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xmas mixes (2003-2006) - Monday, Nov. 18, 2013
Swans - Not Here / Not Now - Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013
Wilco - Friday, Oct. 25, 2013
Where Have All The Flowers Gone: The Songs Of Pete Seeger - Monday, Oct. 14, 2013
W - Stephreadedredchild - The Remix Sessions - Friday, Oct. 04, 2013

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Monday, Nov. 18, 2013 | 12:14

xmas mixes (2003-2006)

i don't have a copy of xmas2003 because the discs wore out and started glitching. cd-rs eventually degrade. all cds do, really, but cd-rs, especially early ones, go much faster. xmas2003 may have been the first pair of discs i burned on my own -- a 3-disc birthday party mix i made prior to that was done on someone else's computer because i didn't have a burner yet. however, i should have the cases somewhere. i made art on the cases with sharpie pens and i should still have those somewhere. i'm not sure whether i could burn the mixes again. i made them in protools and i don't know whether i still have those files. even if i do, re-bouncing the tracks and burning the discs would be a pain. and now i think of it, if i made the mixes in protools then they weren't the first mixes i made myself. i don't know what were, though.

i suspect these mixes tell the listener a lot about me and my mindset at the time i made them. xmas2003 is me experimenting, trying to make a creative mix that flows yet offers interesting juxtapositions. some of them i heard other people do, while others i heard randomly playing music on shuffle. i tried to introduce people to music i knew they hadn't heard (which is the core attribute of all my mixes).

xmas2004 shows an obsession with sex and noise. some songs i let play straight up while others i coated with distortion or layered over other songs. or both. i was angry that year, angry and frustrated. i was fuck and fight. i wanted to destroy everything, and the mix shows it.

if xmas2004 was about destruction, xmas2005 was a different kind of annihilation. the deliberate stripping down to a cold and open sound was about self-denial, maybe even self-abnegation.

i had discovered german techno dub and wanted music stripped down to bass and effects. i selected several songs that fit this sound, then made my own transitions made mostly of samples from those songs. it's not always entirely successful, but it's an interesting experiment.

i'd like to go back and extend the tracks i made into full songs of their own. i wonder how my current mindset and musical leanings would influence those beginnings.

in 2006 i lost my edge. or, i used the lcd soundsystem song "losing my edge" as the theme. that mix opens with the song and follows i with songs by bands named in the song, in order (though not a song by every band mentioned, since i didn't have one). that one is filed in my collection under that title instead of xmas2006. i don't think i mention xmas2006 anywhere on the artwork.

i don't have records for who received these mixes or how many copies i made. i started with something i thought i'd end up playing when i had people over, hoping to impress them as though they'd pay more attention to my mix than the party. i had a lot of online correspondents at the time, and i'm sure i shared these mixes with many of them. as those numbers dwindled and i got out more, i started handing them out to friends, culminating in a year where i gave mixes to everyone who came to my xmas party.

i received the most compliments on 2006, possibly because after that my mixes were more topical, and thus less classic. after that year i got back to annoying people, usually fitting in one or two songs a mix that was grating or weird rather than good (though often i thought it was both).

[tomorrow: 2007-2013]

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