It’s better to have an edited life than a messy one
Karl Lagerfeld
These mixtapes are the curated outcome of decades of music fandom, a bloated collection, the fatigue of choice, and the realization that in the unending quest for the ‘new’ much was slipping through the cracks. In this humble curator’s opinion Spotify and the like are useful, but ultimately overwhelming and unsatisfying. The result of this exercise is a restored love of music. In life, sometimes invariably you just want to hear all your favourite songs.
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InFlux
Coming of age listening to The Clash, The Cure, et al., lead to the pop horizons expanding – like the universe – infinitely, and in all directions. Issuing forth from the centre, influences, offshoots, and contemporaries are filtered and lovingly prepared 20 songs at a time.
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Agitate
Age reduces one’s tolerance to frenetic music, but a dusting now and then is useful.
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Ontology
The electronic soundtrack to the feeling one gets in their gut – perhaps while driving alone late at night – when confronted by thoughts of mortality, wonder, regret, existence, and so on. Said feeling could be described as ‘indiscriminate nostalgia’.
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Fluorescence
Reverb drenched Venn diagrams describing the undeniable pop luminescence emitted by brooding, sartorial, aloof, (sub)urbanites who make shoegaze-noise-rock-dream-pop-post-punk-experimental-avant-lo-fi-blah-blah. Turn it up to eleven. Do… do do… do do do do.
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Kosmische
A heavily filtered, heavily opinionated, love letter to the German anti-genre of the late 1960s through the 1970s so flippantly referred to as Krautrock. Rebelling against the horror of WWII, a new generation of Germans stitched out a creative and cultural rebirth – resulting in one of the most inventive, diverse, experimental, and influential periods in modern music history.
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Juncture
Indulgently long. Odd balls, old favourites, and things from other places. Ripe with seasonal mood and melody.
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Selector
No need to be a crate-digging 45 junkie to access the best of vintage Jamaica – there’s an embarrassment of riches for all. A sprinkling of summer soaked, toe tapping bliss from the original decades long, island musical explosion.
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DubSelector
Ditto (see Selector) – but Dub exclusively.
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Dusted
When sitting in a garage at sunset, drinking beer from a can – these are the songs to be with. Instilling memories of a simpler time you were never a part of.