Stranger Turning Stranger - A Mixmas Miracle 2019 (Full Mix Leak 320 MP3 Album)

We’re doing this! 2019 2020 WHOOOOOO! 2019 2000! THE MIX OF THE FUTURE!

1. Ah, shoot…false start. This soundbar always hates my phone at first. NO SPOILERS, SOUNDBAR! Let me listen to Ohtis for a minute while it catches up. Come on, soundbar…you’re six feet away.

Great news – no more connection issues. I’m giving up on the traitorous soundbar and switching to headphones.

1. Nice opening – Four Tet-ish bloops and static. STATIC! That’s my sound of the year. And also strings, which are my other sound of the year. When I went through my candidates for my mix I realized I had a ton of static and strings. This is awfully nice but don’t go all Braveheart on m- Why is my kid talking to me? Can’t she see the headphones and doesn’t she remember that I JUST told her I was putting headphones in? I missed the transition to the new age space sounds but here they are now. I like the warbly closing plus STATIC!
2. Country twang, that’s my thang. Whoo dang! Drink TANG! “Tired of my sad songs”? Never! I heard promises of sad bastard music. Full horn section showtunes galore – I feel like there was a lot of this type of music this year. Kassi Valazza almost made my mix but it wasn’t meant to be because she had no static. I like the slide of that guitar, although this song kind of makes me want another country album by Karl Blau.

OK, I really want this on the speakers that I bought with HARD-EARNED MONEY holy crap I am feeling a little crazy. I need more of those chill, chill space sounds. That reminds me, I forgot to see who the first songs were. Let me use the CD as a way to block out the later songs so I only see what I want. THAT’S HIGH TECH. Oh hey, Slow Meadow. Did I help find this one? “Liminal” is a great word and is probably 41% of the reason I liked the book Liminal States. Song two was Faye Webster? I probably should have given that album more of a chance but I ended up getting more into Kassi Valazza instead. Who am I kidding? I’ve had years where half the songs on my mix were country-tinged singer/songwriter women.

3. Back on track, now on speakers! Ooh…uh…these are not my favorite vocals. It’s weird how close they are to the kind of androgynous warbling I really love but between the audio filter and the warbling falsetto it just sounds so forced. Oh look at that, it’s the Deerhunter album I hated. I think I would adore this song if it wasn’t trying so hard. Maybe they can make a covers album of their own songs but in the style of Halcyon Digest. Even better, in the style of Atlas Sound. Oh yeah – I remember liking this part at 2:30 way better the two times I listened to this album. I’ve really fallen out of love with Deerhunter, or at least newer Deerhunter. I do like a lot of the last half of this song but I’m not in this thing for HALF SONGS. I feel a little less crazy now but I still plan on shouting as much as possible. The whole song should have been the last 90 seconds, three times over. That’s kind of a mean trick to put an awful part at the beginning so that I like the last part even more, Deerhunter.
4. ORVILLE! YOU MADE IT! Orville was like three albums away from fitting on my mix but he’ll have to wait for the next album – there were just a few draggy spots on this one. I appreciate going from Rob Moran-level hardcore famous to doing something like this and his voice is pretty amazing. This album also has some fantastic lyrics and this song’s standout is obviously “spend a Johnny’s cash”. My favorite song was Winds Change but Buffalo Run was the one that was going to make it on my mix because it had the vibe I needed.
5. OHTIS! That opening line is what really got me to pay attention the first time I heard the album. Some years I worry that my mix will be all country and everyone will turn tail and remember it as worse than Transformers but guess what? NOTHING IS WORSE THAN TRANSFORMERS. This mix is 60% country so far and that’s just fine by me, pardner. Obviously I’m happy this song is on here because it was my number one album of the year, pardner. Every song stuck with me and at one point I think I listened to it at least 10 times in a row. Helps that it’s so short, pardner.
6. No wonder someone thought we were soul twins – there are strong parallels with my mix here. I had such a hard time with the two Tourist albums this year because they both had such different feelings while sharing a lot of the same sounds. My year was more Everyday than Wild so that’s probably why the earlier album won out with me. I like that this track is in the middle of the album because it feels more like a conclusion than an interlude so I’m paying attention to see why the mix is over so soon. TRICK MIX! NOT OVER YET!

Pardner

7. Oh, golly. Is this the saddest song? Also a trick – they’re all the saddest song. Even if I didn’t know he killed himself this whole album would be the saddest song. Every single track has a double meaning. My junior Mixmas elf stole my saddest song just because it’s about SNOW. It gets me because it’s less overt and there’s the meta aspect where the song sings about songs and it hits you that dead or alive, the person who recorded the song has become a ghost and the “whoa” chorus becomes longing moaning. My second saddest song is what made it to my mix and that one is much more overt the way Nights That Won’t Happen is. The play on words is cute but how cute is it to start a song with a direct statement about imminent suicide? I would have accepted a mix that was just every song on this album.
8. Space rock, help me meditate. There were a few of these kinds of albums this year (Moon Duo too-o!) and they all landed just outside of my mix. I liked a bunch of them but loved none of them. Some of my all-time favorite albums are space rock (Spacemen 3!) but the batch from this year didn’t have any true standouts for me, although I’m not complaining about getting a bunch of albums that I enjoyed having on all the way through.
9. I didn’t even have to make a second disc – this mix covered it for me! I liked this year’s…wait…last year’s Sharon Van Etten more than the last couple for the time and place. I managed to always have this album on at the right time this year and it helped raise it up for me, although it’s unlikely that anything will hold a candle to the timing of Epic for me a decade ago. “You Shadow” was my song. The biggest thing Sharon had to fight against with me was that this year was AMAZING for women with guitars, throaty voices, and a clever sense of playing with song structures and conventions. See also: like half the songs on my mix.
10. Will this be Swans? Low Roar? What else from my lost disc will be on here? Probably nothing now that I ask. Huh. Is this hardcore? Where’s Rob Moran when I need him most? TWO ROB MORAN REFERENCES! COUNT IT! This…might be from Transformers.
11. Oh thank God. Back to my disc two. This is one of the two Anna Tivel songs I had as possibilities – “Minneapolis” was the other. I thought this song was the perfect way to open an album. It’s just too bad that not every song on the album had the same sense to be in the right place at the right time. “Minneapolis” has all my favorite musical things though – ambiguity and clouds of dust. Just writing that puts me halfway to a decent song. Add in the last 90 seconds of that Deerhunter song and I’m ready to be an indie music superstar with as many as 15 fans!
12. Do I know this one? I do not. It has a bird name so whee! That’s probably why I liked the San Fermin album. I don’t like Electric Guitar, I learn over and over. I like electric guitars just fine and especially crunchy or staticky or fuzzy ones but rarely Electric Guitar. This is a little too 70s not-quite-easy-listening for me. I picture a lot of brown pants. It’s no Transformers but it’s also not something I would listen to more than once probably. I can’t understand the lyrics because the vocals are just too darn smooth, pardner. BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME, Robert Zimmerman. I might be getting a little tired. I do enjoy the faded horn outro.
13. Closing out with…sounds calm….sounds piano…sounds like something I don’t know. Eluvium. Did I listen to this? Maybe, but it didn’t stick. I used to totally hate piano unless it was really buried but I’ve become more piano-positive over the last few years. Moonface helped me reach this place of acceptance, and maybe even appreciation. Well this is nice. I appreciates it. It really turned a corner halfway through there without really doing a whole lot. It just occurred to me…I think I had more instrumental songs this year. First time?

What an adventure. There’s a small part of me that wishes there was less overlap so that I could discover new things but considering the insane volume of albums I listened to last year it’s not a total surprise. The dog is having a face-twitching dream and it’s probably in response to that restful last song. What a great way to close it out.

Good night, pardner.

A Very Special Mixmas Special Mix - BrisYee (2018 Full Album MP3 Download)

1. Hey, what? Is this a standup comedy album? I hate standup comedy. I don’t even have a good reason for hating it, I just do. I didn’t really like Master of None either but it had Eric Wareheim so even though Aziz is kind of whiny it was almost worth it. Now I’m trying to figure out what made this track stand out compared to any of the others. OHHHHH…THE GRAPEFRUIT. Now I get it.
2. Now we’re into my party jams. PARRRRTY JAMZZZ. You know it’s a party because she’s singing about booze. That’s how you knew Lorde was old enough to drink on her album last year. Is that a synthetic steel drum? I guess if you’re throwing up from all the sugar from your exclusive diet of screwdrivers you probably don’t want to be handling real drumsticks. Do people regularly mix higher-end vodka with orange juice? Grey Goose is gross, but if you liked it and paid for it it seems like a waste to drown it in OJ.
3. This sounds like Caribou after he wakes up. I like it so far! Plus, he’s singing about Coca-Cola and so far there’s no rum in it. Bum-bum-boh, bum-bum-boh! I am extremely satisfied with this song but I’m not following what’s happening with the soda mystery.
4. This guy sang for some new wave band, right? I don’t know how he couldn’t have. I’ll just assume this is a Depeche Mode remix. If it’s not, the voice is a little bit of a put on. I feel like if I broke his heart and crushed his dreams and all the other things he’s challenging me to do he might feel differently about his soul. I like the confidence but I don’t trust in his fortitude. I’ll take that soul if I want to take that soul.
5. CHIPMUNK ROBOTS! I love chipmunks and I love robots so there’s no way this song can fail me. Oh no…a big ol’ “LIKE THAT” man just took over and messed with the flow. I didn’t like him until he started playing Pong with the chipmunk robot and then I was OK with him. I’m 90% sure this song isn’t by Eric Wareheim or one of his friends but it should be, and he should do the video. It’s basically a Major Lazer or DJ Douggpound song.
6. This is ominous and WOW she’s really getting right to business. She called me the “B” word and I didn’t even do anything to her. I don’t know that I’ve ever been angry enough to relate to a song like this. What the heck is she saying about a horse? I’m having a hard time following but I feel like not all of this rant is as focused as it was at the start.  So angry.
7. I shouldn’t have started thinking about Tim & Eric…now all the songs sound like comedy bits. It doesn’t help that the vocals sound like Terry Crews. Maybe they’re supposed to be. Is he shouting “I got that work!” over the sirens so his co-worker can hear him? And now they’re working! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! This is my new favorite song. I’m teaching it to the baby this weekend. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

1. We’re in a saloon! That there cowboy just asked me “what up?” Three time signature changes in the first minute…not a great sign. What is this song doing? CHOOSE A SIDE! Buuuuut…it has a wacky fake phone conversation and isn’t angrily telling me about blood and money so it’s not all bad. “Little baby man”? Did I hear that right?
2. This is the slowest of my JAMZZZZZZZ so far. I don’t know why I keep doing that but I’m all in now so I might as well run with it. The second vocalist on the mix that I don’t care for. He talked about blue flowers though…maybe he knows Kool Keith. So many mid-song shifts though and now it’s not a slow JAMMMZZZ. One of the sub-songs is definitely stolen from “Ms. Jackson”. The rest are stolen from various rooms in the all-robot fetish club and now I’m drenched in antifreeze and various lubricants. That was kind of exhausting.
3. I hope this is the Macarena. No vocals yet and I’m grateful after that last song. I’m really enjoying this one so far – nice and trance-y and it feels wide open. I’m not really writing much because I’m enjoying this a lot. Good song. Done.
4. Oh boy…glad I got a chance to relax with the last song. This one was recorded inside the tank of a tanker truck where we thought it was a good idea to have a rave but then a raccoon closed the hatch and now we’re trapped in here. We need to bang on the sides to try to alert someone that we’re in here, but we also need to PARTY. PARTY JAMMZZZZZZ. This whole sounds like when I “play” the siren whistle by breathing in and out but played through stadium speakers. I would be OK if I never had to listen to this again.
5. Oh good…sounds like the truck is driving away. The problem is that we’re inside it. Actually, aside from the awful and grating intro this isn’t too bad. Kind of like if one of the Blue Room Released artists didn’t want you to relax at all.
6. I’m glad I’m getting breathing instructions for relaxation hypnosis. CONTROL MY MIND, JAMZZZZ. Oh wait…it’s hypnotizing me into relaxing. With squeaky shoes and Slinkies. I think I had this song on a Ras Dva industrial sampler in 1994. Because I’m super old.
7. OH MAN, HARRY NILSSON! I love Harry Nilsson, although this isn’t my favorite song. I did have a dream of dressing the oldest male offspring in a leather fringe jacket and recording him staring into storefronts back when he was two years old. Nothing funnier than a toddler midnight cowboy.

 Final Rating: Seven sexy robot cowboys out of 10. A few of them needed to tone it down a bit and I could have done without the excursion to the fetish club but overall those were some well-programmed JAMZZZZ BOTZZZZZZ.

Defiant Plankton Narratives - A Very Special Mixmas Live Review (2018 Full MP3 Leak)

OK, I have to just live review this thing. No other way to do it justice. I’ve spent too much time already trying to get the album art to upload correctly so I’ll go with what I’ve got and just claim that it was poorly aligned when I got it.

Track 1

Hmm…has it started? Is my volume up loud enough? I think there’s some guitar sound. Let me turn up my volume. Great news, it’s just quiet guitar still. Five dollars says this is an instrumental track. Oh yeah – no way that snare drum doesn’t go with an instrumental rock band. I think this is the band that I had to listen to over the summer. At least it’s a reasonable opener since it builds from quiet, but boy is that drum still annoying to me. I like this part about four minutes in way better now that I’ve had four minutes to hate the drums. Oh geez...six more minutes though? Not that I can talk since Zimpel/Ziolek went about the same way. This semi-electronic sound at six minutes in is nice too. Maybe I only like the 30-second segments that start every two minutes. HAHAHA not even kidding the next part I liked started at 7:59. The next part I will like is at 10 minutes when the song is over.

Track 2

I wonder if this will be instrumental. It could go that way from the opening. It sure would be a good joke if I had to listen to nothing but 15 tracks of Public Broadcasting Service. Which I think is what this one is because I remember the annoying old British guy talking about stuff. Except for maybe he’s Scottish. I don’t care. Their drummer is a little less annoying, but the bass sounds are not as good. I’m just going to put all artsy instrumental rock acts in the same basic bucket of judgement. That bucket is filled with indifference and just a touch of annoyance.

Track 3

The strummed guitar is a nice change of pace, especially with nothing behind it. It’s slow enough and lacking enough snare drum that I’m pretty sure some vocals will have to happen. Even though I’d be happy to listen to an instrumental version of this. Do I know that voice? I think I do. Is this Beck? Was there a song like this on the Beck album? I’d never know because I wrote it off after two listens. Maybe. I can’t remember if I got that far. This is more Sea Change than what I remember if it is Beck. I remember YO DAWG PARTY BUT ALSO IN A HIP WAY. I think that was Beck. I’m not allowed to look until the end though.

Track 4

PIAAAAAANO Oh god this is that teenager girl. Why did this end up on here? OK, this particular song is pretty good but the whole album? I’ll listen to this song since I didn’t hate it but the whole time I’ll let my overall hatred fester and grow. I just listened to the lyrics to this song a little too closely. I’m trying to put my festering hatred aside but even without (most of) that I must just really not like her writing. Because I want to shake this person around and tell them they’re not as poetic as they think they are.

Track 5

MY HEADPHONES ARE TOO LOUD and there is an awful screeching sound. Boy oh boy are there a lot of sound effects so far but that screeching violin is really killing me. I’m too lazy to turn the volume down though so I’ll let it pass. The concept is fine, it’s just really not coming across well because the clickity-click fire crackling noise is popping out a little too sharply as well. I keep wincing. This song is a blast. It was definitely a closing track but the album isn’t over!

Track 6

I AM DANCING AN ISLAND DANCE! This is a wacky little number. Hey, The Magnetic Fields! I’m glad someone else picked out a song that was enjoyable out of all those terrible ones because I didn’t feel like it. I can’t even remember if I got all the way through the album. I like the slippery-sliding trombones on this song.

Track 7

Yesssssssssssssssssss. There aren’t enough esses (not changing it) in the world to applaud this song. I think this might have been my favorite song on the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album but I didn’t like it as well for my mix. All is well now that it’s the centerpiece of this mix. I don’t have to type anything else because it’s that good a song.

Track 8

This sounds like a Beatles outtake. Or maybe a Beatles parody by Frank Zappa. Is someone singing in a high voice for the backing vocals. The song actually isn’t so bad but the high voice is cracking me up. Also they’re having an awfully hard time choosing a time signature and sticking to it. Art.

Track 9

Oh, nice. This Alt-J album really grew on me over the course of the year. It just didn’t grow tall enough to reach into “mix territory”. Poor Alt-J though…they’re going to need to do something really different but still appealing to get out from under their first album because that’s all I think when I listen to their newer ones. I do appreciate that most of last year’s album was patient and didn’t move at such a frantic rush. I’m glad this was on a mix because I felt bad about not having it on mine.

Track 10

Am I on track 10 now? I should be keeping better track (GET IT?) of what I’m listening to. OK, we’re good.

Track 10

It really feels like we’ve fully made the transition into British rock at this point in the mix. At least from the music. I’m pretty sure the actual band for this song is American. What do I know. I’m no ichthyologist. // Was there singing in this song? Now I can’t remember. I think there was. Just not right now. I wish I had a marimba. I’ve only ever gotten to play one a few times but it sure is satisfying. Oh, there are the vocals. They’re OK. Not as good as the marimba.

Track 11

Well that’s a pretty voice. Is she a little drunk though? It’s really hard to understand the vocals so let me turn the volume up a little more. What the heck – I already can’t hear anything in real life anyway. Fun fact: my whole mix was almost all maudlin female-vocal folk songs. I should’ve stuck with that concept. That song was short.

Track 12

Another amazing song and album that didn’t quite make the cut for my mix. I should have done two discs. This Benjamin Clementine album was really something else and this song was definitely my favorite on the album. Man…so good. The song is such a crazy journey and even though it has all these disparate parts it feels really cohesive.

Track 13

VOLUME IS LOUD This track is mixed crazy loud and also her voice. Is this that Riff Raff woman? She’s so angry. I think I actually like this song but I don’t like the edge to her voice. Which is probably the point, but I still have to listen to it so come on…dull the edges a bit. And there’s just one thing…do you have to use so many cuss words? Oh god…the circus just started. This is turning into Neil Gaiman’s wife’s music. Next thing I know she’ll be wearing steampunk pants and making ticking sounds while she yelps and swears. Goody…now there’s a poor-quality old-timey recording of someone talking. I think I did listen to this at least once because now there’s all the yelling “BALLANTE” or whatever. What the hell, song. This is a real contrast to the Benjamin Clementine song right before – they’re both pretty hard listens in their way and one clicks for me and one really doesn’t. It was nice to have them back-to-back though.

Track 14

See, now I don’t know if this is a new song or not. Oh wait…it’s quieter and a man singing and no one is swearing at me and/or shouting nonsense. This song would probably be nice but after the one-two punch of the last two songs I don’t know what wouldn’t feel a little weak. Is this Elton John? I can only assume it is. He’s going to need to toughen up to beat out the last songs. // GARLIC COIN HAHAHAHA // The interruption might have helped Elton out a lot. Tell me, Elton. Is it human nature? Oh, just human nature you say? Well that’s settled then. This kind of sounds like a Sesame Street song if you listen to the lyrics a certain way.

Track 15

I think this is the last song but I wish I didn’t know that. But that means it’s probably instrumental. The end is really where an instrumental song belongs. This one fits very nicely here. Yeah, this is a super rad way to close out. I need to see what this is. I bet it’s an instrumental band that I pooh-poohed earlier.

Final Rating: Three instrumental tracks out of 15. I’d rate the actual mix much higher though.

Well, that settles it. I listened to someone else’s taste in music and the only thing it did was reaffirm that I like what I like and everything else is exactly bad. I’m going to go listen to Alt-J again right now though.