Saturday 3 January 2009

A Place Where The Sun Never Shines

So, it's been about two months since I last pulled a mix out of the bag. That one was very New Rave / Electro. This new one very much isn't. It will still have an air of familiarity to anyone who tunes into my radio show on Purple Radio though. Well, it will for people who stay tuned in until the end of the show.

In one sense, it's almost a Best Of This Year - the tracks by Amiina & Lee Hazlewood, Sigur Ros, The Durutti Column, David Holmes, Goldfrapp vs Spiritualized, Death of the Neighbourhood, Hot Chip, Emiliana Torrini and Sia are all from this year. But on top of that, there's a number of other reasons for it coming together. A stinking cold just over Christmas meant I wasn't in the mood for jolly Christmas tunes and I wanted music that would soothe my head. And there's two tracks with "Christmas" in the title but aren't Christmassy at all, which came to my attention while searching through iTunes for festive stuff. One of those, the Mogwai track, reminded me that years ago, again over Christmas, I made a compilation tape which I called Mogwai Fear Santa (a play on their track Mogwai Fear Satan). That was also quite chilled, and other than the Mogwai track were the Pulp, Beth Orton and My Life Story tracks which make an appearance here. There's also a bit of an Icelandic theme going on. When I was playing around with tracks, I was looking at Björk tracks I might include, and had a live version of Unravel in the list up until this morning but decided it wouldn't quite work in the end. I've had a love affair with Scandinavian music for years , and I really feel for what's happened to the Icelandic economy this year. Hopefully I'll make it back this year at some point this year, which I'll admit is opportunism on my part, because the exchange rate should mean that everything's dirt cheap over there now. It's still one of the most amazing places in the world though, and I hope their path back to stability doesn't change that. This story is heart warming, but why did the Guardian have to write "Though Audur Capital has not divulged the material investment of Björk the singer in Björk the fund, knowing her work we imagine it is something along the lines of one heron feather, five regrets and 16 baby teeth.", undermining the whole article and resorting to lazy stereotypes?

Anyway, I hope you like it. For those who enjoyed my last mix and were hoping for some more bleepy electro nonsense, there is a Fidget House mix in the pipeline. Watch this space, as they say...

A Place Where The Sun Never Shines
download link

Amiina & Lee Hazlewood - Hilli (At The Top of the World)
Alpha - Given Time
Aphex Twin - Avril 14th
Sigur Ros - All Alright
The Durutti Column - Amanda
David Holmes - Hey Maggy
Mogwai - The Christmas Song
Pulp - Sunrise
Goldfrapp vs Spiritualized - Monster Love
Death of the Neighbourhood - The Town of Half Finished Building
My Life Story - Angel
Blur - Sweet Song
Hot Chip - We're Looking For a Whole Lot of Love (Christmas Version)
Beth Orton - Pedestal
Emiliana Torrini - Bleeder
Sia - Lullaby

1 comment:

Craigster said...

Who says that Christmas has to be all Slade and Wham!? (can I do that? What's the right way of punctuating a question which finishes with an exclamation mark anyway?).
I wouldn't have expected Sunrise to have worked anywhere other than at the end of a compilation, but as ever, you seem to have pulled it off, Rob.