ALBUM REVIEW: Kid Reflux's Summer Mix 2010.1

A series of honorary every day i wake up, out of the darkness, into the light posts about some tapes what I got. If they had an order they don't now. No tracklists either, so what follows is more work than it looks. Audio to follow.

I know fine the joy of seeping into my music collection with someone else's ear in mind; when I'm mixtaping is probably when I love music most. But, Item: none of youse tell his mam that this is (some of) what he was getting up to in that 'Revision' month, alright?

A - 'Just Barely Enough To Believe In '

1. [some plainsong]
2. [cuts to] [More plainsong]
3. [cut] Crumb by Crumb - Rufus Wainwright
4. [violent cut] You Got The Love - Source (Candi Staton)
5. [cut] Can't Seem To Make You Mine - Ramones
--> 2s of "Teenage Kicks -->

6. [The Fandango Boys mocking the Bee Gees?]

7. [some light-stepping grime, 10s]

8. [this is classic, but I can't name it] - Benga?
--> 5s of techno-y rnb - Kanye? -->

9. Neon Lights - Kraftwerk

10. [cut] Rules & Regs - Rufus Wainwright

11. Words Of Expectation - The Fall

12. Dinner At Eight - Rufus Wainwright

13. Pogo - Alice

14. - [Honey Shop Screamers?]

15. [some incredibly beautiful mid-fi pop]

16. Martha - Rufus

Overall mood - characterization, if you like - is of someone trying to be romantic though let down much before. Overall composing is impatient - undressing someone while you're being undressed - with paceless jumps and "I'm bored with you; get out"-cuts, which emphasises the songs which are allowed to run all the way through; "they're respectable, I wouldn't touch them." Overall eclecticism goes without saying.

"I would like, deep down /At the bottom of my odour, lingering, my heart and soul /
To see the government wrecked / And my LPs roll"

The slamming of Gregorians against Rufus' very different grandeur works very well, though I don't know if I'd trace any influence across it. The change to Candi Staton is brutal, makes the song hit you deep past guard (as it probably hasn't before).

Rufus is the pedal note, the reference point, the observer of it, too. There's only the climax of "Rules and Regulations", which could easily have been infuriating - Mount Improbable! - but any bad feeling is absorbed into the much greater bad feeling of the Fall.

Just look at the sequence from 11-14, will you? Epic snot followed by yearning cabaret wrapped in a glitchy dream and all taken care of, finally, by [a garage demo equally Booker T and Half Man Half Biscuit.] It takes love to pull that off, more than I've got, more than you probably have. And none of the 2sec teases or attempts to disorient undo this.

"Doesn't everyone want to be someone else?"

B - 'Skip A Beat And Move With My Body'

18. Crap Kraft Dinner - Hot Chip

19. Slow - Kylie
20. [some instrumental reggae, no chance. Bass is bizarre...]

21. [Indistinct folk - backmasked strings?]

22. Go Long - Joanna Newsom

23. Love Sick - Dylan

24. --> Debaser - Pixies -->
25. [some lo-fi reggae]
26. Flat Beat (Acid Creators Remix) - Mr Oizo

27. [a mashup of two 80s funk things]
28. World's Greatest - Bonnie Prince Billy

29. Genesis 30:3 - Mountain Goats
30. [Stooges?]
[4secs hard pop break]



I was very nearly too young for cassettes, just as I was too young to understand what gravitas Strummer's headline should be read with and jee-ust old enough to gurn for Peel's. I was a hand-me-down sort, though, and so remember being passed down my brother's old tech even while CDs were pre-eminent. (Though he remained very attached to the Tao of Tape, mostly cause of the zine scene's dependency on it. Sorry; that is, the international-subversive-DIY-antica-antifa-band-mail circuit's deviance from technocratic norms.) Remember having Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life" and the Dead Kennedys' "Fresh Fruit" and not much else. Probably the fucking Buffy soundtrack.