Hole Control: Theres a day that comes for most teenage when you realize you’ve been naive. Your ignorance has just walked through a wall and into the depths of actuality, once past the threshold entering reality, the door smacks you across the backside of your head and the revelation tastes more revolting than it feels like an epiphany. If this adolescent apocalypse has yet to dismount, you’ll be well prepared for when it surely will. If your awakening has been more gradual, and not as cataclysmic as a film would make it seem to be; let this mix of pungent exasperation and insecurity cue your revelation to get on stage already. And lastly, if such sinister angst has already well before proclaimed a place in your memory; let this mix be your highway down nostalgia road rage. But then again, I am teenage and allegedly midway through my much exaggerated angst, so perhaps I’m amplifying something thats much less apocalyptic than I make it out to be. Regardless, music is much more fun amplified. 

Hole Control is an impulsive mixtape from myself to you, who creates soundtracks for strangers whose supposed demise I like to over-dramatize. Listen to the mix with the volume piercing an all time high, and preferably in your first car. Download the 18-track mix here for free. 

Tracklist: 

Ryan Adams - Note to Self: Don’t Die

Guided By Voices - Always Crush Me

Nirvana - Heart Shaped Box

Dinosaur Jr. - Crumble

Wilco - Monday

Morrissey - I’m OK By Myself

Lloyd Cole And The Cardinals - Perfect Blue

Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot

Pavement - Fight This Generation

Hole - Dying

Ryan Adams - Jesus (Don’t Touch My Baby)

Yo La Tengo - Gentle Hour

Paul Westerberg - Born For Me

The Pretenders - I Hurt You

The Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words

Elvis Costello - Sulky Girls

Hole - Heaven Tonight

Guided By Voices - Cigarette Tricks

—-A mixtape made for Space 15 Twenty—-

Sounds Surreal; and looks like it too

An afternoon with Twin Sister :::

Surrealism was coined in the 1920’s as a cultural movement and artistic style that liberates the imagination. It relocates the subconscious mind into the framework of art, without intention of comprehensibility or congruity, surrealism absolves dreams from the responsibility of entire comprehension. Some Surrealists intent was to follow the stream of subconsciousness until the conscience could better analyze what dreams alluded to. In essence, the conscience has to adapt to decode the language of dreams, and translate it into a structure that could be understood by the public. There is a similar musical movement today. As all is accessible through the age of the internet, the possibilities are endless and what can be utilized to create is restricted by no boundaries. Surrealisim developed during and post World War I, and while our current world may be very much unlike the world of the early 1900’s, in both time periods extensive technological and industrial evolutions took place; then in industrialization, today in technology and globalization. Because of technology, opportunities are boundless, and those keen on utilizing all the new found recourses that now sit at our fingertips, can be members of the thriving community of the age of accessibility. Those who best utilize these resources, I will call, Surrealists. Today though, surrealism has an altered definition in my mind than the definition given to the word in the 1900’s. In regards to music culture, surrealism refers to the internationality and accessibility technology has provided the world. And no longer is music constricted by interments in their former definition either. Instruments are now defined by nothing, and are as abundant as our slowly opening minds may allow. After attending a plethora of festivals and concerts, traveling internationally throughout the summer, I’ve come to realize how surreal the atmosphere of music has become. In London this June, I met with a magazine publisher I was introduced to over email. In Chicago, I met with my label parter with whom I’ve been exploring the world of various artistic mediums in relation to music. Two days ago in LA, I met with a musician who had recognized me at Pitchfork Fest and with whom I went to FYF months following our coincidental encounter. Just the other day I had a three way Skype interview from LA, to Chicago, to London, on BBC (interview begins at 2:12). If you haven’t caught my drift, music is international and constrained only my our imaginations, much like Surrealism was an artistic movement post/during a similar evolution in history. It is all surreal, and alluringly dream-like.

As I watched Twin Sister perform at FYF, a music festival in Los Angeles’ China Town, the word that continuously laced through my mind was Surrealism. It had only then hit me, while swallowing in the last days of Summer sun and while engrossed in Twin Sisters similarly romanticized music, that music today is quite sublimely surreal by nature. Surrealism, Surreal, Surrealist, repeating like the disease of echolalia throughout their honey-licked performance. Andrea Estella exhaled through effervescent lyricism as the slick twang of instrumentation hypnotically swept beneath her breath. Her ethereal whisper and hushed croons were rejuvenated and diffused by weightless, fluid, and teasingly inciting grooves. There is a sense of illusiveness in their whimsy curiosity and buoyant radiance. Their music feels most like diving into the virginity of fresh, unsalted water, innocent and oddly seductive, in a way only someone of my age (16) may perceive. In attempt to capture my experience with the sounds of Long-Island originated Twin Sister, I took a number of amateur photos with the quintet after their set that sweltering Saturday at 20 past 2 in the afternoon. What resulted were idealistic and young looking photographs, tainted with a glare of a sun-drenched saturday, the mesmerizing flare of warm vibrancy, and a valid effort towards portraying the dream-like (surrealist) nature of the music of Twin Sister. 

You can find the rest of the photos from the dusty day of tunes here. 

Glow Kitty (a mix for Space 15 Twenty)

Earlier this week I made a mix for Space 15 Twenty. Its comprised of a collection of songs that live in empty houses, for those whose homes feel similarly empty. I’m not one to be superstitious, but conversion is here. And its a whispery persuasion, but often times the most persuasive is the messing of your own mind. I’m curious to know if the characters of the songs believe in ghosts. Whether they do or they do not, let them persuade you to. Download the 11-track mix for free here. 

Tracklist:

Teen Porn - Twist N’ Shout

Marie Minerva - Kyrie Eleison

Albert Swarm - Familiarities

Nowhere Nothing - No Problem

Drifter - Drifter’s Stone

The Bilinda Butchers

Cross Record - Black Cat

Green Gerry - Celery Salt (Spider Man Quit Fucking With Me)

Katie Kim - The Feast

Memoryhouse - Modern Normal

The Caretaker - Tiny Gradiations of Loss

Tiger Lily (Mix for Space 15 Twenty)

Yesterday I made a mix for Space 15 Twenty, it flows as follows:

“Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960’s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz, and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music.” Funk as a product of its origin was the most prime influence on the augmentation and creation of most popular genres today.  Samples of it can be extensively found throughout hip hop and its sub-genres, and more recently in the freshest sample based sounds. This mix is comprised of the disciples of funk by its most broad definition, and is intended for the ears of those foster the groove. It is called Tiger Lily. Download el tigre for free here.

Tracklist: 

De La Soul - Intro

Galapagos - Girly

Jacques Greene - Another Girl

Little Dragon - Shuffle A Dream

L.A.Y.F.I.T.M - Hide

Dusty Springfield - Spooky

De La Soul - Eye Know

Sister Nancy - Bam Bam

Take Your Love - Telas Da Areia

Digable Planets - La Femme Fetal

A Tribe Called Quest - Jazz (We’ve Got)

Clams Casino - Natural

Similar Objects - Terminal Dogma

Samaritan - Dig Work

Vondelpark - Camels

Edibles - Mind Fry

2 Many Dj’s - Don’t Look Any Further

Portishead - All Mine