Torii MacAdams got a warning threatening a state trooper
Last year I gave Passion of the Weiss readers Summer of Sin, a mixtape for breaking your Nike Cortez off in someone’s ass. Rather than continue fanning the flames of anger and enmity with unrelenting gangster rap, I’ve decided to take a more loving approach to this year’s summer mixtape, Pastel Silk. In the place of punishing, mid-90’s murder raps are aquamarine boogie ballads by artists from the United States, Japan, Italy, England, Brazil, and Canada.
Boogie was a halfway point between the undeniably black music, and worldwide electronic experimentation that flowered with the availability of synthesizers and drum machines. The addition of synth lines and frequent subtraction of driving, live drums had a softening effect–I think of boogie’s texture as smooth to the point of treacliness. It’s a music perfect for warm summer nights, rhythmic without a sense of immediacy.
I don’t have a deep, long-lasting relationship with the songs on Pastel Silk, and other bloggers could surely one-up me (Most notably the guys at Beat Electric and the defunct Boogie Times). But, as Small Pro noted when writing about his own mixtape, there’s a deep, cosmic unlikelihood that anyone else could’ve picked these songs and put them in this order. It’s my summer mixtape, but I hope it’s yours, too.
Tracklist:
1. “If You Love Me” – The Stylle Band
2. “What Does It Take” – Tony Rome
3. “What’s Missing” – Alexander O’Neal
4. “Y’a Du Blues” – Marche Noir
5. “Spend My Life With You” – Goldie Alexander
6. “Negra Flor” – Sandra De Sa
7. “I Thought It Was You” – Windjammer
8. “Blind Curve” – Kikuchi Mimoko
9. “Quick” – Steven
10. “Crimes of Passion” – The Limit
11. “Givin’ It Up” – Charms
12. “Nights Over Egypt” – The Jones Girls
13. “Fantasma Blu” – Giuliano Spiga
14. “Picnic” – Hiroshi Sato
15. “三つ首塔” – Mystery Kindaichi Band
