Summer Mix 2K11

I talk in detail about this mix here. But for those of you who just want to listen/download it, here it is for your pleasure:

Summer Mix 2K11 by joshehr

Tracklist:

1) Radio Dept. - Heaven's On Fire

2) Cut Copy - Alisa

3) Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

4) HEALTH - Before Tigers (CFCF Rmx)

5) Das Racist - All Tan Everything

6) Big K.R.I.T. ft/David Banner - Sookie Now

7) Alphabeat - Heatwave

8) Nicki Minaj ft/Ester Dean - Super Bass

9) Britney Spears - Till The World Ends

10) The Weeknd - What You Need

11) Simon & Garfunkel - Somewhere They Can't Find Me

12) Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

13) Van Morrison - Wild Night

14) Eagles - Already Gone

15) Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - Natural Born Lover

16) Mayer Hawthorne - The Ills

17) David Bowie - Look Back in Anger

18) LCD Soundsystem - Home

How I Create A Mix; A Completely Unnecessary and Excessive Step-by-Step

I just finished my 9th annual Summer Mix 2k11. I'm a little obsessive about this mix and spend an amount of time more appropriate to studying for a the GREs or searching for a job. This year I happened to create a separate playlist for each draft which gave a nice overview of how it evolved to its final form. You don't' need to read this to enjoy it, you can simply listen to it here. One word of warning-this post is super nerdy.

My goal for every summer mix is a sound that is contemporary since last year's summer but also having a somewhat classic sound, a mix that I can return to again and again, year after year. I spend a lot of time tinkering with it to get this perfect balance.

In the months leading up to summer I'm beginning to identify specific songs that I feel would work especially well for a summer mix. There's no conscious searching here, but always listening with an ear towards that. Usually these songs help me determine a theme I'll be going with. This year, I started with:

HEALTH - Before Tigers (CFCF Rmx)

Das Racist - Amazing

Alphabeat - Heatwave

Cut Copy - Need You Now

After identifying these songs I begin to think of a theme, usually inspired by something I suspect I'll be doing a lot of this summer which this mix will soundtrack well. For this summer I kept coming back to an image of looking out the bus window on cross-country rides watching the landscape roll by hour after hour.

So now I have theme and an indication of song direction. I also usually have an idea of specific artists or albums I want to drawn from. I take all this information together and, after many hours in very few days, I have my first draft.

Draft 1:

1) Big Boi - Daddy Fat Sax

2) Alphabeat - Heatwave

3) Japandroids - Younger Us

4) My Chemical Romance - Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)

5) Ariel Pink's Huanted Grafiti - Bright Lit Blue Skies

6) Holy Ghost! - Jam for Jerry

7) HEALTH - Before Tigers (CFCF Rmx)

8) Das Racist ft/Lakutis- Amazing

9) Britney Spears - Till the World Ends

10) Kanye West - All of the Lights

11) Robyn - Call Your Girlfriend

12) Cut Copy - Need You Now

13) Yeasayer - Ambling Alp

14) Van Morrison - Wild Night

15) Mayer Hawthorne - The Ills

16) Big K.R.I.T. - R4 Theme Song

17) Simon & Garfunkel - Somewhere They Can't Find Me

18) Crystal Castles ft/Robert Smith - Not In Love

Because I always do this draft really quickly I'll fall back on some old standbys (examples here Kanye, 'Not In Love') or some past summer mix successes (Japandroids, Robyn). Invariable my first draft draws too heavily on songs that I really like and thus might burnout on more quickly.

Then I'll sit on it for a week. There are some parts of the first draft that work really well. For example, this draft had a nice R&B element that I thought fit well with my initial songs and theme. But, pretty quickly I'll know its not working as a mix and the rest of the time is spent figuring out why.

In this case it was because I didn't really hear this mix fitting with my theme. It felt too obvious and 'party-time'-good for a summer mix, but not this summer mix. It didn't have a cohesive element to it, just a lot of good tracks. So, I decided for Draft 2 I was going to really work on showcasing my desired theme.

Draft 2:

1) Cut Copy - Need You Now

2) LCD Soundsystem - Home

3) Holy Ghost! - Wait and See

4) HEALTH - Before Tigers (CFCF Rmx)

5) Das Racist ft/Lakutis - Amazing

6) Big Boi - Daddy Fat Sax

7) Alphabeat - Heatwave

8) Nicki Minaj ft/Ester Dean - Super Bass

9) Britney Spears - Till The World Ends

10) The Weeknd - What You Need

11) Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

12) Simon & Garfunkel - Somewhere They Can't Find Me

13) Van Morrison - Wild Night

14) Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks

15) Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - Natural Born Lover

16) Mayer Hawthorne - The Ills

17) David Bowie - Look Back in Anger

Draft 2 is always way closer to the final mix than Draft 1. Here it's because I now have the structure of the mix. In the first section (tracks 1-5) the theme is strongly established, then I let some drastically flow changing hip-hop give me a bit of fun (it is summer after all). After, in the third part (tracks 10-17) I'm playing with a very expanded interpretation of R&B.

At this point most of the selected songs are becoming necessary in their inclusion. Nicki Minaj's awesome single 'Super Bass,' 'Wild Night,' and 'The Ills' are three examples. Other songs are already becoming tiring such as 'Wait and See,' 'Amazing,' and 'Young Folks' (like immediately).

Now that most of the songs have been identified, putting them in the correct order the main problem. For Draft 2 I ended up ditching Big K.R.I.T. because I couldn't find a place for it and Big Boi's 'Daddy Fat Sax' and Cut Copy's 'Need You Now' never sounded right no matter where they were placed. Plus, the beginning, though it sticks with the theme, sort of drags; I want the theme to be evocative, not boring. And the theme isn't really carried beyond track 5. So, after a few days of thinking, I work on Draft 3, which ended up being this year's final mix.

Final Mix/Summer Mix 2K11

1) Radio Dept. - Heaven's On Fire

2) Cut Copy - Alisa

3) Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

4) HEALTH - Before Tigers (CFCF Rmx)

5) Das Racist - All Tan Everything

6) Big K.R.I.T. ft/David Banner - Sookie Now

7) Alphabeat - Heatwave

8) Nicki Minaj ft/Ester Dean - Super Bass

9) Britney Spears - Till The World Ends

10) The Weeknd - What You Need

11) Simon & Garfunkel - Somewhere They Can't Find Me

12) Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

13) Van Morrison - Wild Night

14) Eagles - Already Gone

15) Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - Natural Born Lover

16) Mayer Hawthorne - The Ills

17) David Bowie - Look Back in Anger

18) LCD Soundsystem - Home

The most significant improvement here was reinterpreting the theme. I looked at 'Before Tigers' which I felt was the best representation so far. I decided that instead of looking for songs with a hypnotic element to it, I would try and match the rolling sound that is heard in that song. 'Heaven's On Fire,' 'Sprawl II,' and 'Home' (from previous draft) matched this well. The new Das Racist track segues better into the middle section and a different Big K.R.I.T. track suddenly fits perfectly within the mix. Similarly, by ditching 'Need You Now' and going with 'Alisa' Cut Copy remains on the mix but the sound is more integrated and appropriate to the theme.

Moving the 8 minute 'Home' to the end was the final important choice. It helps keep the mix smooth and flowing, rather than feeling interrupted. Plus the sequencing of the the R&B's section 'The Ills' to Bowie's 'Look Back in Anger' to LCD is as a great three song transition back to theme.

So there you have it, my incredibly nerdy and involved discussion on how I put together a Summer Mix. Disagree? Suggestions? Make a comment. And again, you can listen to it here.

A Week of Positive Things

Immediately across the entrance to my apartment building, in the midst of a row of apartment buildings, is 'fuck' spray painted in black letters. I don't really know why its there, but it provides a great landmark to anyone coming to my apartment. 'I'm the entrance across from the fuck.' No one I've told this to has ever forgotten my apartment. Totally convenient.

But alas, somehow this convenient and hilarious landmark isn't enough to get through the days and weeks. Sometimes, despite the fact that I can describe my building as 'across from the fuck,' I get pretty down on Azerbaijan. These past couple weeks was just that sort of funk. So to help myself out of it, I decided I would do a little daily exercise to write one thing I liked about Azerbaijan, hoping positive self talk would help me fake it till I made it. It (plus school ending) worked and below are some of my entries, in no particular order.

1) Shop owners proactively ask your name. At all the shops I go to with relative frequency, I know the names of the shop owners and they know mine. This is such a nice little thing. I can think of at least 10 places in Denver/Boulder that I went to all the time and yet only at one of those places did this ever happen and I loved that place because of it. I really will try and bring this back to the states with me.

2) Excellent cross-country public transportation. One of the great things about Azerbaijan, as a Peace Corps country, is that it has an outstanding infrastructure of public transportation. Not necessarily the greatest roads, but a ton of buses and minibuses are traveling on those roads. Because everyone relies on it, it quite easy and inexpensive to get anywhere in the rayon, area, or country using public transit.

3) Azerbaijan is very green. Its got a bit of its own environmental issues to work on, but Azerbaijan is incredibly fertile and green. Even the cities (again, I live in a big city, though its only about 40K) have tons of trees and flowers around. Fruit and nut trees are everywhere and everyone has porch gardens if they don't have a yard. And once you get out of the city you're driving through real countryside, forest, and mountains. There are farms and orchards but they don't have the cold, efficient look that so many of the US superfarms have.

4) Men are very affectionate with babies and kids. Men have absolutely no hesitation about showing their affection for children. They will coo and play with babies just as women do and far more frequently then I have seen in the US. And its not just fathers, any man who is emotionally connected to the family loves lavishing attention on babies. Its really endearing.

5) All the dudes tucks their t-shirts into their underwear. This is hilarious because, in the summer, it means you can see almost everyone's underwear.

6) The amount of community upkeep and repair that occurs in the Spring is unlike anything I have ever seen in the United States. Its like the city husks its old skin and takes on a new one. Come spring everything is made shiny and new. Everything might not be built to last but it's refreshed yearly and makes for a beautiful spring and summer place.

7) I actually do have time. I'm definitely a busy volunteer, but I was really hoping that, upon joining the Peace Corps, I would have time to do more reading, yoga, and writing and be given an opportunity to create the lifelong habits that I always felt I was struggling for while working in Denver. Its nice that this has come to be.

So there you have it. A week of positive thoughts about Azerbaijan.

[Insert Rapture Joke Here]

The outstanding Dance-Punk band The Rapture are finally back, releasing a new album September 6th. Even better, they'll its coming out on DFA, the beautiful label that brought this great band, LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, YACHT, and a million other great singles. Get excited.

Next Post is Positive, I Promise

February is generally acknowledged among the Peace Corps Volunteers here as the worst month. You're past the newness of site an job and wallowing around in the thick of it, with every problem abjectly staring you in the face. Its also the worst month of winter and the month with the least amount of available fruits and veggies. Plus, you've been living with a host family for 6 months at that point.

This past week seemed a reprise of February and it hit me like a ton of bricks. it came out of nowhere and I'm still figuring out what happened in hopes of effectively dealing with it. Everything should be good now. I'm in my own place (with fully functional plumbing), I'm starting to get a bit more familiar with the Azeri language, summer is practically here. And yet, last week was one of the most emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausting weeks I've had. Each morning I forcibly dragged my body out of bed and for a couple days I couldn't even get that far. Nothing remotely like this ever happened in America.

At this point in the school year, school is over. The problem is that every one still goes (except for the smart students who realize that its over). It is mind-numbingly boring, nodding off in class boring, finding yourself staring out the window into nowhere boring. All the review that I've been encouraging my teachers to do throughout the year is compressed into this week. But there is no review, simply reciting multiple choice tests which have answers already circled.

Furthermore, my plans for summer are being very closely watched and tracked. There have been no 'nos' yet, but it has been a lengthy process navigating a series of obstacles that seem to spring up at each turn. Annoyingly enough this is just to get permission to use a classroom in the already open and used school for conversation clubs that students and administrators are incessantly clamoring for, while at the same time impeding.

This whole process of inaction exemplifies the paranoia and victimization that is ever present in Azerbaijan. Coming from a country worshipping the idea of 'picking yourself up by your own bootstraps' this country's pervading feeling of 'everyone is out to get me' is draining. Many times I want to shake the person and yell 'so how are you going to work to improve it?' If Azerbaijan was a person, I would probably not be its friend. In fact, I can think of people I know like this, and I'm not their friend.

Rationally, there are a lot of things I need to keep in mind. The week before summer is like the day before Christmas-the closer it gets the worse the week is. Its also true that initiating things here is always brutal, but the actual doing is usually really fun. And I've basically got a few months coming up dedicated towards traveling around the country with a visit to America thrown in.