falls from grace -- october 22 / 2008

So, goddamn it, Mixwit and I are going to have some words. I would dearly love to make some joke about how it ain't turning tricks like it used to, but that would be inappropriate and would probably lose readership. But, really - apparently it really hates this mix. I found practically none of my songs. And, in my opinion, this is my best mix yet, so fucking seriously, ask me for it.

In short, the idea of the mix came from listening to the song "Jacob's Ladder" by Patrick Wolf (not provided here; fuck you very much, Mixwit), and thinking in an offhand manner that it sounded like Satan falling from heaven in Milton's Paradise Lost. All these songs try to reflect that sort of dark, twisted atmosphere: a fallen angel with burnt wings, a sense of nobility remnant amidst the horrors of hell, and various other misshapen figures scattered in the wreckage. So it's really very creepy but in a cerebral, brooding way. This isn't the shock value horror film, it's the psychological one that seeps through under your skin, like Rosemary's Baby.

Next mix, look for an auditory approximation of Faulkner. No, really, don't. That's a joke. Don't even think of holding me to that.

original track list

01. "Elephant Woman" - Blonde Redhead (Misery Is a Butterfly);
02. "Jacob's Ladder" - Patrick Wolf (Wind in the Wires); *
03. "Airships" - Metallic Falcons (Desert Doughnuts);
04. "New Dawn Fades" - Joy Division (Unknown Pleasures);
05. "I Would Hurt a Fly" - Built to Spill (Perfect from Now On);
06. "Twill" - Elliott Brood (Ambassador); *
07. "Our Hell" - Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton (Knives Don't Have Your Back);
08. "Turn Smile Shift Repeat" - Phantom Planet (The Guest); *
09. "Picky Bugger" - Elbow (Leaders of the Free World);
10. "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" - Modest Mouse (The Moon and Antarctica);
11. "Black Mirror" - The Arcade Fire (Neon Bible);
12. "I Saw a Light" - Bat for Lashes (Fur and Gold);
13. "Deportation/Iguazu" - Gustavo Santaolalia (Babel OST);
14. "Liquid Diamonds" - Tori Amos (From the Choirgirl Hotel);
15. "Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down" - Interpol (Turn on the Bright Lights);
16. "Our Dance" - Wax Tailor (Tales of Forgotten Memories);
17. "Charlie Big Potato" - Skunk Anansie (Post Orgasmic Chill);
18. "Death to Death" - Stars (Heart);
19. "Paranoid Android" - Radiohead (OK Computer);
20. "Broken Up a Ding Dong" - The Beta Band (Igby Goes Down OST); *
21. "The Wrong Way" - TV on the Radio (Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes); *
22. "Soap Opera" - 54 Seconds (Coma); *
23. "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning" - The Smashing Pumpkins (Watchmen Trailer);
24. "The Great Western Road" - David Byrne (Lead Us Not into Temptation). *

music for libraries -- september 27/08

"Music for Libraries" is perhaps the most obviously themed mixtape Cassette Shelf has featured so far. In my defense, I would like to state that, as an English honours student, I am swimming (alright, fine: drowning) in reading assignments, papers, and theory at the moment and the thought of coming up with a mixtape idea independent of everything that is filling my brain right now seemed difficult. You should probably understand that this mixtape is my brain. The songs generally all have some relation to literature or academics, whether through the obvious reference to books or the much more vague literary allusions. Plus "Almost Crimes", because it's a kick-ass song and I should probably mention that all of these books and words make me happy on a deep personal level. And this mix is actually pretty damn cohesive: it starts off on an ominous foot, full of brooding and modernistic angst, proceeds to an energetic little jig akin to how I feel walking through campus in the fall with an armful of textbooks, and finishes quietly and wistfully. So don't judge this mixtape by its gimmick-y tendencies, it's got a lot to offer.

original track list
01. "Bad Education" - Tilly and the Wall (Bottoms of Barrels);
02. "Cordelia" - The Tragically Hip (Yer Favourites);
03. "Sailing to Byzantium" - Liars (s/t);
04. "Bukowski" - Modest Mouse (Good News for People Who Love Bad News);
05. "Neon Bible" - The Arcade Fire (Neon Bible);
06. "Reading in Bed" - Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton (Knives Don't Have Your Back);
07. "Theologians" - Wilco (A Ghost is Born);
08. "Wrapped Up in Books" - Belle & Sebastian (Dear Catastrophe Waitress);
09. "Bookshop Casanova" - The Clientele (God Save the Clientele);
10. "Poetaster" - Miracle Fortress (Five Roses);
11. "My Favourite Book" - Stars (In Our Bedroom After the War);
12. "School Books" - Fields (Everything Last Winter);
13. "Academia" - Sia (Some People Have Real Problems);
14. "Jake's Classroom" - Terence Blanchard (The 25th Hour OST); *
15. "Sovay" - Andrew Bird (The Mysterious Production of Eggs);
16. "Pressed in a Book" - The Shins (Oh, Inverted World!);
17. "Almost Crimes" - Broken Social Scene (You Forgot It in People);
18. "The Book I Write" - Spoon (Stranger than Fiction OST);
19. "The Sun Also Sets" - Ryan Adams (Easy Tiger);
20. "Tragedy" - Brandi Carlile (s/t);
21. "Family Happiness" - The Mountain Goats (The Coroner's Gambit);
22. "Oedipus" - Regina Spektor" (Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories);
23. "Virginia Woolf" - Indigo Girls (Rites of Passage);
24. "A Place Called Home" - Kim Richey (Rise);
25. "The Vivian Girls Are Visited In the Night by Saint Dargarius and his Squadron of Benevolent Butterflies" - Sufjan Stevens (The Avalanche);
26. "Hows About Tellin A Story" - Devendra Banhart (Cripple Crow);
27. "The Professor & La Fille Danse" - Damien Rice (B-sides);
28. "At Last the Secret Is Out" - Carla Bruni (No Promises);
29. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" - Sufjan Stevens (Seven Swans);
30. "Sylvia Plath" - Ryan Adams (Gold).