mixtape time...

so i'm gonna try and do this weekly. it's been over a week. oh well. in the past week i've had my stitches out, my hand examined (although it healed badly it's perfectly fine), i've seen my mum go into hospital twice and i've had to stay in bed for the weekend. boo-urns. but anyway.
here are some songs i just can't get enough of at the moment. they're awesome. obviously.

boards of canada - kid for today
daft punk - da funk
sebastian - dolami
hot chip - boy from school
justice vs simian - we are your friends (dj hell's bavarian gigolo mix)
shpongle - dorset perception
switch - a bit patchy
playgroup - make it happen (zongamin remix)
dj shadow - triplicate/something happened that day
cat power - free
the long blondes - once and never again
lcd soundsystem - beat connection
yeah yeah yeahs - turn into
le tigre - deceptacon

ok i've tried to put in some order, but i don't have it all on the computer here so can't really get my head around it. but yeah. a nice opening from boards of canada, kid for today from in a beautiful place out in the country, a track which has the honour of being the only boc track ever featured on the essential mix. some french house, old and new, from daft punk and sebastian - had forgotten how insanely good daft punk can be until i saw them in marlay park. whoah.
hot chip's boy from school is one of their only tracks that i like outside of their live show. i just don't get them i think, they kinda wash over me. we are your friends has no doubt been played to death, but i love dj hell's remix. shpongle's dorset perception was remixed to great effect by sasha on his involver mix, but the original is pretty great as it is. unlike the rest of their stuff, which is noodly space age sounds over limp faux dnb beats. what can i say about a bit patchy? nothing. i heard diplo play it at pitchfork, 2manydj's played at the picnic, even jaxx managed to fit it in somewhere! i have erol alkan to thank for the zongamin remix of make it happen, that's how he opened his first ever mix cd. triplicate is the only track from dj shadow's the outsider that had the wow factor, i mean i don't hate it like everyone else seems to, but this is definitely a standout track. ben gibbard sang about chan marshall, diplo played free at the end of his fabric mix, and i'm delighted they both introduced me to the work of cat power. jo whiley reckons once and never again is the hottest record in the world right now. i don't know about that, but it's damn good. beat connection might be a few years old, but it never gets old. turn into was class at the picnic, and on record it's pretty fine too. and deceptacon, yeah it's another diplo track (for me at any rate), but i will never tire of it.

so there are a few songs to get on with. goodnight.

first timer, eh?

I'm not entirely sure who I'm doing this for. I'll be honest, it's all for me. With that admission out of the way, why not get started?
Last week I had my wisdom teeth taken out. It hasn't been a pleasant experience overall, I won't lie. In the past eight days or so I haven't really eaten a proper meal. Or at least anything that looks like a proper meal. Chicken and potatoes, lasagne, and others have all been put in a blender (separately, of course) to create a lovely tasting but unsightly mush that is far more easily consumed than their original incarnation. Eating gloop aside, I haven't really done much, bar sit at my laptop playing hours of Pro Evolution Soccer 4 (which I picked up for €8 a few weeks back) and reading Pitchfork religiously. I don't know half the bands they go on about, but it's all educational I guess. I heard my dissertation supervisor ask a DJ for Pavement last year, and now they're on Pitchfork, so I guess they must be good. That actually brings me to my next thought...
Over the past, well I don't know how long it's really been, but anyway, I think I'll start that sentence again. I've managed to amass a large collection of music over the past X number of years. Some of it I listen to and think, hmm, well that was a waste of time. I won't give any examples. Oh, I will. Wolfmother. Others, I listen to and think, Wow, how have I managed to miss this? Examples: Boards of Canada (MHTRTC released in 1998, discovered by Aidan in 2005), Wilco, etc. I could go on. The final category is music that I acquire, in one way or another, and blissfully ignore for months, years sometimes. Eventually, I say to myself Dammit, this has been sitting here for far too long. Listen! Sometimes I have to put reminders in my phone to listen to a certain album. Tonight I finally sat down and listened to Rough Trade's Counter Culture '05 cd, well, if I'm being honest I only listened to CD1, but hey, that's a start! Sure enough, I found some damn good music on there... I have vagure aspirations towards DJ-dom, and I found some nice tunes I wouldn't mind playing some night to an unsuspecting crowd. Top of the list must be Katzenjammers' Cars, a Carribean steel band remake of Gary Numan's '80s anthem. The Pipettes are up there too, It Hurts to See You Dance So Well is like a spurned lover's I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor. Although, at a little over a minute in length, it could be difficult to mix in/out. But that's hardly the right attitude! Right now I'm playing the painfully dated* City Rockers compilation Futurism, which I borrowed from a Mongrel writer two and a half years ago. I suppose I'll have to listen to Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted next, I've had that for all of, let's say, three months?

*Not really. Electroclash may be dead, but Sunglasses At Night and La La Land are obviously timeless.