs ever composed. Awkward and unnecessary horn section included free of charge.

r. smigielski

One of the great pleasures in being obsessed with music is learning about what a band was like before they made it big. And there’ll probably be no better period for this kind of discovery than the early ’80s. Dozens of bands made it big when they turned their sound from an idiosyncrasy to a novelty, sacrificing what’s often a long and interesting career to a flash in the pan, all in the name of radio airplay and MTV fame.

A great example of this is Dexys Midnight Runners—before Ms. Eileen came along, before they dressed like Irish rednecks, before there was a fiddle-drenched “Celtic soul” sound, the band looked like Cockney bootblacks and thugs and were primarily influenced by Stax Records. In 1980, anyway, they were occupying a particular niche between the punk sounds of what, for example, The Jam were, and the lighter indie pop of what The Jam of “Ghosts” became.

One of my very favorite Dexys lyrics goes, “Sing me a record that cries pure and true. Not those guitars, they’re too noisy and crude.” On “Dance Stance,” the band’s sure-footed debut single, they’re pushed to the background while the horns are gloriously front and center. It does sound a little like it’s lacking a good low end—my only real gripe with “Ghosts” because of how excellent The Jam’s rhythm section was. But I wanted to turn that disadvantage into an advantage here, kicking off this volume with a spiky, joyous call-and-response hidden gem from an underrated and overexposed band of young soul rebels.

m. joosse

Honestly, I think the new format for the NEIMT has finally found it’s stride. It’s been more than a year since we relaunched the blog and in that time we’ve been able to create six volumes of never-ending mixtopia. You may have noticed (or may not) but the mix has been moving at a record pace, fueled with rediscovered passion for musical influence peddling and hit-curating-one-ups-manship. Vol 06 is probably the most cohesive and thematically dedicated yet. But that’s not denying it’s diversity, with it’s forays into everything from garage racketeering to wink wink (and actual) nostalgic pining. Stay tuned to where we go from here.

r. smigielski

Download the Mix as a 92 MB zip file.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files. Email me if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01. Le Responsible by Jacques Dutronc
02. Drive My Car_The Word_What You’re Doing by The Beatles
03. Go Home by Ty Segall
04. Excedrine Headache #265 by Reigning Sound
05. B-B-Bicycles by Bicycles
06. Pedestrian by Spiral Beach
07. Boys are Boys and Girls are Choice by Monks
08. Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars) by Grinderman
09. Make Up is Lies by The Make Up
10. What To Do by The John Spencer Blues Explosion
11. Get Down by The Delta 72
12. 108 Battles (of the Mind) by Kula Shaker
13. Before I Was Caught by Jay Reatard
14. Ride Ride Ride by Vetiver
15. Ghosts by The Jam

It’s an unspoken rule between Mr. Joosse and myself, that we are attempting to next-to-never repeat artists in this never-ending musical tennis-match. I don’t know if either of us know how hard that is going to be once we get farther into the overall string. The main implication to this strategy/limitation is that one has to really consider which song they use for any given artist—as it is likely to be the only representation of that artist on the NEIMT. So we can’t afford to waste it.

So Mr. Joosse will probably be irked that I have played The Jam card. Truth be told, I actually expected it from him in the last round because this whole mix really seemed to be constantly referencing them. So in my mind he left it wide open for me. I am posting one of my favorites, a less rocking but wonderfully layered and melodic affair.

I also feel it captures that slight-country, lilting 70s AM gold quality the Ride Ride Ride brought. Plus, I love the mariachi horns.

Ghosts also nicely ends this amazing mix on a reflective, hopeful note. The sun sets of Volume 6, but will rise again on number 7.

As always, the entire volume plus cover art will be posted for download shortly. Thanks for listening.

r.smigielski

Mr. Smigielski surprised me with that Jay Reatard track—mainly because Jay Reatard surprised me with it too. As clean and bright as an Apple Store before opening time, it shows little of the chaos and feedback I associated with his earlier works. I got a little sad knowing that I had given up on his music before his final album, and he’d given up that path too.

“Before I Was Caught” is brimming with a sense of optimism that I kept coming back to, trying on dozens of songs in response. Nothing seemed quite joyful enough, until I poked my head into a folder I keep called “Best of 2011” and pulled up this track. Vetiver has a lot of low-key charm, which means their albums are mostly pleasant but a little blurry. But this is a true standout on their newest, Tight Knit, a muscular but uncluttered gem. I love everything about “Ride Ride Ride,” especially how it takes a minute for the tambourine to kick in and how the background singers—hinted at towards the end of “Before I Was Caught”—spring forward at the end. It seemed like the perfect penultimate track, relaxed and spacey, an acknowledgement of how far we’ve come and how far we have left.

m. joosse

As Mr. Joosse instructed, I am going with my gut. Despite having a whole handful of amazing tracks in my pocket as potential closers for this mix, I am replacing it at the last minute with something that just feels right. Here we have Jay Reatard in one of stellar tracks from his final LP—stripping away a little bit of his sonic fuzz assault to make room for some nuanced melodic layers. But it’s still classic Reatard. RIP.

r.smigielski

One thing I’ve commented on in a past volume is how sometimes there’s a song that makes the most sense to post, and other times there’s a song that instinctively feels like the better—though maybe not smarter—choice. “(108 Battles) of the Mind” is definitely the latter, and in the second consecutive volume where we’ve moved at a breakneck speed, our instincts seem to be trumping everything else.

So the mix takes a cloverleaf back into the ‘60s, with this track’s shades (or full-on primary colors) of the Beatles, the Who, and the Zombies. It incorporates the “Scooby-Doo organ” from the Bicycles and Spiral Beach but merges it with the confident Western European sound of Jacques Dutronc and heavy rhythmic backing of the American garage bands we’ve loved here. Though it’s much more acoustic and much less sex-obsessed, I see “(108 Battles)” as something of a natural progression of the whole volume—deftly and lovingly combining rock, soul and garage into one pounding, frantic, layered juggernaut. Kula Shaker were never traditionally cool, but this song remains their high watermark and an epic tribute to the psychedelic decade that inspired them most.

And trust me, when you listen to the complete volume, “Get Down”’s feedback buzz going right into the thunderclap will be truly killer.

m. joosse

Back when dischord records briefly toyed with expanding their stylistic repertoire, there was Delta 72, a group of hardcore kids playing the blues. Or something they though sounded like the blues.

For me, this song was the only logical follow up to JSBX. Because I have a soft spot for songs that largely forgo lyrics, just repeating a single phrase over and over. Plus it frickin’ rocks and makes you want to get down.

r.smigielski

If it’s energy we’re seeking, the mighty JSBX has enough to power a small country. Here’s an alternate version of one of their earlier songs, recorded live in a basement by the master of simplicity himself, Steve Albini. He manages to help turn the ragged guitar and echoed vocal up to 11, and gets Jon Spencer to hit a brief falsetto, though more in an Otis Redding style.

I love the little fakeout at the beginning, even though if you’ve ever heard any JSBX song ever in history, you know that it would never turn out to be a quiet or slow number.

m. joosse

Ah Grinderman. I’ve actually been waiting a while for this mix to get me to a place where I could unleash the Grinderman. I guess I left that window open for Joosse and I am perfectly happy with that. Because it actually left the window wide open for The Make Up. Sure it leaves behind the organ, but swells with the recklessness and raw energy needed to follow Mr. Cave.

Special moment that gets me every time, Ian Svenious’ prince scream :10 from the end. Perfect.

r.smigielski

And now back to our regularly scheduled chaos.

That wonderfully frenzied organ and wordplay from the Monks led me to Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds. Right around 2003, when they started upending their methods and recording whole albums in a week, they also started incorporating an organ into their palette. When they shifted into their Grinderman project in 2007, that raw, instinctive recording style loosened up their sound and pushed the organ to the fore. Grinderman is full of deranged, debauched tracks like this one, which pulse with squalling organs, feedback bursts, ribald lyrics, and pounding drums. It sounds alive, like the combination of raw thoughts and throbbing heartbeats—like the best garage rock.

m. joosse

I took to heart several loveable things from the wonderful Pedestrian. But I am simply not ready to leave the garage.

This little ditty from Monks, a bunch of German-stationed American GIs who cut their hair in monk-like tonsures and wailed on banjos, organs and drums, is fantastically weird and danceable. It definitely captures that B-52′s inspired weirdness within an undeniable pop context that Mr Joosse was channeling.

It’s rather short and one dimensional, and I predict that will make it almost feel like a transition or message-from-our-sponors type break in the mix. Which I wholeheartedly welcome.

r.smigielski

Was it just me, or did that Bicycles track sound a hell of a lot like the B-52’s? Not that I would’ve minded; I’ve had a soft spot for them my whole music life. Especially based on the first few seconds of that track, it took extreme effort not to upload “Rock Lobster,” write 200 words on it, and dance crazily around my living room.

Anyway, there was much to latch onto there: a “whodunit?” organ, guy-girl harmonies, a general sense of twinkle-eyed mischief. I could stay in the garage for a while longer, but I thought using another track that reminded me distantly of the B-52’s would be a more fun direction to go. Also, both Spiral Beach and Bicycles are from Toronto, and I get a real kick out of the way both have approximated what I would consider a very American sound.

m. joosse

Jesus, I really hated Mr Joosse’s song at first. He insinuated Ty Segall was “a racket”, but damn “Excedrine Headache” was literally delivering on it’s title. Having listened to it a few more times now, I’ll say it’s really growing on me. And I am one who generally loves noisy music. So I am perplexed as to the nature of my immediate dislike. Which brings me to an interesting observation about music in general—the role of familiarity in aesthetic judgement.

When I first graduated college, I was completely fixated on grunge. All I listened to were bands from Seattle. It was ridiculous. Then I got a retail job that mostly involved sitting around all day listening to music with my other coworkers. They openly belittled me for my singular musical focus.

They would try to open my musical mind with all kinds of genres and seminal bands like Fugazi, Meat Beat Manifesto, Ministry, James, Misfits, Tribe Called Quest and on and on. With everyone of those artists (now all personal favorites) my immediate reaction was either utter distaste or ambivalent “meh”. Only after repeated listening did my ears adjust. As if the newness of a style to the ear directly contributes to it’s ability to communicate. Ever since, I have payed special attention when my initial reaction is negative. I almost always come around. Along the way, I have discovered that there is much more good music out there than bad.

But really none of that has anything to do with my selected track. I just felt like this track by the Bicycles captured another side of late era Beatles, where they were still open to having fun within a bluesy riffs, strong backbeats and hummable melodies.

r.smigielski

My friend Beau told me once long ago about the collective unconscious—the idea that there are things that unite humanity in ways we can’t put a finger on. Things that, when we discovered them, felt very familiar even as they were inherently new. He believed the Beatles were somehow able to tap into the collective unconscious and that’s why their songs feel so immediately familiar and so immensely loved.

The word “Beatlesque” gets thrown around a lot in music criticism, and can refer to a basic pop song with melodies, the same way “Dylanesque” refers to anything wordy and acoustic. But I tend to take that word in stride—a ton of bands get called Beatlesque because the Beatles sounded like a ton of bands over their career. So you can do an easy, loping “Love Me Do” or a reverb-drenched, hard-driving “Helter Skelter” and be said to be influenced by the same band. I like to think that speaks to the greatness of the Beatles, and to why this track is what it is.

We could spend the next six volumes exploring what it means to be Beatlesque in all its different meanings. At the very least, it feels like a crime of ignorance to skip past the ocean of tracks we consider to be similar to the Beatles. So I can’t in good conscience push on from Ty Segall and his racket. I searched long and hard for something that could meet halfway between the previous two tracks yet still provide a clear path forward. It bears an awesome title and some almighty reverb, with a similar combination of garage noise and heavy melody as “Go Home,” yet manages to be at one end of that spectrum of you-know-what.

m. joosse

Let’s just call this the track 2 “WTF” moment. It happens with almost every mix. I believe I did it to Mr Joosse with that William S. Burroughs track. And now he does it to me. With The Beatles. It’s almost like the author is not quite sure which direction the lead track is going, so many options being viable, that it will never feel quite right. Perhaps no choice is actually better than another, given the open possibilities the existence of the opening track creates. The second track always ends up feeling like a speed bump along the way of us figuring out where the string is going.

Granted there is absolutely nothing wrong with that song, remix, or The Beatles. But how do you follow that up? It’s like reacting to oxygen or water. It’s great and all. It’s the life-force and all. But where next?

Perhaps I put too much on shoulders of the fab four, but I can’t help think you’re better off leaving them out of most discussions of music. But now that I said that, it just seems equally as wrong to suggest.

I digress. Sticking within a sixties-garagy-back-beat-and-hip-shaking aesthetic, I give you Ty Segall. This has a ripped vocal melody from the great Jackie Wilson but puts a modern twist on things with it’s cynically maxed-out production and off kilter rhythms.

r.smigielski

Man, that was one awesome track to start a mix. So awesome, in fact, that I consider this post a small failure—I can’t call it better than its predecessor, which was just perfect.

So with that admission out of the way, I’ll say that I was seeking something that was rhythmically similar but with some small odd charm, like how “Le Responsable” is like a long-lost American #1 from 1969, only in French. This track is my favorite from Love, the Cirque du Soleil-sponsored remix album, because it seems to flow effortlessly between three songs (with elements of two more blended in) from the less-well-tread side of their catalog. Add in some wonderful little background touches, don’t let it overstay its welcome, and it’s like discovering something brand new that’s been there all along.

Plus: cowbell!

m. joosse

Mr Joosse and I have agreed, that in order to make the mix sets more enjoyable, we would avoid jarring stylistic departures from song to song. With exception of the first song of a new set. While we want to maintain the “never ending” status of the mix blog, we want to take opportunities to move things along a little more dramatically. The first song of a mix is the best time to do that.

So I choose this ditty from Jacques Dutronc. I don’t know where I got it. I don’t care. It’s mystery is one of the best things about it. I rediscovered it as I searched for tracks somewhere in the middle of the last mix. I was like “what the hell is this? It’s awesome!”

It’s insanely familiar. And equally fun. Sitting uncomfortably in between Satisfaction and Dancing in the Streets. I just can’t get it out of my mind. It’s the perfect summer jam. The kind of song that could get a street full of people to suddenly dance in unison, Ferris Bueller style.

I can’t wait to hear with the mix goes from here.

r.smigielski

After a shaky start, wherein we became a two-man operation and technology threatened our way of life, we emerged with the most cohesive mix since Volume 2. It was also the quickest, where more than ever we trusted our instincts and moved the mix forward musically in smaller steps instead of huge leaps. But more than that, I had a hell of a lot of fun working on it. I can’t really say that for the last couple volumes for whatever reason, but this one was just a joy to produce.

I believe that when you play this volume from start to finish, it’s going to sound like a deliberate change in mood. We started at a relatively mysterious place and, with the establishment of a strong rhythm, found a focus that led us slowly but surely from noise and discord to melody and unity. I’m shamelessly addicted to that kind of movement, that need for a happy resolution for all involved. For lack of a better word: it’s the light. Discovering that in this volume, step by step, was a tremendously good feeling that just built and built over the last few weeks as we hurtled toward track 15.

But like I said in the last post, this isn’t an ending; it’s just a milepost along the way. Volume 6 will start right where we left off and we’re quite happy about that. Thanks for making the journey with us.

m. joosse

Download the Mix as a 114 MB zip file.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files. Email me if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01. Me, White Noise by Blur featuring Phil Daniels
02. Did I Ever Tell You About the Man That Taught His Asshole to Talk? by William S. Burroughs and Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
03. Come in Houston [Sax Version] by Morphine
04. Satellite by TV on the Radio
05. Love Missile F1 Eleven by David Bowie
06. Middle Class Revolt by The Fall
07. Red Shoes by the Drugstore by The Wedding Present
08. In the Art of Stopping [Live] by Wire
09. Magnetic City by Silverbullit
10. Gilt Complex by Sons and Daughters
11. Bored in Belgium by The Victorian English Gentlemens Club
12. Busy Doing Nothing by Love is All
13. Something Clicked & I Fell Off the Edge by The Rakes
14. Dance Steps by The Natural History
15. Wake the Breathing Light by The Shaky Hands

Everything The Natural History recorded sounds most appropriate for the post-midnight hours, when the party’s waned and you start thinking about heading home.

But just before that happens—just before you fear you’ll be seeing daybreak soon—you need one last song to end the party on the right note. Something that unites the stragglers together with ragged passion and a slow-burn roar. An epic that, like this mix, urges you to keep it alive wherever you go next.

m. joosse

All moving objects must give in to the gravity.
And even never-ending parties eventually peter out.
The universe demands it.
This song is about the afterglow.
The moment yesterdays antics become tomorrows stories.
Take us home Mr Joosse.

r.smigielski

My everlasting thanks to Robb, who, in the home stretch of this mix, is turning it into the Never Ending Party. Love is All is a really wonderful example of how a band can always teeter on the edge between melody and madness, always sounding like they might just derail at any moment in a caterwaul of shrieks and saxes.

So it’s time to go over that edge. The Rakes were one of the last great children of Britpop to ensure that every b-side must be as good as the a-side. This one, with its superb title and innumerable hooks, is an early track and one where the band deconstructed its clockwork precision and proper English accents in favor of a hell of a good time and that Cockney speak-singing that’s kept popping up. Its primal howls and chugging guitar lead to a rip-roaring climax that never fully explodes—meaning our next two songs will find its proper conclusion. In the meantime, I’ll be pogoing around the room. Where’s my cigarette and drink?

m. joosse

Wow! What a great follow up track. I mean REALLY great. Mr. Joosse is fucking good at this whole music-tennis-as-bloodsport thing. That song is so fucking catchy. It instantly implanted itself into my brain. Lodged in there really good. So much so, that I spent the following evening scrubbing through what felt like tens of thousands of songs, trying to find the one it so distinctly reminded me of. You know the one with that very similar “kid chorus” chime along.

You know the one? Really?! Tell me god dammit! I’ve been searching for it for days!

What do you mean you don’t have it? Seriously man, don’t fool around with me. I’m a race car in the red. And you know what you don’t do with a race car in the red.

Forget you. You’re no help. You’re just a music blog lurker. You’re probably not even going to comment. You know, we don’t do this for free. We get paid in comments. Or likes. Choose. Don’t lurk.

Actually you can just lurk. It’s cool. It’s all about sharing the music. Ya know.

I know that song is out there somewhere. And one day, a long time from now, it will rear it’s adorable little head, and my hand uncontrollably punch myself in the face.

Stepping back from the ledge, I only add that I really love “Bored in Belgium”. There are so many things to love and respond to in that song. The art school recklessness. The cockney talk singing. The tight post-punk instrumentation. The non-chorus chorus.

Oh so many ways to respond.

r.smigielski

Just when I think this mix can’t please me more, Robb goes and pulls out Sons and Daughters, one of my favorites. I love just about everything the band’s ever done. I love the dynamic guy/girl interplay, the way their drummer is a human metronome, the bewitching combination of sly and sinister present in their best songs.

I didn’t want to stray far from those elements, since together they’re a strong recipe for success. So we continue our European vacation with The Victorian English Gentlemens Club and this tale of continental life gone sour. It’s a great song, bursting with a Fall-like bass and chugging drum—simple rock done very right.

m. joosse

If there is anyone actually listening to this little blog. They have to be just smacking themselves in the forehead in disbelief at all the hits that keep coming one after another. That Silverbullit song is a total gem. It sounds so familiar, in a really comforting way. As if it’s really standing on the shoulders of musical giants, not redefining but simply refining the universal sounds of exhilaration.

Nicely played.

I can only describe this song by Scottish band Sons and Daughters as a separated-at-birth-sibling of Magnetic City. The constant building rhythm of the vocals and the focused, repetitious riffage really drive things forward with great tension. It was an easy pick.

r.smigielski

Musicians pausing in mid-song for half a second to yelp the word “Go!” is definitely in my top five rock and roll flourishes. It’s an almost wildly unnecessary device, yet to me it always speaks to the sheer dumb fun of performing, of getting the order to pull the level and turn the music on. Particularly with Wire, we’ve been looking at songs as machinery, though I suppose I felt I wanted to add some color and break out a little further.

This track, released to zero fanfare in 2001 by the Swedish band Silverbullit (renamed due to assumed Coors-related copyright infringement in the US as Citizen Bird), was the only way to follow that fantastic Wire track. In fact, the first time I heard this was ten years ago in a designer’s presentation. I’ve forgotten all context by now, but it was an animation he created unofficially for the song. I think it involved a train passing through various European countries identified by flags, and in between those flags was the same few seconds of animation repeating itself until the end. At the time, the song’s dynamism quickly made us forget about that loop; all these years later I realized the only way to illustrate the song was to accentuate that glorious repetition. I heard it just the once and subsequently spent years hunting it down.

m. joosse

This mix is really starting to age well. I love where it’s going. Finally a home for my long hidden passion for the song-of-one-dimension. This could really go on for weeks.

Thus I give unto the mix this really awesome track-of-1-dimension from Wire’s third incarnation as a band. I prefer this live version—it has more power, more fuzz, and more fun. They attack it’s singular riff with such abandon and reckless repetition.

I hesitated at first, because it didn’t really build on the stripped-down “spindlyness” of the Wedding Present track. But then I noticed that the Wire riff is basically the same melody as Red Shoes, only slightly backwards. It was destined. I can’t wait to see where this goes.

r.smigielski

I, meanwhile, love The Fall. I love their sloppiness, their Englishness, their aggressiveness, the way they seize upon a hook and just beat it to death. Robb can attest to my habit of putting Fall tracks on mixes every chance I can get. So because I can’t post another Fall song as a response, I’ll go to the next closest thing.

“Red Shoes by the Drugstore” is a cover of a Tom Waits song, and I’m perfectly content to have never heard the original. Years ago, when I finally dove into The Wedding Present’s back catalog, this was the first song that really caught me. It’s probably the heaviest song they’ve ever done, built on a locked-groove bassline and featuring David Gedge speak-singing his way into a Mark E Smith impression, tossing off details and asides in a thickening accent. The rest of their quite substantial catalog plays much more with restraint and acoustic melody, but this one still stands out as a wonderful anomaly, punishing but thrilling.

m. joosse

After working through a ridiculous number of potential replies to the Bowie track, I am putting forth one of the first tracks I had set aside as potential replies. I’ll admit I really didn’t want to post this song at first. Cause I am just not the biggest The Fall fan and I thought I’d be posing a little to use it. They have great tracks strewn throughout a fairly unlistenable catalog (IMO). So I tried and tried to find another suitable next track. In the end, I succumbed to it’s rhythm, it’s fuzz, it’s relentless melody.

Having listened to it probably thirty times in the process of my deliberation, I grew to love this song much more than I thought I could. Hell, it’s not even a song. It’s a treatment. A tone. It does one thing. And it does it really well.

It is a tonal dystopia on a sweaty dancefoor. If we are back on earth, I guess with The Fall is a great place to be.

r.smigielski

About 20 seconds into listening to “Satellite,” I reached for The Best of Bow Wow Wow to use as a response. I wanted what I refer to as “Adam Ant drums”—a tribal-like beat anchoring a song, primal but controlled, sounding like a small army of street drummers in the subway. It’s a distinctive sound but one that entrances me. Bow Wow Wow—and one song in particular, which will go nameless here in case I can use it someday—probably did them the best. But as “Satellite” drew to a close, I had another thought.

See, last Friday I spent the full day only listening to David Bowie, skipping around his catalogue and remembering once again how he would just pluck genres out of the air and mix them together for fun. Buried on the second disc of a rare deluxe edition of Reality, from 2003, was this cover of the famous Sigue Sigue Sputnik song. I found myself playing it over and over, hypnotized by its beat and how remarkably odd it is even for Bowie. “Fun” is an important word here—this version is fun as hell. It’s TV on the Radio meets Bo Diddley, with a rollicking electric piano and clipped guitar distortion and that mighty backbone that sounds like it stretches to infinity. It manages to feel far more human and less processed than the original, so much so that it feels vaguely incomplete, like a hour-long studio jam put to tape.

There’s a Buckminster Fuller quote I love: “Nevermind that outer space stuff, let’s get down to earth.” If “Come in Houston” is the sound of liftoff, reaching a plateau that no one else could see; and “Satellite” is the sound of orbit; “Love Missile F1 Eleven” is the sound of hurtling home with reckless abandon and total joy.

m. joosse

If there was one thing I was really digging about the Morphine track was that it only did one thing. I really have a soft spot for songs that have the confidence and economy to just do one thing. One rhythm. One chord progression. One direction. It’s an admirable thing.

So I set about searching for a great song that only did one thing. Then Mike put the request in for less “weird-ass” and more “rock”. Which really put a damper on where I was likely headed.

When combining the criteria of “one thing” and “rock”, only a few real standouts remained. One of those is this great propulsive track from TV on the Radio’s first EP. Hell, it almost sounds like a song Morphine would have wrote. But it retains some of the lush electronic flourishes that this mix started with.

r.smigielski

I’ve been trying to figure out a good place to use Morphine in the mix for a long, long time now—way back to the Blurt track, which was almost a Morphine track, though I no longer remember which one. Morphine is, to me, one of the very best American bands to ever exist. Their sound isn’t likely to be heard on this planet again. And why would it? I have to believe that anyone who hears this band respects it enough to let it be. They left behind a discography that was brief but glorious, always moving forward and upward and outward.

The Morphine songs I like best are the ones with urgency and power, sex appeal and melody bursting out everywhere. But as the years have passed since I first heard “Honey White” on my favorite station in high school, I’ve grown to appreciate the detours they took into the weird territory. “Come in Houston” is one such path, difficult but strangely alluring, tossed off as a studio jam or calculated to sound nearly disorienting. Either way, it’s probably the first- or second-weirdest song they ever recorded. Recording and release info is scarce; as a result, I only know it was created near the end of the band’s lifespan. I don’t even know where I got it from—it just showed up one day when I was searching aimlessly through my collection. It’s like it exists outside of time, like the backing track to some future poet’s ravings about life and death and space, waiting to be pulled out of orbit and used for some purpose we can’t yet guess at.

m. joosse

Art songs + sweet beats + spoken word. There is only one thing I could post. Like many disaffected college youth in my day, I became obsessed with William Burroughs without actually being able to get through any of his books. They just have way too much fluids in em. Jizz, blood, sweat, spit, ectoplasm, etc. It just becomes too much for me after the 50th page.

Anyway, my fascination led me to start collecting his spoken word and collaborative albums. His voice has an amazing instrumental quality. The album this comes from is by far the best. It has some great stories, set to great beats and instrumentation. This track in particularly has always stood out. It’s simply hilarious and frightening.

Plus I am interested to see how Mike deals with this moving forward.

We have moved off of soundcloud with our MP3 player. Love that service but there committment to thwarting unlicensed music sharing was getting ridonkulous. Turns out that wordpress has its own decent flash player. So there we go.

r.smigielski

In the mid-90s I was enthralled with the glory and pomp of Britpop, and nothing was more British than “Parklife,” Blur’s ode to domestic London narrated by Phil Daniels that was as bright and cheery as a glass of shandy. The next time the band and actor joined forces was in 2003, for this track that was about as far from “Parklife” as you can imagine. The dream of Cool Britannia had been replaced by the reality of life during wartime while the band warped and bent several times along the way. The album was called Think Tank, which Damon Albarn joked once was the first thing George W. Bush does when he wakes up. But it’s equally telling that the album was almost called Darklife.

“Me, White Noise” is a “track zero” from their as-yet-final album and the one that will cement Blur’s ultimate distinction as one of disillusionment with the things that used to bring comfort. The album itself is strange and groovy, so it’s an interesting choice that the band chose to hide this dark, pulsing squalor before the first track proper; it has as much bile as the rest of the album lacks. But it’s not a righteous, unifying fury that Rage Against the Machine brought—it’s an unhinged, noisy anger that disturbs rather than mobilizes.

So here we are: new day, new volume. “Me, White Noise” was, for me, the only real contender for a spoken-word response to Robb’s pick and a way to lead this new batch of tracks into [hopefully] strange new territories. It beats with the heart of a protest song, though not against a figurehead, but against oneself (or perhaps one’s sobriety). As Phil slurs in his best Cockney tone, “This is England, this ain’t America, for fuck’s sake.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

m. joosse

Not much to say about this mix. The results are equally inspired and baffling. I almost would label the theme as “confounding insubordination to thematic constraints” because the mix takes wild left turns at almost every opportunity. Don’t turn your back on it for even a second. It will betray you and probably poison your pets while your at work.

But having listened to it several times now, I have found that there is hidden thread of continuity tying it all together. Only these elements are linked no at the highest level but within the details – within the elements that are subconscious and unnoticed. That is an unexpected outcome that gets me really excited for the next installment. Take a listen. Let us know what you think.
r. smigielski

Download the Mix as a 143 MB zip file.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files. Email me if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01. Born Free by M.I.A.
02. Attack Ships on Fire by Revolting Cocks
03. Hu Hu Hu by Dig
04. Psyche Out by Meat Beat Manifesto
05. Cool it by Nodern
06. Hidden Place (Hearts and Bones Remix) by Bjork
07. Run the Heart by Sleigh Bells
08. Godmorgon by Consor
09. We’re Not Adult Orientated (Neu Wave Live) by Stereolab
10. The Lisbon Maru by Fuck Buttons
11. La Guitaristic House Organisation by Rinocerose
12. Turbulence (Bis Remix) by Arab Strap
13. Bang! Bang! by Le Tigre
14. God and Country by The Thermals
15. Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebov by Rage Against the Machine

Protest song. Art Song. Meet this unlikely (and rare) live track from Rage Against the Machine. Yes that’s right. Those fine purveyors of mallrat white angst bring you a spoken word performance of an Allen Ginsberg poem. It’s every bit as ridiculous, paranoid, pretentious, furious and awesome as you’d expect. This blew my mind when I was 17.

FWIW, I always felt Rage were generally of higher quality than the rap rock douche bags that continue to clog the airwave in their name to this day.

And so ends a really weird mix, full of intense, and four months late. We lost one of our authors along the way. But perhaps Epp will be back someday. Mike and I are going to carry on this musical tennis match and hopefully the results stay interesting. Full mix download and cover art on it’s way in a couple days.
r. smigielski

I really wanted to do something kraut-y in honor of Epp’s departure. But the more I listened to “Bang! Bang!,” the more I was pulled toward the idea of following it up with another protest song. This track was the only conclusion.

“God and Country” is pretty much the angriest song I can think of. It came out in the summer before Bush’s reelection, as we watched John Kerry grimly flail about but still hoped he could prevail. Only, the Thermals knew to write a song about it. It’s filled with rage, the kind of rage that leaves you shaking, fingernails pressed into your palm, eyes closed, almost unable to function. It’s two minutes of blind fury, loud and rough and unleashed squarely at the president and his subversion of religion. “Pray for a new state. Pray for assassination. I can hope, see? Even if I don’t believe.”

Le Tigre’s approach—of turning that rage into something close to art—will always be more effective. But every so often you need something closer to noise, a two-minute explosion that’s impossible to suppress. You need something that stands for you, that says what you’re not supposed to say out loud. You need to play it on repeat at full blast. Fuckin A, you do.

Needless to say, it’s been a while since the last post. More then 5 months. The last year has been a crazy one for me personally. I have been busier than at any point in my life. And I spread myself too thin. Volunteered for too many opportunities. Took on every responsibility that came my way. Started too many personal projects.

On top of that 2010 was one of the worst years for me musically. I stopped reading music press. Stopped paying attention to new breaking artists. Stopped listening all together.

All that added up to participating in the NEIMT not being high on my list of priorities. Which is a shame. Because I believe the experiment of this new version of NEIMT was really producing interesting results.

Anyway, things are starting to even out. Projects are slowing down and I am back to prioritizing what things I want to be a part of. NEIMT is one of those things. And now I am listening to music again. I actually have Kanye West to thank for that. My Dark Twisted Fantasy really broke through my malaise. Listened to it non-stop for weeks. Amazing, beautiful piece of art that record is.

Moving on and picking up where this mix left of was also daunting. With all the momentum sucked out of it, it could go in almost any direction. The question even came up as to whether or not we just end it where it was and start over.

But then, a couple days ago I was in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. And there was a really great Art of Music exhibit. One of the featured songs was this little ditty by Le Tigre. I hadn’t really heard it since it was released and it was very refreshing to hear again in the context of an art museum. It’s a really great example of how pop music can be confrontational, relevant, effective and still rock. This track is really a work of art.

Volume 04 has really gone all over the place sonically, in the best possible way. Bang! Bang! brings it back around to the beginning in a way for me. As if MIA could not do what she does without the foundation of Kathleen Hanna.

Enjoy. And tell your friends that the NEIMT is back.
r. smigielski

I’m writing from a hotel room in Phoenix, without my usual massive hard drive to pull something from. So in between writing a presentation and feeling my flesh burn in 105-degree weather, I dug up an Arab Strap song from a few years ago, when the band broke up. They had a neat trick they pulled out every so often—creating dance music that was almost terrifyingly bleak and sad, but you didn’t really notice because it had a fast beat (and a thick Scottish accent). That doesn’t mean it sounds fun, but it does sound thrilling, and best of all, it has lyrics that tell a story in complete sentences, which we haven’t seen in a long while.
m. joosse

I’ve been looking for a way to slip in something more organic and dance oriented to lift and chill the mood. I think it fits nicely between Sterolab and Fuck Buttons. Here’s rinôçérôse from their super danceable Installation Sonore (1999). I saw them at an open air on a summer’s evening a few years ago and man was that a fun show, dancing everywhere, nonstop.

This will be my second to last post for NEIMT. Though it’s great being a part of it, I am not able to respond to posts in a reasonably timely manner. Though I will  continue to listen eagerly. And I promise to deliver my final post within the agreed upon 2 days!
m.eppelheimer

Well this is fascinating. When I started this volume, I was expecting that it would explore an upbeat electro-pop realm. I found it interesting when it started to veer into ambient territory. While that’s a genre I very much love, I couldn’t give in so early in the chain, so I tried to steer the mix back to a more upbeat pop realm with the Sleigh Bells. Which Mike promptly let me know “he really didn’t like.”

Only to get the big “FU” from Epp with that Godmorgon track. Not that I didn’t like it, but it upset all expectations in the harshest of ways. Then another “FU” comes from Joosse with another sharp left turn back into pop territory and a new emphasis on a guitar driven sound.

I have been left sitting this last week thinking, “well what the hell am I supposed to do now?”. Pop for mike? Noise for Epp?

I have sifted through countless tracks. I almost posted a very beautiful but highly repetitious 15-minute Papa M track as my own passive aggressive move. Instead I posted this 9-minute journey through the cicada infested wilderness of Fuck Buttons. Their second album, Tarot Sport, is just phenomenal. They are really towing a nice line between the noisy and melodic sides of the ambient sound. This song is just so beautiful. Enjoy.
r.smigielski

It’s interesting to me that this last round of songs has been highly random—we’re purposefully leaving very few breadcrumbs for the next person to follow our trail through the mix. This is the first time we’ve had a sustained length of songs where we seem to be following our edict (this song is a reaction to the previous one) from our guts instead of our ears. Which means we’re going a lot of weird places.

So the one breadcrumb that leads from the utterly baffling Consor to this rave-up from Stereolab is the way the electronic buzz overpowers everything else, toeing the line between earworm and earache. This song is as much a reflection of how badly I want us to return to warm pop territory as it is a representation of the cicadas that have lately been humming incessantly outside my window at night.
m. joosse

I was going to put up an LFO (Mark Bell, who produced some Björk) track that fit in nicely but it felt like too much of the same. Mixes should have pauses, or spaces to reset while a theme develops so here’s a piece by Consor. Some of my favorite tracks are long with a sense of drama and build that start with a theme and dance around it and return to it (Eno, Mogawi, Godspeed). This one reminds me of Music for…-era Eno and has the electronica and scratchiness we’ve been grooving on. I like the ambience and slowness and those deeper pipe-organ-like notes that run throughout.

So I agonized quite a bit over this track selection. The ambient, glitch-tech sound is very much in my wheel house and I could comfortably stay here for a while. Part of me feels that’s too easy and just wouldn’t feel right. For some reason I am compelled to post this great track by Sleigh Bells. It just feels like the right song to relate to the swells of random noise this mix is veering towards. But it also picks up the pace slightly and guides us towards the second half of the mix.
r.smigielski

Speaking of straying from a path, I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to use a Björk track for this post. She’s done industrial, she’s done great beats, she’s done dark, she’s done killer vocals. For restless experimentalism and relentless innovation, I’ll always look to her, because even if she produces something I don’t like, I still know she followed her muse and it took her to somewhere in deep space and back.

But which Björk to use? The Debut era quickly became dated-sounding. Post and Homogenic have some spectacular songs that will live forever. My attention wavered from Vespertine and Volta by emphasizing mood over melody. And I found Medulla flat-out impenetrable, even though it did with voices what Robb’s and Epp’s tracks did with synths, and that would’ve been a cool place to take the mix.

But this “Hidden Place” remix hit all the right notes with me. It seems to almost literally exist outside the Björk canon—available only as a download from her website, it removes much of her vocal parts and reconstructs the song into a twitchy, human-mechanical hybrid that doesn’t resemble the original version even a little. I love how the very warm-sounding hi-hat bears the unmistakable footprint of a human being, which Björk—and much of our volume so far—had seemingly been running away from at that point.
m. joosse

I don’t know how I came across the video below, but it induced me to go straight to iTunes and buy the album. I’m straying from the industrial path a bit but this track has great beats, atmosphere, and is well dark. Nodern is the moniker of a South African artist/musician named Mitch Stratten who built that crazy dog including animatronics.

I used to work at this rock’n'roll t-shirt shop in Phoenix AZ. It was a dream job for college. Sat around all day folding t-shirts, selling Dr. Martens and those Calvin pissing on Ford/Chevy stickers. We sat around and listened to music. Any music we wanted. When I first started, I was fresh out of high school and completely ensconced in the Seattle grunge thing. The other guys at the shop quickly labeled me “seattle boy” for the fact that the music I brought in to play was so idiotically narrow-minded. Needless to say, I discovered a lot of music by working there and quickly outgrew my grunge fixation.

One of the guys there claimed to have 5000 cd’s (which i never actually saw but for the most part believed). He played a lot of industrial music (Front 242, Skinny Puppy, etc…). I heard a lot of it over and over again, and I wondered if the repetition would eventually empower me to “love” it. But it always just washed over me like lukewarm water. Complete indifference. Some things did stand out that I grew to completely love. They will remain unnamed as they actually might appear further in this mix.

But Meat Beat Manifesto is one of the greats. In particular I find the album 99% to be masterpiece. Probably because its the one that focuses on vocals more than samples. The vocals are what just kill on this album. And Psyche Out kills perhaps just a little bit more than anything else.
r. smigielski

I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to industrial music, which I found terrifying at first, based on brief glimpses of Front 242 and Ministry on late-night MTV, but came around to realizing how much beauty there was in its perpetual motion machinery.

And I used to think Virtuosity, the source of this song, was a great movie. Then I realized it would be trapped in time as pointing the way to a future that never came and was never really wanted. And it dumped Russell Crowe on America. For that it must be punished.

“There are no bad guys, just disturbed guys.” It reminds me that I’m always misunderstanding something.
m. joosse

The best track from the best industrial album I ever owned, The Revolting Cocks’ Big Sexy Land. Like M.I.A. RevCo was enveloped in controversy in the 80s and the UK even banned tracks like “No Devotion” (“The voice of god means nothing anymore!”). Being in high school during the height of industrial in a city at it’s center (WaxTrax) I saw my share of shows at the Metro in Chicago; Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Test Dept., Laibach, Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Einsturzende Neubauten, Nitzer Ebb and more. In the basement of the Metro was The Smart Bar where “Attack Ships On Fire” and Nitzer Ebb’s “Join in the Chant” always had immediate and complete effect on the dance floor.

I always put Big Sexy Land up there with Fear Of A Black Planet, 2 albums I often revisit that ended the 80s on angry, relentless and awesome notes.

The minute I heard this song, I fell in love with MIA all over again. She does this to me with every record. Perfect blend of dance, punk, and art noise and that Suicide sample is just infecting. Felt like it captured some of the eclectic rambunctiousness of last mix but most of all I was really interested in where this track would lead us for a new mix. I already have like 25 tracks that might fit somewhere in there. But that depends on how the other’s interpret it.

And if you haven’t check out the youtube “banned” video:

Planets influence each other in a regular, predictable way. Not so the 3 current contributors to the Neverending Mix. This third volume may not be the smoothest ride, but it’s a rocking one. It’s especially satisfying to me as many of Robb’ s and Mike’s tracks were unknown or new to me (discovering new/unknown music being one of the main points of this exercise). Throughout the run of a mix, finding the right track to respond to increasingly complex attributes is a daunting task. At the same time controlling the pacing and flow is not absolute, a track laid down is a track laid down. I wonder how a blind response to a list of requirements would turn out, we each deliver five tracks based on predetermined requirements of genre or year or place or…. would be fun to approach some mixes in an Oblique Strategies sort of way.
m. eppelheimer

Download the Mix as a 88 MB zip file.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files. Email me if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01 Spartacus by Ungdomskulen
02 Feel the Mores by Wicked Farleys
03 Slipstream by Silkworm
04 No Sleeves by Les Savy Fav
05 Little League by Cap’n Jazz
06 It’s Expected I’m Gone by Minutemen
07 Without MSG I Am Nothing by Mclusky
08 Phoenix and the Faultline by The Plastic Constellations
09 Lie Down on Landsdowne [Version] by Lifter Puller
10 Epic Problem by Fugazi
11 Arizona by The Constantines
12 What If I Was Right by Sleater-Kinney
13 Cresent City by Gabardine
14 Snake Charmer by The Warmers
15 Via Nomentana by Joe Lally

The hardcore movement never interested me. Maybe because I came into music a little late, or because my biggest influence growing up was an adult alternative radio station, or maybe because I just fundamentally don’t get screaming. So I’m much more interested in the aftermath of the dam holding hardcore breaking and spilling its waters into the larger body of music to influence and be influenced by.

“Via Nomentana” sounds a little like late-period Fugazi (duh), a little like the Warmers, and a little like Sleater-Kinney. But it thrills me to report that it also sounds like the Velvet Underground and Steve Wynn and PJ Harvey and a whole mess of other artists that we haven’t talked about yet here.

So even though I may be ending this volume on a moody note, I hope this is a mixing of waters that frees us to move in any direction in #4. As always, I’m excited to see where we go from here.
m. joosse

Doing the best to both capture a more bare-bones aesthetic as well as a slightly trance-like composition, I give you the Warmers — a Dischord-era trio that manages to sound insanely stripped down and immediate. I find this song, building on “eastern-ish” sonic tropes, completely mesmerizing in its use of contrasts. Unaffected guitars and shouted vocals against hushed melodies and an arrangement that builds and evolves unexpectedly.

Whenever I listen to Sleater-Kinney I usually end up listening to Gabardine, mostly because I discovered them around the same time. Or maybe it’s the spare approach they share. Gabardine is a trio from Zurich that I had the pleasure of opening for with my last band in Basel. Switzerland is a desolate wilderness for the thirsty, transplanted, rock music fan, but there are a few oases like Gabardine and Shilf. At first I thought Slow Motion Rocket would be a good follow up track, but it’s too slow. Then I thought, hmm, what have they been doing lately? And found the Years & Airports album from last year. Thanks Mike!  Then I heard this great track and it was decided.
m.eppelheimer

It’s hot and humid outside, Supergrass broke up, people’s excitement over soccer has turned into xenophobia, but most importantly, it’s been THREE WEEKS since my last post. Come on guys, let’s pick the pace back up here.

Robb, I think inadvertently, moved the mix forward a good amount with “Arizona.” We traded heavy for spiky and noisy for melodic, and for all our sakes I hope we don’t go back for a while. And I definitely wanted a break from bands of dudes.

So here’s a track from Sleater-Kinney, who share a lot of qualities with the Constantines—a similar tone, a supreme ease with hooks, an ability to scream tunefully, and a career evolution that still allows them to remain quintessentially themselves. They also share what we used to refer to as “post-millennial tension,” but since this song is from 1998, that analysis will have to wait for a future volume and the chance to hear/discuss their revolutionary One Beat album.
m. joosse

Now Arizona is not a complex track. It’s a little bit “one note”, in that it is really only interested in executing one sonic idea. But it has always been the song of theirs that stuck with me over time. It always pops in my head, especially that “1984″ line. Not sure why. The narrative of it has me captivated. And that big ass drum sound. I was reminded of it instantly when I heard the Fugazi track.

I think about Fugazi’s The Argument a lot. It’s in my top all time favorite Albums. That’s capitalized because it’s a true album experience, the tracks interlocking in a sonic story with pacing: ups, downs, climaxes, resolutions. And I could listen to it over and over and over. It’s quiet, tense, loud, bracing, and a seamless crossover of rock, alternative and postpunk and every freaking track is memorable. So if anyone out there doesn’t have this, they NEED it.

But picking a song sure is a task, a problem, an… epic… problem.
m.eppelheimer

It’s interesting to me that Lifter Puller followed the siren call to Brooklyn and morphed into the Hold Steady, while the Plastic Constellations stayed put. I suppose it’s a question every band faces: go to the scene’s epicenter instead of being an odd fish in a small pond?
m. joosse

Balls. Out. Rock. Without all the pseudo-violence. I am still emo after all.
r.smigielski

But in all seriousness, I love this band. Very, very much. So I have almost no choice but to use this moment to insert them into the NEIMT for the first and perhaps last time.

There are many great songs to choose from, but I almost can’t not pick “Little League”. This song is the epitome of their sound and is one of my all time favorite songs, period. It’s muddy but massive. I always thought it was the closest approximation of how music could sound like thunder. It also is the perfect blend of boyhood sensitivity and adolescent anger, with absolutely zero macho testosterone. The closing of this song never fails to get my heart rate amped up.

I also see Cap’n and other bands of this ilk, to be great examples of the punk ethos. How you really didn’t have know how to sing or played expertly to create great artful rock music that was powerful and moving. This was hugely influential into me growing UP and remains so to this day. That’s what great emo was all about, and these kids were fantastic at it.

I can only imagine that Mr. Joosse is not going to very happy following my posts this round, as this particular niche of music is one of my sweet spots and I have lots more to share.
r. smigielski

The second half of “Feel the Mores” reminded me of an airier version of Silkworm, who sort of began in that emo vein before finding their own style quickly as something far more muscular and interesting. I had several of their early songs to choose from for this post—one was a lot like the Wicked Farleys and one had some great time changes and one was an epic 9 minutes. But I’d rather use a song that evolved from that sound instead of followed it closely. So I went with “Slipstream,” which is perhaps two steps removed from “Feel the Mores,” but was my favorite of the options. Let’s face it—the 38 seconds starting at 1:34 are just fucking awesome. Coming in a close second: the line “Steve Albini, you’d better learn to take it easy. You know they used to call him Albini-weenie.”
m. joosse

Instead I’m gonna build on the angularity of Ungdomskulen, with the Wicked Farleys. This is a band from Boston that I saw play in some warehouse ages ago. The show was one of the best i’ve ever seen. It blew my furtive little mind. And this track from their first record (which is impossible to find nowadays) is one of the best. Lots of changes, noisy productions, jumpy rhythms and a soft vocal style that’s just downright pretty. And as with any good song it’s listened to loud. Enjoy.
r. smigielski

Last.fm member sabsludge described them thus: “King Crimson song structures + Black Sabbath riffs + Sonic Youth tone + Dinosaur Jr vocals = Ungdomskulen. In short, this band is better than eating at Burger King twice per week.”
m.eppelheimer

This blog is as much a celebration of music as it is a celebration of the ah ha! moment when a solution presents itself. Throughout design school and as a professional, I always knew that the “right idea” would come along—the trouble was in not knowing when. So sometimes you’d have to wait days and stay awake until the birds started chirping just to reach it; other times it would show immediately. I just had to trust that it would come, and that the process—however long or meandering it may be—was worth it.

So that’s what this mix is like to me: an occasionally bewildering, frequently inspiring, always tremendously fun process of hunting for that ah ha! track. We hope you’ve enjoyed this second volume and will download the collection below.
m. joosse

Download the Mix as a 115 MB zip file.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files. Email me if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01 A Few Hours After This… (demo) by The Cure
02 Haunted When the Minutes Drag (USA Mix) by Love and Rockets
03 I Am the Resurrection by The Stone Roses
04 Chewing Gum Weekend by The Charlatans
05 Shoot Speed/Kill Light by Primal Scream
06 Strange Lights by Deerhunter
07 Clean Coloured Wire by Engineers
08 The Story of Yo La Tengo by Yo La Tengo
09 Departures by Half String
10 City of Bugs by The Cribs
11 Remember Me by British Sea Power
12 You Still Love Me by Cut Off Your Hands
13 Taking Tips from the Gallery Gang by Bound Stems
14 Interzone by Face to Face
15 Electricity by Spiritualized

Then I ran across Spiritualized. And this massive wall of sound called Electricity. I think it nicely capstones the mix and even has a little of that bluesy energy evident in the Face-to-Face track. They both move at the same pace and have a similar franticness to them.

And the magic of this track is the bass line. What the hell low-end heaven does it hit in that chorus? and what the hell is it doing at the end of the song?Up and down the neck like a bat outta hell. Yum.
r. smigielski

m.eppelheimer

It serves a nifty purpose for me as my final entry in this volume: a wonderful anthem that supports previous entries that suddenly takes off in another direction. Maybe it’s just me fighting my nature, because I could stay in glorious-bombast-anthem land forever, blind and blissed out. But if Bound Stems can make a hard left into another territory—somewhere jaunty and sunny and with trumpets—then what happens when this mix does as well?
m. joosse

Despite the bombast of that amazing British Sea Power song, I am not yet ready to give up on the sweeter side of things. This track by the amazingly named Cut Off Your Hands brings together so many elements explored throughout the mix. It’s really straight-forward but seems to be hitting the right spot on this beautiful spring weekend.

Full disclosure: the song that really should appear here is CUYH “Happy as Can Be” but it appeared on an NEIMT just over a year ago and I thought that was just “too soon.”
r. smigielski

m.eppelheimer

So instead I offer this track by the Cribs (plus the pinch hitter of the decade, Johnny Marr), from last year’s Ignore the Ignorant. I think it combines the epic intensity of “The Story of Yo La Tengo” with the rhythmic power of “Departures.”

I obtained an mp3 of this song through less-than-perfectly-legal means a month or so before the album’s release and copied it immediately on a thumb drive that I plugged into my car. When “City of Bugs” came on, the creators of the mp3 had done a nifty trick and literally caused the track to never end—it looped at a certain point back to an earlier point in the song, and that edit seemed technically flawless. I bet I listened to the song for 22 minutes before figuring out that it wasn’t really that epic. But I think that ceaseless rising and falling is the ultimate dream of the shoegazer: music that traps the listener in a state of rapture forever.
m. joosse

I almost countered with another 12 minute plus track but thought since there are already two on this mix in that range I will spare you listener and save it for another day.

Ultimately I settled on this wondrous track by a “little known” Arizona band, Half String. I don’t say that to be indie snob snooty. Let me explain.

I grew up in Phoenix. In the cultural desert that was Arizona in the 90s, there just happened to be a pretty great little music scene. And there was and still is the greatest little record store in the history of man, Stinkweeds. All the clerks had that indie-know-it-all-allure, which at that time had not been dubbed an unattractive “hipster” quality. For me it was everything I aspired to be. I came of age in that record store and was introduced to countless amazing bands via their recommendations.

I do not call Stinkweeds the greatest record store because they had any and every kind of music. Far from it. This was a small place. What made it special was that they only carried what was “good”. And even better they had everything good that you never heard of. In this digital-get-anything-anytime-age, we shall never know such curated beauty again.

Anyway, the owner of this record store is a woman named Kimber. She not only ran this Mecca of music but also was an amazing drummer in one of the greatest AZ indie bands, the aforementioned Half String. The high school version of myself had a huge crush to say the least. Anyway, I only call them “little known” because for me they were and will always be one of the special things about my growing up in Arizona. The mere thought about anyone outside that space knowing about them is just beyond my understanding. But that’s just me.

This track is from their last record, A Fascination with Heights. It is a classic from front to back. Find yourself a out-of-print copy STAT.
r. smigielski

I also thought it would be nice to have a big noisy epic track right in the middle of the mix: here’s “The Story of Yo La Tango”.
m.eppelheimer

This Engineers track made me want to introduce the language of shoegazing into this mix. We’ve seen so much human essence, from Pere Ubu and the Slits and Deerhunter and all the rest, that I wanted to drop in something almost mechanical.
m. joosse

I am also incredibly aware (and anxious) as to how my choice is going to affect the overall direction of the mix. I don’t want to fuck it up.

I felt like adding another track from the same era would pigeonhole the mix permanently in that direction and make it too singular in focus. Then again picking something too out of left field and I screw up the flow.

So I hope I managed to do both with this absolutely gorgeous Deerhunter track. It maintains the fuzz and the tempo of the previous track, but brings us squarely into a new century point of view. Love Deerhunter.
r. smigielski

Shoot Speed/Kill Light closes it beautifully. Felt like the right place to take this.
m.eppelheimer

Between 10th & 11th has become one of my all-time favorite albums, and I’m pretty okay with the Charlatans’ career being one long ripoff of the Stone Roses. You can hear “I Am the Resurrection” clearly if you listen to Some Friendly or Up to Our Hips, but 10th & 11th is light on the low end and heavy on keyboards, and favors the Roses’ soft introspection instead of its worldbeating. Surprisingly (or not), it’s probably the least-popular Charlatans album and is rumored to be the band’s least-favorite. I’d follow Robb’s post with almost anything off the album, but “Chewing Gum Weekend” takes its time unspooling, finding a wonderful groove that builds ever so slightly towards its end, making it a perfect track for driving at sunset and for pushing this mix into the early ’90s.
m. joosse

At that time, I hadn’t really listened to any of the mid-to-late Eighties English bands (not even The Cure) and I remember being taken aback by the noisiness of all that reverb and how they could sound so vintage and new at the same time. I repaid the favor to my cousin by introducing him to the Violent Femmes, specifically Add it Up. Natch.

The Stone Roses have a gold mine of great tracks but I am going with I Am The Resurrection because it’s rhythm seemed to be the most relational to the Love & Rockets track. I particularly love the grooviness of the bass lines throughout and the hugeness of the drums and guitar.

Plus I am a sucker for long songs (especially as they appear early in a track line up, Wilco’s Spiders (Kidsmoke) I am looking at you). I also love the fake ending at the 5:26 minute mark. That could have easily been the end of the song. But they said “hell no, there is still more awesome left in this track, let’s get it out”. I can only imagine what this would have been like to see live.
r. smigielski

So, moving from hours to minutes but staying in the 80s, here’s a track by Love and Rockets before they shed most of the goth of Bauhaus and Tones On Tails but are definitely getting more psychedelic, glam, and moving towards the mainstream. It’s a magic spot and this is a magical track, one that Harry Soenksen and I spent many evenings listening to,  driving back and forth from home to Medusas, The Exit, Berlin, or the Smart bar.
m.eppelheimer

So why not go from Caesars back to their musical primordial soup? There were several contenders from the mighty Cure that could’ve fit here, but this outtake from A Head on the Door was both less familiar and flat-out better than the others. As a demo, it feels remarkably complete, with the right mix of scrappy confidence and melodic hope that I was seeking as this mix’s “track 1.”
m. joosse

And so ends the first volume of the all new NEIMT. We really had no idea how it would turn out and the results are both thrilling and confounding. The new format appears to reward a path of meandering influence more than any kind of overarching cohesion. We hope you enjoy and stay tuned for the next volume starting momentarily.

Enjoy.

Download the Mix as a 143 MB Zip File.
Now using sendspace to deliver these massive files. Email me if the file expires.

The tracklist is as follows:

01 Written in Reverse by Spoon
02 Lipstick Vogue by Elvis Costello
03 (I want to be an) Anglepoise Lamp by The Soft Boys
04 White Elephant by The Volcano Suns
05 Caroleen by Pere Ubu
06 A Drop of Nelson’s Blood by Jarvis Cocker
07 Wear Two Eyes (Boom) by June of 44
08 Bathysphere by Smog
09 Get by Blurt
10 Mount Blasta by Critters Buggin’
11 Saigon Pickup by John Zorn
12 Newton (rough mix) by The Slits
13 True False, Fake Real by Hercules and the Love Affair
14 If Looks Could Kill by Camera Obscura
15 Strawberry Weed by The Caesars

So I choose to end this first volume not with a bang or a whisper, but with a big, dumb, happy grin. Maybe because it’s summer outside, or because I love being a part of this mix. Whatever the reason, like the song says, I’ll keep coming back for more.
m. joosse

So, I went with this awesome feel good track track from Camera Obscura, replete with Afro beat, guitars, girls, and of course, horns. You can dance to it, sing to it, rock to it. And thinking of John Zorn (though still the right choice!), when I heard the line, “tell me where it all went wrong, maybe I can make it better” that cinched it.

Wrap it up Mike!
m.eppelheimer

err.. something…

With this Hercules and the Love Affair track, I am setting things up for a bit of a feel good ending. It has nods to the lanky funk and randomness of the Slits but is mostly innocuous (in the best way of course). There is intentionally not a lot going on here. Just a moment to breath, take a hot shower and prepare for the next day.
r. smigielski

So “Newtown” by the Slits does a few important things for me. It turns the mix back away from the brink of total modern-composer madness, a pool in which I cannot swim. I think it captures a similar sense of the unknown as “Saigon Pickup,” albeit in a less chaotic way, through its layering of odd samples—“Newtown” uses the sounds of an ashtray banging, a spoon clattering, and a match striking to reference the drug use that the lyrics compare television to. Finally, like the aforementioned basket, this mix was turning into a real sausage fest.

This “rough mix” was unreleased until a deluxe edition of this album came out late last year. This version is about 40 seconds longer than the original, with certain elements pushed back or forward and a sound mix that’s more naked and crisp. Like “Saigon Pickup,” I find it slightly alien, somewhat unsettling, and totally mesmerizing.
m. joosse

When I first got the debut Naked City album and brought it to undergrad studio, my good friend Chuck said, “This is like being strapped to the hood of a New York City taxi on a Saturday night!” Fucking A Double Plus.

The Naked City Band: John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Fred Frith, Wayne Horvitz, Joey Baron.
m.eppelheimer

I felt like the crazy-theremin-keyboard sound built on the squawkishness of the amazing Blurt track. Plus I am really diggin’ on the treble-heavy beat and I really wanted something to connect rhythmically to that.

I don’t know how the hell we got here from Spoon, but I am most pleased with our first strings meandering adventurousness.
r. smigielski