Here’s another mixtape I made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork.

I’ve made so many mixtapes this year that I think I’m starting to crack what I really love in a good mix.

Vibe.

What I really love in a mix is a vibe rather than a theme.

This comes up a lot this time of year when people post their Halloween mixes. All the songs are about witches or demons or whatever, but they don’t really cohere musically.

(I make exceptions for Bob Dylan’s brilliant Theme Time Radio Hour, which ruled completely, and also had a Halloween episode. Also: a radio show is different than a mixtape — the DJ can add context, switch the mood, etc.)

Anyways, I named this mix after Ray Bradbury’s collection:

“October Country . . . that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain. . . .”

I wanted it to sound like what October sounds like to me — in feeling, if not in lyrics. (To be honest, I barely listen to lyrics most of the time, which might be surprising to hear from a writer, but I’ve been a musician a lot longer than I’ve been a writer?)

SIDE A
– Chris Isaak, “Wicked Game”
– Tom Waits, “Down in the Hole”
– Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Little Demon”
– Ty Segall, “Girlfriend”
– Leonard Cohen, “Waiting for the Miracle”
– Scott Walker, “On Your Own Again”

SIDE B
– Depeche Mode, “Enjoy the Silence”
– Fever Ray, “Shiver”
– Thee Oh Sees, “Ghosts in the Trees”
– Ravyn Lenae, “Sticky”
– Keith & Tex, “Run to the Rocks”
– Bjork, “The Anchor Song”
– Charles Simic, “We Were So Poor”
– Portishead, “The Rip”

Originally, I had a wizards vs. witches thing going with the sides, and I was going to do Bjork, Fever Ray, and Ravyn Lenae and more on side B, but, again, I throw out concept and theme for vibe when I do these things.

The Charles Simic poem was kind of an accident — I was just looking through Spotify at my “Liked” tracks and tried to find a short snippet to fit the rest of the tape. (On the actual cassette, I play a tiny little portion of “The Rip” to end the side, but I think it goes nicely as a full song at the end.)

You can listen to the mix on Spotify.

I’ve made 11 of these things so far this year! If you want, you can listen to a big 10-hour playlist of them all.

Filed under: mixtapes

Here’s a bonus August mixtape inspired by the music our family listened to while driving around Oahu last week.

I made it from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at End of an Ear. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork.

This is the mix I really wanted to make for August, but I needed to go to the island first to make sure everything worked. (“Make Time Stop” should’ve been the September mix!)

SIDE A

– Richard Myhill, “Hawaiian Link”
– Janet Kay, “Silly Games”
– Heimo Rhonda, “Sunshine in Hawaii”
– Haruomi Hosono, “Saigono Rakuen”
– Raymond Scott, “Vibes & Marimba”
– Benjamin Rogers, “On a Coconut Island”
– Dominique Demont, “Un jour avec Yusef”
– Paul McCartney, “Ram On”
– Roedelius, “Wenn der Südwind…” (snippet)

SIDE B

– Señor Coconut, “Showroom Dummies”
– Martin Denny, “The Enchanted Sea”
– Harmonia & Eno, “When Shade Was Born”
– George Kulokahai and His Island Serenaders, “Aloha Oe”
– Raymond Scott, “Portofino 2”
– Gaussian Curve, “Impossible Island”

This tape was trimmed down from a 2 1/2 hour playlist I had on shuffle as we drove around the Windward Coast and the North Shore. The best way I’ve found to make a “vibes” playlist is to dump a bunch of stuff in there, and put it on shuffle, and anything that doesn’t fit, you just delete it as you go. 

When it comes to making an actual tape, however, I think you just have to start with the song you want to start with on side A and do one track at a time. (I was going to start with “Ram On” — it was really kind of a theme for our trip: I learned it on ukulele while we were out there and the 9-year-old even requested it — but it’s a song that works better for me towards the end of a side.)

Janet Kay’s “Silly Games” wasn’t on my original playlist, but I heard it by the side of the pool and I got excited because I love that song and started singing along and realized I haven’t put that one on a mix yet. (They were playing a lot of great Jamaican tracks at the resort we stayed at.) 

Everything on this mix is streaming for now, so you can listen on Spotify: 

This is the 9th mix I’ve made this year — if you’d like to listen to them all in one big batch, I made a 6+ hour playlist out of them.

Here’s August’s monthly mixtape I made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at End of an Ear. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork.

I was going to save this summer fading fast vibes mix for September, but I’ve decided these days not to save things, to make them when they’re ready:

It was a short tape (only 30 mins) so it was a short mix:

SIDE A

– the first few seconds of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”
– waxahatchie w/ MJ Lenderman, “right back to it”
– big thief, “time escaping”
– durutti column, “sketch for summer”
– nick drake, “pink moon”

SIDE B

– the mamas and the papas, “got a feelin’”
– bob dylan, “went to see the gypsy”
– the feelies, “raised eyebrows” (faded out around 1:50)
– crooked fingers, “sleep all summer”
– thee oh sees, “golden phones” (faded out after about a minute to fill the tape)

A couple of these selections seemed a little obvious to me, but “Pink Moon” is the perfect song for filling 2 minutes at the end of a mixtape! (And it’s also a perfectly recorded song, no matter how many commercials you hear it in.)

It was a cheap tape that I hit a little too hard on the recording, so it runs a little hot.

I’m trying to extend the pool vibes from the “Firecracker” mixtape, so I don’t really plan on listening to this again until September, but you can listen to it any time here:

This is the 8th of these mixes I’ve made — if you’d like to listen to them all in one big batch, I made a 5-hour playlist out of them.

Filed under: mixtapes

Here’s another monthly mixtape I made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at End of an Ear. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork.

This one started out a little differently than the others: I asked my 11-year-old son and composer Owen (check out his album TECH) to trade tracks with me in a collaborative playlist. See if you can tell whose tracks are whose: 

This was enormously fun — we had a little iMessage window going and our Spotify windows open and could see our changes in real time. Some of his picks really impressed and surprised me. 

Only trouble was, I misjudged the length of the tape, so I had to cut it down and rearrange it a bit — I started side B with “Funkytown” (we both love that song) and wound up adding Yukihiro Takahashi because we’d been listening to so much Yellow Magic Orchestra: 

SIDE A

– yellow magic orchestra, “firecracker” (with a snippet of Martin Denny’s original at the beginning)
– daft punk, “motherboard”
– four tet, “lush”

SIDE B

– lipps, inc., “funkytown”
– yasuaki shimizu, “kakashi”
– yukihiro takahashi, “drip dry eyes”
– toby fox, “ruins”

I’ve made 7 of these mixes now and I wound up buying another dozen 99 cent cassettes when I was at End of an Ear last time, so it looks like I might just do this indefinitely?

If you’d like to listen to them all in one big batch, I made a 5-hour playlist out of them.

Filed under: mixtapes