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the mix-tape nobody wants

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This mix-tape was compiled for another website, who were going to run a feature on Collapse Board. The feature didn’t run. So here I am now, with the mix-tape nobody wants.  The original idea was that to put them all up on SoundCloud, but I can’t be fussed with that, so you can find a link to the physical mix at the end of this entry. Obviously, I’ve had to drop a few tracks: copyright considerations and all that.

All the original songs can be found here.

Pascal Comelade – I Can’t Control Myself
The great Pascal Comelade, France’s hidden national treasure

Fall Of Saigon – Visions
From Montpellier, they were one of Pascal Comelade’s first bands, they were really close to the Young Marble Giants and they only released one mini-LP back in the early 80s, but damn it still sounds fresh, innit?

tUnE-yArDs – You Yes You
No less an august authority than The New York Times described this Oakland CA singer as “somewhere between Aretha Franklin and Yoko Ono”… which only goes to prove that even the most revered among us can slip up sometimes. No she isn’t. Not even vaguely.

Analogik – Ali (Budzillus remix)
Some fierce wicked unexplainable indefinable jazz-orientated playful mashed-up Gypsy electronica with squiggles and the odd squirrel of meaning from Denmark – a bit like Kid Koala deadpanning that brass from New Orleans, but not anything really – comes teasing its way into my inbox and I need to know why.

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
I can’t help noticing that the way this song lilts, and its slightly breathless, squeaky vocal, reminds me of Lykke Li. The deftly handed percussion too. Ironic. One is pop flimflam in comparison (except when she isn’t) and the other is Rock Seriousness For The Critics (except when she isn’t). Mind you, almost everything is Pop Flimflam in comparison with Polly…

Rah Digga – Classic
This is a fucken fine slice of rap, with some fine fucken female MC rapping over the top, all laidback and sensuous-like, with a meaty fucken bass that threatens to drop my bass Woofer right through the centre of my fucken bass, the way the motherfucker is jiggling back and forth.

The ‘B’ Girls – Fun At The Beach
Just an amazing girl group sound from the 80s. The anti-Radiohead.

Melanie – Mr Tambourine Man
There are two facts we need to establish first.
1. I wasn’t even aware I liked this song.
2. I wasn’t even aware I liked this singer, before I heard her version of this song.

The Deadnotes + The Legend! – Fixed Grin
Too often noise musicians deliberately eschew melody – as if to admit for a fondness for such is a weakness. Brisbane scholars in the School of Error The Deadnotes as unreconstructed and wilfully abstract as the most experimental among us, but at the heart of the music is (usually) a melody, a structure, a beating heart.

Vivian Girls – I Heard You Say
Vivian Girls are the guv’nesses, same way Ramones were once the guv’ners. The standards of the Ramones didn’t slip for several albums. The forthcoming Share They Joy is the Vivian Girls’ third, and their standards haven’t slipped yet either. That should be all you need to know.

Gyratory System – New Harmony
Gyratory System are hypnotic, spasmodic, lush. More fun than batting a battalion of Radiohead fans round the heads with the complete recorded works of Damo Suzuki.

Hello Seahorse! – Despues
From Mexico: their music is vaguely operatic in the same way Foetus can be but nowhere near as abrasive or upsetting: the opposite, often: and likes to linger in a sense of music, mystery, majesty. This is music that swims.

Pris – Blu-Tack Baby
One great way of judging music is thus: “Are the band having way more fun than me? Do I wanna go get stupid inebriated amnesiac with them? Do I want to fool-dance manically down the front and trip over BANG among the drum pedals?” Are they the anti-Daisy Lowe? The anti-Tori Amos? The anti-Kings OF FUCKING LEON? Do they perform in their underwear? ARE THEY HAVING MORE FUN THAN THE OTHER 50,000 PEOPLE IN THE ROOM COMBINED? Yes, yes yes! That is the attraction of London’s Pris.

Shannon And The Clams – Sleep Talk
imagine Etta James duking it out with the lady from The Detroit Cobras over reverb-drenched gorgeousness, plus a little punk manhandling that even YOU Mr Scared White Indie Boy In The Corner Tentatively Trying To Grow A Fleet Foxes Style Beard might well fall for if only you remembered what it was like to have fun. Sure it’s a little aggressive. So is life.

Elli et Jacno – Main Dans La Main
Classic French 80s coldwave. Every fine woman should also have a rectangular sheet of paper to dance on.

Dirt Child – Slugmite Millionaire
There’s something about this Sydney rapper/sculptor that reminds me a little of the no-holds sleaze of NYC’s Princess Superstar, although maybe I should hesitate from making such an obvious woman-woman comparison. Dirt Child is way dirtier, and less salacious. She doesn’t play to the male balconies. She’s got a steel vagina.

Dandelions – Tuffy
I was tipped off to this delight by gentleman Ben Ayres of Cornershop a few months back. It was, he felt, something that I might well enjoy. Gentleman Ben sure knows my taste. This delight is a 12-song album of folk music released in 1971, recorded by two girls, one aged 11 and the other aged 10, names of Tres Williams and Kitsy Christner: a little like The Shaggs, a little like Smoosh, but not like either really. This, my would-be rivals and petty philanderers, is the business. End of argument.

The Lovely Eggs – Don’t Look At Me (I Don’t Like It)
This song deserves to be yelled from every rooftop in every street in Britain. Its lyrics deserve to be carved into every desktop in every schoolroom in Britain. Its tune should be yodelled from the terraces. Its video should be put into constant rotation on every last fucking meathead video channel the world over, and replace Arcade boring-as-fuck Fire as the hipsters’ sensitivity of choice. Imagine if The Lovely Eggs were U2 or the Pope. Wouldn’t the world be surreal and wonderful and full of delicious turmoil and laughter?

Karaocake – It Doesn’t Take A Whole Week
“1-2-3-4-5-6-7 days and it’s over/I fucked up big time/You screwed up everything/You screwed up everything/You screwed up everything,” the French girl intones dolefully over a jaunty, jittery Casio beat – like a phalanx of Gameboys left to run wild on the kitchen table in Gregory’s Girl. There’s something very Jane Bond And The Undercover Men about this, but way more intense and not playful at all, or a little bit George Pringle (only far more melancholy).

Ruth – Polaroid Roman Photo
This is a delight. French coldwave/synth-pop from 1985 that once again gives the lie to the fact the English-speaking countries had the monopoly on the most interesting music: quite reminiscent of a few of Ruth’s Teutonic cousins, with a richly refined and sardonic bent, and a few of their French contemporaries too. I mean, it’s quite Gallic.

The Notes – Those Days, Those Nights
Great sound. Saturated to such a degree that I’m not even sure it’s a girl or boy singing, not that it matters, and with steady minimal drums that fill in every fourth beat just when you think they won’t bother. The echo is sullen. The harmonies are anything but. The guitar sound is very early Creation and pure Shop Assistants in places (in my heart, everything is pure Shop Assistants in places), and the feeling is melancholy but with the knowledge that there’s always something round the corner, a ray. From Southampton.

Kashmere – Bang! Splat!
Another top recommendation from Neil Kulkarni – some sci-fi horrorcore from the UK or thereabouts, the video cheekily lifting images of one of my very favourite 60s Marvel Comics characters. (I say “very” favourite, but really I was just turned on by the sheer scale of his supposed size, and the resulting fact no comic book artist was able to properly portray him.) Minimal, spooky, playful… it’s a video game! No it’s not. It’s a space adventure! No it’s not. It’s a rap record

M9 ft Blasphemy & Cyrus Malachi – Black Widow
Some horrorcore rap, which is some of my favourite sort, truth told: y’know, Wu-Tang, Gravediggaz, all that shit. (I’m quite sure I’m exhibiting a woeful lack of knowledge here.) This is all menace and high rise flickering wrongness: amnesia, corpses and crack issues free-styled over a minimal smattering of piano and two-note piano – the crime scene moved someplace hidden, someplace where you better pray you never stumble over it.

Hello Seahorse!

Here’s the link.

EDITORIAL DISCLAIMER: These mix-tapes are intended for private enjoyment only, not for any commercial use. If anyone featured on any of these mix-tapes has any sort of objection to being featured thus, please contact us and we will of course immediately remove their music from public domain. If you like any of the featured artists, please track back to their MySpace sites, record company home pages and the like, and show support by purchasing their music direct.

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