Produced for Lateral Addition in 2014 - Original post here
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I am excited to have contributed a new mix to Eric Laska’s expertly curated site, Lateral Addition. In a way this mix is a an attempt to represent “the sound of Media Consumption Today,” and I reflect a bit more on that in the text that accompanies the piece. I’ve copied it below, along with a track list.
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While I still buy records and tapes, increasingly for me, the time I spend Listening To Music has become a part of the more general act of Media Consumption, which is largely grouped under the heading Time Spent on the Computer. There is a permissiveness to mixing content in the new culture of sitting on your couch with your laptop, making your own entertainment. The flatness of more access means we listen to more disjointed content all the time, and has created a feeling of normalcy around collage. “Everyone is a DJ.”
A rising tide lifts all boats, and the flattening effect we feel around instant digital access has raised the volume of consumption while simultaneously making each audio delivery channel less special and each act of listening more interstitial. I’m trying to embrace music as just another type of audio, flowing seamlessly with audio from the Internet, Radio, TV, Social Media, and every other formerly autonomous media that has been folded into a computer and now comes out of laptop speakers. I’m trying to use my mixes and radio shows to reflect on this change in my listening and exploration habits in the world of audio.
This centralization of listening has made me much more keenly aware of where and how I listen to music or audio. If digital provides All Access to Everything All the Time With No Forgetting, and if all genres are equal in the Long Tail, then to me, the new challenge is to curate or corral content from different listening scenarios. The patter and crowd noise of live sports broadcasts that come out of my TV. The band pass filter of AM talk radio in the car. The slowly evolving house music on long drives. The podcast for doing dishes vs. the other podcast for woodworking. The freedom of the tinny bluetooth speaker vs. the tether of the high quality stereo ⅛” plug. Physical formats continue to intrigue me, too. Each unit entombs it’s own content, era, sound, and culture as it recedes into obsolescence, and it’s need for specific playback technology dictates a setting, a set of constraints for listening. I have another project where I record live radio on the fly, trying to capture some of the magic of a seemingly now outdated, non-personalized, live media delivery format.
Doing freeform radio shows have allowed me the flexibility of trying to capture and express a curated version of the Universal Listening, the sound of Media Consumption Today. While I appreciate and gather content from genre-specific and format-specific DJs, I’m too interested in the avant garde, and the excitement of grasping at the contemporary to fully commit to nostalgia in my own DJing. I want to make work that treats the sound of an episode of True Blood with the same reverence as all those Parliament albums I’m supposed to know. And with this mix for Lateral Addition I feel I took a step in that direction. I’m trying to let go of some of the “complete-ism” that drives both dedicated vinyl collectors and Spotify evangelists, because to save everything is not to know everything. It’s natural for content to recede past the horizon of our memory and to be renewed again through rediscovery.
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I moved to Santa Cruz about a year ago. As a newbie, I have spent a good deal of time alone, as I have only a small social circle, and not a lot of work that gets me out of the house. I have turned to radio, podcasts, and other media as a way to fill the air with voices, to feel less alone.
This mix reflects that through a myriad of voices. It includes talking cowboys, surfers, computers, hippies, stoney prank caller types, TV teens, and awkward real life teens in their bedrooms. There’s an eight year old pretending to be Bill Clinton, DMX revealing that he sounds exactly the same in real life as on his records, mixtape DJs yelling, Miami drive-time radio DJs yelling, and one particular Miami drive time and mixtape DJ yelling about McDonalds. Back in the 70s and 80s Jerry and Cronos chatted with the crowd at their live shows, a Village Voice writer cut a record while riding real high on the fumes of the 80s downtown crossover scene in New York, while Travolta the townie scumbag kid danced in Bay Ridge. We’ve got more kids singing in Spanish, plus their Peruvian hype man, autotune, comedians who voice cartoons, video game troll dudes, and a Chicago commuter who hears jazz in the parking garage. About ten years ago for Halloween I wore a long shroud that I made out of cassettes and fishing line over a sort of b-boy jumpsuit. I bought those tapes off Craigslist, and digitized two of the home recorded gems for this mix.
Enjoy!
– BMW
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Tracklist:
Artist – Title (Album, where applicable)
Stardrive – Stardrive (Intergalactic Trot)
Bill Cobham / George Duke Band – Almustapha the Beloved (live)
Tuning ‘77 – https://archive.org/details/gd1977-12-31_505
An American Hippie in Israel trailer – http://youtu.be/Qry7XccmQKo
T. Texas Tyler – Deck of Cards
Longmont Potion Castle
Jimmy Riddle Gives an Eefin’ Lesson – http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/03/eef-beat-manifesto.html
Hearn Gadbois – GAHT MAYH MOH8JOH3 WOYKIHN (Tellus #12)
Amazing Amar – Talking About My Baby
Gary Wilson – 6.4 = Makeout (O.G. 1976 Version) (Mary Had Brown Hair)
MASON HO’S DREAM WAVE (edit) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMkfh4eX9v0 (see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-5F_7DwPpo)
Door Does Impression of Miles Davis – http://youtu.be/wwOipTXvNNo
DMX Rides Orlando Sling shot !!!HILARIOUS!!! – http://youtu.be/-tZ3-a7lCAU
Three 6 Mafia – Twist It, Hit It, Light It (Instrumental)
DMX – Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer – http://youtu.be/TPXWZxtDooY
Wendy Sulca – La Tetita
Donny Matsler – 2001 (DONNY MATSLER at his… Lowry Organ) – http://waxidermy.com/donny-matsler-at-his-lowrey-organ/
Migos – Adios (Cory B Intro) (Y.R.N. Young Rich Niggas mixtape)
Jon Benjamin Voices Hal in 2001- A Space Odyssey – Late Night Basement – http://youtu.be/G0cqV3h-aDA
Saturday Night Fever
Venom – Live At City Gardens, NJ. CLASSIC. – http://youtu.be/4TztqYaemt0
Los Mier – Santa Claus Le Di Un Beso a Mama
Karol y Su Amor Gitano – Llorando Se Fue
Los Kjarkas – Llorando Se Fue
Mannie Fresh Lecture Redbull Music Academy 2011 – http://vimeo.com/32362836
Strafe – Set It Off (Instrumental)
GTA Guitar Bro – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jQkxsEbnS4
Raymond Scott – Don’t Beat Your Wife Every Night / Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (Manhattan Research Inc.)
Arthur Russell – The Platform on the Ocean (Calling out of Context)
Verticle Lines – Beach Boy
Guitar Red – Fantasy (Hard Times)
Suicide – Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne (Second Album)
WPOW Miami Power 96 Don Cox 1994 California Aircheck Video – http://youtu.be/WfrATpB2UCQ
DJ Khaled McDonalds ads (edit)
Longmont Potion Castle
Ryan Winter – Bill Clinton Speech / If I Could Give A Gift To The World (Ryan Winter, Age 8 ½, 3rd Grade, 11/93 – 12/93 cassette)
Franklin – Sometimes (Franklin’s Demo cassette)
90210 (edit)
20th Century Fox Flute Version | HQ – http://youtu.be/IsdCGQbbd8k