September

Here it comes again.



September 2009 Mix
Mixed / compiled by Foxes in Fiction
Total Time: 34:55

DOWNLOAD *zip includes mp3 and tracklist*

1. Animal Collective - Banshee Beat
2. LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
3. Actual Water - Boutique Neighbourhoods
4. The Bilinda Butchers - Gigi
5. Elliott Smith - Pretty (Ugly Before)
6. HEALTH - Before Tigers (CFCF Remix)
7. Reverie Sound Revue - One Marathon

1. I've been listening to this song a lot lately. I never thought of myself as a huge Animal Collectives fan, mostly due to a perception I used to have that while some of their songs were really lush and nice (Panda Bears' Person Pitch) the majority of it was too frenetic and annoying to be enjoyed in the same way. I've kind of revised this position over the last few weeks after really giving this one track a listen while driving to and from my cottage with a few friends, without trying to compare it to anything and hearing it just as it is.

2. There's been a huge amount of hype surrounding this album ever since it came out in March 2007, and I'm sad to say I still haven't heard the whole thing. I only heard this song for the first time last night at around 4 AM, and have had it on repeat for most of today. There's something very robust and triumphant about the way the lyrics are written coupled with the every-growing swarm of instrumentals around the static piano loop. Powerful shit.

3. Actual Water are a band from Toronto, Ontario whom I'd known about and heard a few tracks from in the past but really started listening to recently when I found their entire album Double Negatives posted on the Deerhunter / Atlas Sound forum by one of their members. Incredible incredible band. Very evocative of German krautrock bands of the 1970s (Neu! & Faust), 1980s post-punk, and noise rock. There's something about the two interchanging piano chords buried in this song that really does it for me.

4. I forget how exactly I stumbled upon the Bilinda Butchers' MySpace sometime last year, but I immediately fell hard for their sweet reverb party bedroom pop melodies. Well worth checking out.

5. One of the first non-A Side Elliott Smith songs I ever heard, via my good friend Ceda Torma. Holds a good deal of sentimental value to me.

6. Montreal-based DJ/Electronic musician CFCFs remix of HEALTHs Before Tigers. In the stead of fucking insane instrumental passages typical of a HEALTH track are pleasant shimmering 1980s-style synthesizer patches and drum beats that contextualize the songs distant and ethereal vocals perfectly. It kind of reminds me of something that would be on a radio station in Grand Theft Auto : Vice City.

7. This is my favourite Reverie Song Revue song. There's something about the harmonization of Lisa Lobsingers' vocals and the music to this track that make it so amazing. I have two really strong associations with this song, both involving illicit situations from my earlier days as a novice psychonaut. I can remember listening to this song on repeat while laying on my back in my tent at the World Electronic Music Festival in 2006 in Tweed, Ontario while coming up on ecstasy that my friend snuck into the event and not knowing how high I was going to get, but listening to this song made me feel like I was going to be alright no matter what. The other was involving a psychedelic mushroom trip during the same summer in Oakville where my friend and I came back to my house after a long walk by Lake Ontario and walked into my basement as this song was playing right at the instrumental part close to the ending and I remember that it felt like I could actually feel the sonic wall that was being created against my body and visualize each separate track independently from one another as if they had their own colours and complex emotional undertones. I think this is what is referred to as synesthesia.