2007年 09月 13日 木曜日 13:40
I'm trying something new this month, and posting the mix to sendspace in addition to a friends-only server. So, for the next week or two, anyone can download the mix: http://www.sendspace.com/file/wuk7b6
For those of you stumbling on this post: As I listen to music in a calender month, I maintain a playlist of the songs that caught my attention for whatever reason. At the end of the month a assemble a mix CD of the songs, and keep the CD around so that it's harder to forget about good music. If you want, you can download the zip file, normalize the volume levels, and burn the mix to CD for yourself.
It was an especially good month for music, with a nice balance of new finds, old favorites, and the rediscovery of a couple of tracks I didn't realize were good the first time around.
A cover version kicks things off, but I've never heard the original, so it hardly counts. Mick Harvey appears here twice, first with this 2005 solo track, and later in a weird, weird song by the Boys Next Door, his band with Nick Cave prior to the Birthday Party.
Local music this month from Thunder in the Valley, a piano-based, energetic vaudeville and cabaret outfit. I hope to catch these guys live at some point.
I've been getting into Magazine recently. They are important members of the original class of post-punk bands, and I don't know how I've overlooked them this long. "Permafrost" is a disturbing song with what might be the scariest chorus I've ever heard. It rocks.
A post from wirehead2501 reminded me of a mashup I was into a couple of years ago. It was the first time I ever really noticed the whole mashup phenomenon, due mostly to the track "Dr. Who on Holiday," which mixes The Timelords and Green Day. It is, I maintain, a near-perfect example of the mashup genre and is the only conceivable way Green Day could ever end up on one of my monthly mixes.
Metal rears its ugly head again this month in Lacrimas Profundere, a band I found and forgot about last year during my failing quest to find more metal that I like. They played M'Era Luna, apparently, and allmusic says this is their best song. I didn't re-listen to many others, but this one is, indeed, pretty good.
gryffyn was nice enough to bring me back from Germany Deine Lakaien's new live CD, backed by Die Neue Philharmonic Frankfurt. It moves me one step closer to naming Deine Lakaien my favorite band. I haven't claimed a favorite band in many, many years, but I might have to break down and admit that Deine Lakaien is, in fact, uniquely awesome in the world. (Random fact: I now own four live albums from Deine Lakaien. They're all different from one another and all worthwhile. One of them, Live Acoustic, is possibly the best album I've ever heard.)
I had two compilation tapes in junior high that exerted some formative influence on my music taste. One was the Enigma Variations sampler from Enigma records, the other the Scream Compilation, published by the Scream Club in LA. One of the songs I liked a lot from the Scream compilation was Caterwaul's "Manna & Quail." I stumbled on a cheap CD by them this month, and was excited to hear the song for the first time in many years. This version is more polished that the punky one I remember from the tape, but it is still a notable and unusual song.
Battery was my favorite industrial dance band for years. Their last album, "Aftermath" is a pinnacle of the genre. Fishtank No. 9 (War-N Harrison, now of Hungry Lucy) has only one album, but it was one of my favorites of quirky, off-beat industrial. Put them together, and you get an industrial song that is maybe a little cheesy in its stateliness, but still plenty awesome.
Metric and All Gone Dead are both bands I found on Radio Ghoul School. Metric is fantastic, splitting the difference between post-punk and emo, with vocals that remind me of a trip hop chanteuse I can't quite place. All Gone Dead is a band I'd written off ages ago as silly goth. I figured out this month that it's only silly (in the bad way) when you listen to more than one song at a time. There are two or three songs on their album that, taken individually, are great fun.
Finally, there's Janet Klein and Her Parlor Boys. Janet plays ukulele, and covers racy songs from the teens, 20s and 30s. This instrumental also features accordion, which helped edge out the other track I planned to include: the raunchiest version ever of "Ballin' the Jack."
01. Mick Harvey - Demon Alcohol
02. Metric - Glass Ceiling
03. Thunder in the Valley - Altar
04. The Decemberists - Shankill Butchers
05. The Long Blondes - Only Lovers Left Alive
06. All Gone Dead - Cedric Krane
07. Dean Gray - Dr Who on Holiday
08. RL Burnside - Let My Baby Ride
09. The Boys Next Door - Dive Position
10. Magazine - Permafrost
11. Lacrimas Profundere - Adorer and Somebody
12. Battery - Doppelganger (Majestic Remix by Fishtank No. 9)
13. Catherine Wheel - I Want to Touch You
14. Caterwaul - Manna and Quail
15. Cindergarden - Dirty Ritual
16. Janet Klein and Her Parlor Boys - Unrequited
17. Yann Tiersen - Mouvement Introductif
18. Deine Lakaien - Follow Me (Live)