August 29th, 2009
A few months ago, the estimable Oliver Wang invited me to make a mix for the excellent Soul Summer blog that he curates. Since my knack for procrastination is only matched for my gift for talking loudly in public places, it didn’t run until now. Part Sint Maarten travelogue, part ode to Jamaican music and marijuana, though the days of Summer are dwindling, hopefully you’ll find the post worthwhile. There are tales of purchasing dirt weed from guys named Slick, bad DJ’s from upstate New York, and Black Uhuru. Everything but the spliff itself.
Soul Summer: Summer Smoke
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July 31st, 2009
Jeff Siegel and Mallory O’ Donnell are both members of the Stylus Diaspora. Passion of the Weiss is proud to serve as Babylonia.
Jeff:
For this aged club rat, chased off by cokeheads, Guidos, and Guiliani, the worst thing about summers was always the outdoor parties, or the warehouse raves devoid of air-flow. One could practically slide along the floor on one’s sweat. Gross. So my music listening over the hotter months had to remain slight, and perhaps a little chilly, certainly not dance-able. But we’re having a nice, mild summer, at least up here in the northeast (my comrade may have a different, though apparently not divergent, experience), so massive, sweaty beats are still in fashion.
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July 24th, 2009
Susan Wood likes summer because she tans really well and enjoys the jealousy of her much whiter, burnt and peeling friends. She also hosts ‘The Late Night Sandwich’ on BluFM in Katoomba on Sundays, 10pm-midnight AEST at www.blufm.org.au and has some blog (who doesn’t?) at http://steeplechaser1.wordpress.com
Summer, in my eyes, really means dancing, and who isn’t up for doing the Twist or the Charleston in the middle of your living room/bedroom/kitchen/puplic transport/outdoor arena to your favourite indie-alternative rock band with effeminate haircuts, too much make-up, and yet strangely attractive in their own… way.
I say it’s time for another Dance Dance Revolution, baby! It’s time for all the wannabe So You Think You Can Dancers to get out onto the streets. That’s right, this summer, I’d like to see some ACTUAL DANCING–if you spot an individual trying to pawn off the hip sway what looks like they’re really too good for their own dance moves, point them in the nearest direction to a dance class and tell them THEY’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
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July 13th, 2009
Hailing from Ottawa, Aaron Matthews boasts an intimate familiarity with the meaning of the phrase, “So Icy.” On a related note, Trey Kerby once made a snowman using nothing but a half-dozen cups of shaved ice and Bill Hanzlik’s mustache.
Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FTB8M6QE
Aaron M:
For a little context, I currently reside in Canada’s capital, Ottawa.
Ottawa winters are groin-grabbingly cold and they feel endless. This is balanced out by the surprisingly warm and pleasant summers. We appreciate sunshine all the more with the knowledge that we only have a few months of warm weather left to enjoy.
The first side of The Cory Matthews Mixtape is intended to accompany you on a lazy summer day, with each song perfectly suited for a specific scenario or moment in your day.
Note that these scenarios aren’t all supposed to take place within the tape’s 40 minute runtime. Keep this on loop on a hot day and good stuff will happen, trust.
First the alarm goes off. You flick it off, stretch, yawn, and get dressed. You throw on your brand new Gucci underwear and open the blinds. It’s beautiful outside, sunny without being balmy.
It’s either a) your day off, b) the weekend, or c) you don’t have a job.
Either way, the weather is nice and you have no immediate obligations. Let’s go!
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July 6th, 2009
Nick Rallo has stupid crazy Cetacean swag at Whale Fight.
Nobody knows the hot months better than Ray Bradbury. The cool smell of lightning, and the snug tennis shoes on your freshly socked feet: Mr. Electrico from Something Wicked This Way Comes is summer. Personally, I don’t get tired of reading about it–the same way when you’re a kid with a flashlight in the dark. You find new things. Luckily, Bradbury is still around to talk about it:
Last week, he spoke at Barnes and Noble about his new book, “We’ll Always Have Paris.” The collection focuses on his forty-year love affair with France and, not surprisingly (or cliched at all), love itself. He raised his hands to the crowd–his palms out like he was blessing us: “My hands are antennae. I feel everything. If you want to write you have to stop thinking.” These songs do that to me–they dilate the eyes and stop you from thinking–they’re good, crisp songs about a rush of feelings. It’s what this mix is about: an explosion. An overload of the senses, like the huge surging-to-the-stars twelve string guitar in “Closer to Heaven,” or the whiskey sadness in “Golden.” Bradbury wrote about it, and damn it’s true. To him, the summer was about the circus–to me it’s about music.
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June 22nd, 2009
A regular contributor to the Singles Jukebox and See Magazine, Renato Pagnani blogs at Until the Train Stops. He is currently vying with Cadence Weapon and Michael J. Fox for the throne of most awesome Edmontonian.
Download: http://www.zshare.net/download/61118024337f19df/
Tracklist:
1. The-Dream, “Walkin’ on the Moon (feat Kanye West)”
2. Miniature Tigers, “Dino Damage”
3. A.C. Newman, “There Are Maybe Ten or Twelve”
4. Project Pat, “I Be Fresh”
5. Phoenix, “1901″
6. Ryan Leslie, “Quicksand”
7. The Whitest Boy Alive, “Courage”
8. Wale, “Penthouse Anthem”
9. Kid Cudi, Kanye West and Common, “Poke Her Face”
10. Death Cab for Cutie, “My Mirror Speaks”
11. Harlem Shakes, “Strictly Game”
12. Metric, “Blindness”
13. Röyksopp, “The Girl and the Robot”
14. Little Boots, “New in Town”
15. DJ Quik and Kurupt, “Hey Playa!”
16. Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, “Difference Is Time”
17. Franz Ferdinand, “Ulysses”
18. Gorilla Zoe, “Echo”
19. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Zero”
20. Junior Boys, “The Animator”
Glance at the tracklist for my entry in this year’s Summer Jamz series and it might appear the least creative of the mixes submitted thus far–which it probably is. But I’m totally cool with that, because, well, that’s sort of the point. Hear me out: I started making summer mixes four years ago with two goals in mind: a) compile mixes to soundtrack my summers while chronicling what listening habits during that period and b) introduce my friends–who in real life love music just as much as I do, but might not share the same unhealthy obsession–to music they might not be exposed to otherwise. Which isn’t to say my taste is any superior to theirs or anything like that, but simply that I listen to more (and more “obscure”) music than most of my close friends do — partially because it’s sorta kinda my “job” (so I tell myself) but mostly because I spent most of the day at work (or class) reading music blogs instead of, you know, actually working (or paying attention to my profs).
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June 17th, 2009
Douglas Martin picks Cherries in Yakima, boxes with shadows, and managed to leave “In the Garage” off this mix–presumably as punishment for “Beverly Hills.”
You’re out of school for the next two-and-a-half months. You don’t have a job, and your parents won’t lift a finger to help you get a car until you get one. You just checked the weather report, and it’s supposed to be Hot as Hell Degrees. So, what do you do? You call up your boys (and/or/preferably girls/at least one girl) to see if they want to sweat their balls (or, in the case of the girls/at least one girl, hopefully not) off in your garage and crank out some jams, duuuuuude!
If we music fans can agree on anything, it’s that garage-punk bands aren’t made during the winter months. Very few souls are dedicated enough to hit their practice spaces in parkas and goose downs with the army jacket lining (unless you’ve just formed The Pixies, but they’ve always been the gold standard). Most bands worth their weight in amplifiers are born out of sweat and sun; out of making sure their neighbors never mow their grass without earplugs. I mean, it’s always nice to hit the beach or cruise around for chicks in daisy dukes and bikini tops, but this summer, we ain’t leaving the garage.
Le Garage: http://www.mediafire.com/?nhwjc1zmnn1
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June 16th, 2009
Andrew Casillas is a former contributor to Stylus Magazine, who currently puts in work at Club Fonograma. Dan Weiss is also a Stylus alum, who contributes to The Village Voice and Pitchfork. This is the only time that Manischewitz and Margaritas will ever mix well.
The year is 2109. Accordions are banned. This is because 100 years ago, two rogue, outlaw music critics made a mixtape so important, so inspiring, so…fucking amazing that all bandwidth worldwide swallowed itself and left all civilization in darkness for over 5 years. After President Obama restored electricity to the northeastern states, the newly formed Republi-Whig party, which controlled both houses of Congress, the British Parliament, and 3/4 of the Legion of Doom, passed the accordion ban of 2016, to prevent such awesomeness from ever coalescing and concentrating this violently ever again. As for the two music writers who created the mixtape, after the passage of the accordion ban, they were sent to an undisclosed location somewhere north of Helsinki, where they were placed in a highly experimental procedure conducted by Greg Gillis and Kanye West to see if the very essence of a human being could be sampled on record and auto-tuned (turns out, yes it could). The following is the notation of their original mixtape…
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NMMCFLVL
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June 11th, 2009
Disco Vietnam cannot be described in a single sentence, but instead exists as a platonic ideal comprised of equal parts Ecto-Cooler, the Rza, and lightning.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/khnpo5
The recession endures but Mister Softee stays winning. The summer weather made its auspicious debut a little over a month ago, yet not a day has passed that the wind has failed to carry the iconic ice cream man’s 16-bar baroque theme directly to my ears. And it’s positively Pavlovian (or I’m just a gluttonous fat piece of shit); any cash contained within my pockets will inevitably be converted into a chocolate milkshake to be quickly annihilated. Totally awesome decision. Doctors don’t make house calls anymore, but Mister Softee will check up on you everyday just to see if you might need him and pull right into your driveway if you ask him to. Do the math.
Recently, on a particularly warm Saturday afternoon my brother and I found ourselves doing very little at all save for sweating profusely when, suddenly, we heard it. The tune was faint but unmistakable and offered no clear indication of where it was coming from; only that it was close enough to hear and by all reasonable assumptions would be heading closer.
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June 9th, 2009
Nick Southall is a former Stylus Senior Writer and has contributed to The Guardian, Drowned in Sound, and LA Weekly. Ian Mathers also used to hang his hat at the Sty and knows more about Spinoza than anyone I know. He regularly contributes to Pop Matters and maintains the Fractionals blog.
Summer Pain by Nick Southall & Ian Mathers
http://www.mediafire.com/?yd0i3lcrzde
1. Spiritualized – Medication (EP Version) (8:16)
2. Mogwai – Sine Wave (4:55)
3. Dinosaur Jr. – Feel the Pain (4:20)
4. The Smiths – Still Ill (3:32)
5. Six By Seven – Speed Is In, Speed Is Out (2:34)
6. Low – Medicine Magazines (4:34)
7. Morphine – Cure for Pain (3:15)
8. Horse Feathers – Mother’s Sick (4:36)
9. Siobhan Donaghy – Overrated (4:47)
10. Frank Black – Headache (2:53)
11. Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes (4;30)
12. The Tragically Hip – Titanic Terrarium (4:34)
13. The Beta Band – Needles in My Eyes (4:32)
14. Dirty Three – Some Summers They Drop Like Flys (6:20)
Total: 63:38
I’ve had the fortune, in my life so far, to be pretty well. A serious dose of chickenpox at 19 that left me looking, after three days, slightly decomposed. A virulent bout of real, bona fide influenza 18 months ago that left both me and my girlfriend bed-ridden and hallucinating for the best part of a week. A few low-level brushes with tonsillitis. A propensity for headaches as a child. A bad back from poor computer posture, easily corrected. A series of minor football injuries – sprained ankles, twisted knees. Nothing serious. I’ve never had a blood test, or a filling at the dentist. But as I approached, and then vaulted past (in mid May) 30 years on this planet, my body has started crumbling. Ian, too, has found himself in the wars in this last few months, and with this in mind, we’ve decided to theme our mix around this common unifying factor; intense physical pain. (Nick Southall)
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