Guest Mix Volume 13 - Helm

If you care about the cool internet blogosphere music community people, you will recognize Helm for his insightful commentary and his deep dedication to heavy metal. He is also a brutally talented artist (see the illustration above), and his work is visible on his blog ASides-BSides. This mix features some awesome weirdo "techno thrash" bands, as well as one of the coolest bands that I've heard in awhile, Socrates Drank the Conium. Once again, my guest poster wrote a lot, so I will shut up.

Hello. I am Helm from Asides-Bsides. I listen to a lot of Heavy Metal and sometimes write about it. Todd Nief of Primitive Future asked me to do just that for you so here's a mixtape and some notes on the songs below.

Waking up today was strange. I suffered from peculiar post-apocalyptic 'digital life' nightmares that I couldn't awaken from. Lots of shit went down but dreams being what they are, most of it is hazy now. All I remember is at the end of the dream I was too afraid to unplug myself from a grotesque body-horror life-support mechanism in fear of not so much death than being 'offline from the world'. Does that sound familiar?

I finally broke the dream paralysis by screaming at the top of my lungs - in the dream, in reality I barely coughed waking up. So, I take a look around in the room and see two monitors staring at me, an abundance of cables lining the floor, felt really weird. Of course I ran to the internet first thing. This playlist was assembled to put my foul mood to some proactive use, plus give me something to do until I felt better. Listening to the full thing seems to have helped, so there you go, self-medicating for information globalism with the Heaviest of Metals.

01 - Shadow of the Beast - Intro

This is a remix of an old Amiga game's intro music, called Shadow of the Beast. I put it on until I could figure out the first few tracks of the playlist but heh, it sorta fits the mood so at the end I left it in.

Here's the intro image from the game. The original tracker music is by Dave Whittaker, if you're interested. I love the synthetic flute, very melancholic.

02 - Obliveon - Cybervoid

This pretty much captures the emotions the dream conjured. Obliveon were a lesser known Canadian thrash outfit obviously influenced in thematics and sound by Voivod. They put out 'Cybervoid' in 1996. They remind somewhat of Meshuggah but I find their compositions to be more succinct and less abstract, hence more enjoyable. The interesting quality of this song is that the lyrics are hilarious on their own,

"Face the void, prepare for the fight
Victimized by cruel megabytes"

but along with the music the end result is effective. Or perhaps it just did for me because of the dream paralysis.

03 - Protector - Nothing Has Changed

Well, this is a downer. Look at these guys,

They're German, they play thrash. Expecting Kreator-cloning or something, right? Well, yes although for my money Protector are more savage and visceral than Kreator (no kidding, check out their EP 'Leviathan's Desire'). But on this song we get one of the more depressing doom songs from a thrash band the are.

"The buildings are made of gold
The sun shines bright
Out of a blue, a clear blue sky
The streets are clean
The people laugh
The animals are free
No hate, no one cries
No more distrust
No more disgust
And no more war
Peace forevermore

No industry pollutes the water
The sea is filled with movement and life
The governments scrap all their useless weapons
They are not bribable any longer
Everyone is happy
No more pain

But suddenly it's fading away
I wake up it's 12 o'clock
And I realize, nothing has changed. "

I don't know, it's not just the lyrics. That monophonic guitar tone is murky as hell, the sharp harmonized solo on top punctuates the sentiment. The chant at the end "nothing has changed, nothing has changed" underlined by throaty screams of each word on its own. There's proper doom metal bands that have tried for records to achieve what this oddity in a thrash band's catalogue manages excellently. But where to go from here?

04 Osiris - Futurity (Something to Think About)

Oh, that's right, techno-thrash.

Not only this cover is exactly how I felt this morning, the music also captures a specific metal zeitgeist very successfully. We're back at 1991 here, thrash is trying to grow up, touches on existentialist concerns, the scope is modernist, so on. Here's some interestingly dated lyrics to go with it:

"Gazing into my crystal ball
It never seemed so dark before
The world is lost and lonely
Year 2011, twenty years from now
Will there be earth, will there be people?"

We'll see soon, Osiris.

Actually to be more precise Osiris are a bit late to the modernist techno-thrash/progressive metal party. The height of this genre's potency was circa 1989-90. When the Soviet Union collapsed, signaling the end of the cold war, a lot of this paranoiac techno-thrash (and lots of metal in general) lost its raison d'etre. But for all we know Osiris were perfecting these songs for a couple of years before the record was released. Anyway, I'll write about techno-thrash in detail in some future post, somewhere.

05 - Abstrakt Algebra - Shadowplay

Speaking of direction-less '90s metal, here's a pleasant upset: Candlemass founder Leif Edling puts out a post-metal record in 1995 and it's great! The cover's worth looking at too, (especially if you fold it out). Back when this came out I didn't know what to make of it, I were as confused about the future of metal as everybody else. Romantic doom/death had happened, Black metal had happened, nothing new and as diligently romantic (as is the essence of metal) seemed to be ready to emerge so almost all of us pursued the precarious poisons of post-modernity... perhaps this was the future, you know?

Well, it wasn't, but there's a lot of '90s artifacts worth interest nonetheless. Looking back now it's easier to appreciate them because they're benign growths on the strange tree of Heavy Metal, but back then the possibility of them being wicked stems of the new was slightly more worrying.

"Taciturned teasers with tattooed tears
A play of shadows they give
A blindfolded sojourn from Shakespeare to Marx
Directions vague and obscene"

06 - Deathrow - Machinery

This is the absolute flagbearer of what is sometimes called techno-thrash (or less aptly, 'progressive thrash' or 'technical thrash' though my distinctions and reasoning on this will have to wait for a future playlist/essay). Germany, 1988, let's look at the lyrics.

"I am walking through the streets of my old town
Looking back on the days of my youth
There are factories in the fields where we used to play
Clouds of smoke hang in the sky and block out the sun

God bless this house, the car and the TV
Show us our idols in magazines
They build us prisons without any walls
Money rules we can't resist

Snakes of commercial TV
Decoy with their apples
False priests spit out their lies
Because God sells
If we don't pull ourselves out of this mud
Our children will have to pay for our sins

God bless this house, the car and the TV
Show us our idols in magazines
They build us prisons without any walls
Money rules we can't resist
We're just wheels in a great machinery"

I'm 26 years old, I was a little baby person back at 1988 but I remember having nightmares about nuclear bombs raining down on Europe just the same. It's kind of difficult to communicate why the combination of this austere music with that type of grounded social angst is so effective. If you haven't lived in a lesser country under the influence of the world's superpowers during a critical time such as the cold war it all probably sounds kind of funny to you. "Supermarkets sell us their shit, lol, supermarkets are our friends" you might be thinking and for all I know you might be correct. Anyway, Deathrow strike a nerve for me at least. For some synaesthetic understanding, listen at the end of the song how the lead melody tries futilely to escape the grinding gears of the rhythm guitars and drums. Listen how at the end the lockstep is absolutely suffocating.

07 - Socrates Drank the Conium - Breakdown

Well this is from 1973, Greece. I absolutely adore the record it belongs in. The lyric is pretty self-explanatory, but listen how the constant double guitar licks augment the already hectic 7/8 rhythm. "Too much smoke, too many people. Gotta get away, riding on the highway. Endless breakdown. Heavy Breakdown". Extremely effective piece, doesn't even need a Cold War to give it weight. I tend to view the 'On the Wings' record as an early precursor to stuff Psychotic Waltz would be doing 15 years later.

08 - Moahni Moahna - Tales of Xet Sof

My computer crashed while I was making the playlist so now you get the appropriate song to express this frustration. Here's the transcribed lyric,

"You only need to press this key, they said
So he did too bad, so sad, they gave him hell

Destructive instructions are easy to make
They are not constructive
Illusions, confusions breaking him down

What's the point in reading this book
Where's the one I trusted, he must die
Because he lied

Nothing happened whatsoever
Days were wasted, time was tight
Book of wisdom, none too clever
It's so wrong, but oh, so right

What's the point of reading this book

*customer support voice says something inaudible on right speaker*

Now he is older, trapped in a book
And he belongs there"

As you might have realized this is an epic Rainbow-esque song about Soft - Ware troubleshooting, a badly formatted manual, lying tech support and the inevitable fate of anyone who dabbles in computer science. Moahni Moahna are a band almost nobody knows about but they're hilarious and it's a shame. Radio's to blame.

09 - Psycho Symphony - Silent Fall

Well I wouldn't like to go into detail about how this Psycho Symphony song works because it's a headache and a half just listening to it, much less trying to scrutinize its various parts. I'll just say that it captures the emotion of feeling trapped in a dream, for me. All these unresolved melodies mirror the wild changes of pace and location in dreams and the foggy spatiality in them too. It takes real songcrafting skill to have phrases that are so everywhere and still hold it together and convey subtle emotions like Psycho Symphony do.

10 - Paralysis - Arctic Sleep

And this techno-thrash band from the Netherlands ties the whole thing off leaving us exactly where we started. Only now, much wiser.

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Guest Mix Volume 12 - Nick Donahue

Nick is really funny. Nick is good at drums. Nick loves music. We have long talks when I drop him off from band practice (we are in PAGAN YOUTH aka DIAPER together). Nick also plays in CANADIAN RIFLE and sometimes in CIVIC PROGRESS. This dude wrote a lot, so I'm only gonna write a little. You know what it is, load it down.

Hi, and welcome to Nix Mix. I put this together in the style of a CD sampler, the most enduring and provocative format for compiled music to date. If you like Wimbledon, please stick around. You're in for a treat! A lil' something about the music:

Some of these songs were prophetic at the time they were written. Consider the way Big Black's "Passing Complexion," from the 1986 album Atomizer, anticipated the way it would sound if the theme music for all twelve characters from Street Fighter II (a game released a full five years later) were layered and played simultaneously.

David Axelrod's 1970 album Earth Rot, where the selection here is from, is a lot like that song "God Hates the World" (adapted from the pre-Auto-Tune original version of the supergroup charity single "We Are the World") recorded by the Westboro Baptist Church a few years ago. It tries to get you squirmin' by making you feel like you're taking a bubble bath on a cloud, and then the cloud starts singing to you about how you're gonna die. The primary difference is that Axelrod's presumed god isn't the celestial embodiment of a far-right militia on a murderous rampage. Still, I think it could be played through massive, Jonestowny stereo equipment around the world and serve as the sonic nudge needed to make things feel really apocalyptic for half an hour.

Making a mix can be a mournful process. For instance, I'm crying right now. But seriously, folks...

I want to say something. Whether you're playing on clay, asphalt, grass, or carpet, inside or out, it remains true: there's nothing wrong with playing the game of life and ending up with "love." I hope these songs help you on that path. Game. Set. Match.

. Wipers - Taking Too Long
2. Skull Kontrol - Camouflage
3. Big Black - Passing Complexion
4. Minutemen - Paranoid Chant
5. Polvo - Feather of Forgiveness
6. The Rats - Defiance
7. Zomes - Petroglyphs
8. Louie Lasky - How You Want Your Rollin' Done
9. Willie Colon with Hector Lavoe - Que Lio
10. Ruby Andrews - You Made A Believer Out Of Me
11. Gal Costa - Cinema Olympia
12. Magazine - Cut-Out Shapes
13. David Axelrod - The Warning Talk (Part III)
14. Cold Sweat- Nightmare
15. The Fix - Cos The Elite
16. United Mutation - Final Solution
17. G.I.S.M. - ABC Weapons
18. Rudimentary Peni - Sonia
19. Born Against- Five Dollars An Hour
20. Condominium - Barricade
21. Billy Bao - Factory of Repression
22. Masta Ace, Inc. - Boom Bashin'
23. O.V. Wright - He's My Son (Just The Same)
24. Richard & Linda Thompson - The Calvary Cross
25. Geechie Wiley & Elvie Thomas - Last Kind Words Blues
26. The Breeders - Oh!

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Guest Mix Vol 11 - Lauren Lorendewski

Hey look here, my friend Nora Liebenbowski is a genius geologist, and is really into death metal and Klaus Nomi. The above picture is of her living the dream at the Tibetan Plateau this last summer, which is probably cooler than anything that you and I will ever do. Read Ms. Lunarovski's paper here in several months when it is published. And hey, I recently got into The Lemonheads because people said my band sounds like them. Anyway, this mix is awesome. DEAD! YOUR GOD IS DEAD! FOOLS! YOUR GOD IS DEAD!.

I spend about nine months of the year sitting at a desk in Michigan nerding about things like plateaus and mountains. The other three months I attempt to fulfill the destiny of a girl raised in the suburbs by traveling, hiking, etc. As fucking brutal as modeling plate tectonics is, I sometimes have trouble working in front of a computer when there are so so so many cool rocks for me play with outdoors.

My mix is composed of the songs that help me get through my infinite work days-the ones that after a 12 hour date with my computer I realize I have listened to on repeat 3045834503485 times, mostly because they remind me of gratifying experiences anywhere but my office in Michigan. Actually, every day I just listen to the entire Bat Out of Hell album on repeat, but I thought people who didn’t get it might become bored with a pure Meatloaf mix:

Tracklist:

1. Talking Heads - This Must be the Place
2. Alkaline Trio - Nose Over Tail
3. Nick Drake - Place to Be
4. Screeching Weasel - I Wanna be a Homosexual
5. Descendents - Pervert
6. R Kelly - I'm a Flirt
7. The Smiths - Miserable Lie
8. The Temptations - Isn't She Pretty
9. Yo La Tengo - Center of Gravity
10. Billy Bragg - California Stars
11. Archers of Loaf - Fat
12. Lemonheads - Rockin Stroll
13. Morbid Angel - Chapel of Ghouls
14. New Order - The Village
15. The Wedding Present - All This and More
16. Bob Marley - Don't Ever Leave Me
17. Woob - Creek
18. The Misfits - Skulls
19. Gorguts - Obscura
20. Klaus Nomi - Cold Song

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Guest Mix Volume 10 - Danny Polak

Yeah, we've got Danny Polak, a man of impeccable taste, serving up a nice heavy, full course guest mix for you today. He is in culinary school, so he really knows how to put it in the pot, and let it steam, let it brew. But for real, Dan has obsessive tendencies with anything that he likes. I admire his weirdo connoisseur of knowledge of cologne, porno, heavy music, and food....makes perfect sense for this dude to be a musician and a chef. Anyway, the above photo is from LEFT HAND PATH's last show with the Cro-Mags. Dan also plays drums for LIKE RATS and we pretty much rock. This write-up is really funny and insightful, and these songs are really heavy, so please enjoy.

I have a love/hate relationship with music. There are times where I look into songs trying to find this hidden code woven into space and time that may unlock all the answers to mysteries surrounding this very world and our lives. For a moment, these random notes and rhythms make the bad good, the mundane exciting, and the dead lively. It is one of the only constants in life that is always there for you. You can talk through it but not to it. It makes you a better listener. I love music for these reasons.

Then there are times where I feel like it owes me something. When I cannot find the answers I sometimes feel betrayed. I hate music for these reasons.

And god forbid I listen to the continuous bowel movement that is popular music. Not to say that all 'pop' music is a stinky turd, but most of it is. I just cannot identify with a bunch of alpha (or beta) losers moaning over cheating on someone or whatever subject matter that is not really important that you can put over a digital drum beat that makes your peepee tingle when grinding and possibly vomiting on some random stranger in the club or where ever the hell these made up creatures in my head go. Even though the last statement sounds glorious, it also makes me hate music (granted that I just made an unfair generalization, but so what?). I am territorial about the things I like. I see it as more than just a beat with auto tuned singing over it and I want people to comprehend that.

I guess I have spent so much time engulfed in this musical fantasy land that I have almost severed all my ties with reality. I cannot really say that I care because we all need an escape sometimes. Mine so happens to sing to me, how about you?

Some years ago I had received my last mix tape. A real life mix too. You know, recorded on to a blank tape via compact disc and record player? It was so full of life, living and breathing. Although I did not like 100% of the songs, I can say that I still listen to it and will never forget that time in my life.

This is my creation for you. I hope you like it and can appreciate these songs for what they are. Some speak to me and some can put me into a trance that blocks out anything that had been riding on my mind for a short while. They make me happy and full. I love music for that.

Oh, and now that I am thinking about it, maybe I take back those rude comments earlier. When you think about it, having a tingly peepee is a damn good thing, right?

Cheers.

- Your Friendly Neighborhood Dan

1. Trouble 'R.I.P'
2. Acrimony 'Million Year Summer'
3. Candlemass 'Under the Oak' (Tales of Creation version)
4. Failure 'Stuck On You'
5. Kiss 'Goin Blind'
6. Leaf Hound 'Freelance Fiend'
7. Plastic Bertrand 'Ca Plane Pour Moi'
8. Anathema 'Are You There?'
9. Uriah Heep 'Traveller in Time'
10. Norman Greenbaum 'Spirit in the Sky'
11. Ride 'Chelsea Girl'
12. Only Living Witness 'Voice of Disrepair'
13. Captain Beyond 'Raging River of Fear'
14. Herman's Hermits 'End of the World'
15. Mindrot 'Despair'

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Guest Mix Vol 9 Shelby Cobras (Illogical Contraption)

Yo, it's that time again, except this time it's time for Shelby from motherlicking Illogical Contraption. Actually, I'm really excited to listen to the Gun album that dudes posted yesterday. Should be tite. Also, don't forget that I contributed my own Guest Mix to IC a few weeks ago, and it ruled. Anyway, Shelby really came through on this one, by coming up with an awesome theme and awesome cover art and awesome tunes. Whatchu know bout Dead Horse?

What is it about heavy metal that appeals to the beast in man? Is it that metal channels our innate urge to fuck, fight, hunt, and kill, the animalistic instinct we all sunbconsciously suppress, unleashing it in spasms of cathartic chaos? Is it our long-dead craving to suckle blood from raw, still-living meat, our hunger to thunder across the open plain indulging every whim for death and bloodlust? Perhaps, but perhaps it is something far less complicated. Animals are awesome, and so is metal. Maybe it's just that simple.

Either way, I present you, the readers of Primitive Future, with this, my partial study on Animals In Metal. During its production, I found myself becoming nostalgic for the days of the 90 minute Maxell cassette compilation, an item as commonplace amongst my high school friends back in the day as a can of Hamm's or the standard issue pair of black Chucks. I always took pride in my ability to fit exactly 44-and-three-quarters minutes of music on each side of a mix tape back then, getting the maximum value out of each blank tape I purchased. So I did the same thing here. The compilation presented below clocks in at 89 minutes and 35 seconds, which I've overindulgently split up into Side A (44:49) and Side B (44:46).
Call me old fashioned, but it is my belief that a compilation tape should hold some sort of "flow" from song to song, carrying the same theme while still exploring the many flavors of music available to our spongy brain tissue. Because of this, I've renumbered the mp3 files on this mix accordingly, so that you can drop the whole unpacked .rar file into its own playlist and hear the songs in the same order the creator (me) intended. Not ALL of the music here is metal, but it doesn't need to be. We are diverse and many-hungered creatures.
Oh yeah: if you get a chance, stop by my blog Illogical Contraption some time. Newbies are always welcome. And an extra special thanks to Todd, proprietor and mastermind behind all things P-Future. This exercise in digital tape-trading was way more fun than it should have been.

dl:
BEAST INFECTION
Biological Specimens From The Museum of Living Metal


SIDE A (44:49)

1) Rainbow - Run With The Wolf
2) Red Fang - Prehistoric Dog
3) Lair of the Minotaur - Demon Serpent
4) Belphegor - Swarm of Rats
5) Sextrash - Night Pigs
6) The Who - Boris The Spider
7) Hideous - The Curse of the Killer Owl of Death From Hell
8) Cryptopsy - White Worms
9) Gut - My Goat Gets A Cold
10) The Frogs - I'm Sad The Goat Just Died Today
11) M.O.D. - Don't Feed The Bears
12) Pentagram - Livin' In A Ram's Head
13) Neurosis - United Sheep
14) Hail Mary - Beating A Dead Horse
15) Dystopia - Taste Your Own Medicine
16) Grief - Rhinoceros

SIDE B (44:46)

1) Accept - Fast As A Shark
2) Cretaceous - Fossilized
3) Men's Recovery Project - Problem?
4) Teen Cthulhu - Bloodhorse
5) Worst Case Scenario - Ignore The Pigs Outside
6) Thor - Catch A Tiger
7) Dead Horse - Piece of Veal
8) Anaal Nathrakh - The Technogoat
9) Saint Vitus - White Stallions
10) The Neighbors - Greedy Pigs
11) Septic Death - Crocodile Tears
12) King Crimson - Dinosaur
13) Deicide - Serpents of the Light
14) Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast


(Courtesy of the PF/IC Music Exchange Program, Feb. 2010)

Guest Mix Volume 8 - Drew Brown

Drew is one of the best drummers I know. And apparently, he's also one of the best drummers that people who know more people than me know, as he has played drums for Owen (New Leaves live @ Beat Kitchen) and Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy (hey a Prince cover). Keep in mind that these are people who have a very wide selection of drummers available to them. Oh yeah and he plays bass in Weekend Nachos. That's Drew on the right if you have the will power to pull your eyes away from Caution's seductive leather vest.

Drew has a music taste that is very interesting and foreign to me, so I was really curious to see what he would come up with for a guest mix. I am almost completely incapable of predicting whether or not he will like something. Like, I think I'll have him figured out, and then he'll completely love Arab on Radar or something and my model fails. Although science may not have the right answers, at least it's asking the right questions....

It seems as though Fall has been the theme for all of these mixes.* In keeping with that, I figured I would just pull songs from my laptop's itunes that have been getting a good amount of plays as of late. There is no real rhyme or reason to the mix besides that they're all songs I've been listening to in the past month. Maybe you will like some of these songs, and if you don't...I don't care.

Tracklist:

1. The American Analog Set - Punk as Fuck
2. Califone - Funeral Singers
3. Cass McCombs - You Saved My Life
4. Gameface - Gibberish
5. Japandroids - Sovereignty
6. Lali Puna - Faking the Books
7. Morrissey - Boxers
8. Owen - A Fever
9. Prince - Kiss
10. Red House Painters - Byrd Joel
11. Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
12. Wilco - We're Just Friends

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*Whoa, I guess Drew sent me this awhile ago. Well Drew, if you don't like it... I don't care.

Guest Mix Vol. 7 - Erik B aka Don Mattingly

Yeah for this muxtape Dr. Mario in training Mr. Erik B aka Don Mattingly aka Erik B & Don Mattingly of Brilliant Corners arrives with a right proper donk on it. This dude is overstanding the pop music scene from multiple angles at all times, enabling him to bring us things such as this Amerie remix (an already ill song based on a Meters sample) which is turned into a complete mind-melter. Fuck yeah. And that Vistoso Bosses song is catchy as fuckkkkkk, too. Anyway, Erik has some white guy rock of his own in the pipeline, first show Jan 29 competing with my white guy rock band's first show. Fortunately, like my hoes, these shows are in different area codes. Brilliant Corners. Brilliant Corners. Brilliant Corners.

so i made this mixtape like a cassette with two sides and a fairly loose theme attached. the first side is about being a young white man channelling anxiety through powerpop and other dumb weenie music, and the second side is about being seduced by black ladies, falling in love, and then breaking their hearts i guess. aphex twin is the most natural transition between the two. its all pop music abounding in vitality, so fuck what you heard.

-erik bengtsen bka giorgio caetano

tracklisting:
1. Crocodiles - I Wanna Kill
2. Rocketship - I Love You Like The Way That I Used To
3. Toms - Sun
4. Barcelona - C64
5. The Nerves - Working Too Hard
6. Orange Juice - Falling and Laughing
7. Marshall Crenshaw - There She Goes Again
8. The Ponys - I'm With You
9. The Flashing Lights - Highschool
10. Luxury - Green Hearts
11. Rivers Cuomo - Lover in the Snow
12. Aphex Twin - Flim
13. Aaliyah - Come Over (ft Tank)
14. Electrik Red - 9 to 5
15. The Diplomats - I Wanna Be Your Lady ft Cam
16. Keke Palmer - First Crush
17. Amerie - One Thing (siik rmx)
18. Candy Hill - Juicy
19. Vistoso Bosses - Delirious
20. 88 Keys - Wasting My Minutes
21. Ciara - I Don't Remember
22. T2 ft Jodie Aysha - Heartbroken (radio edit)
23. Mariah Carey - Shake it Off

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Guest Mix Vol. 6 - Adam Could Die Tomorrow

The internet is oversaturated with music blogs, and you can find just about anything you're looking for using Google's blogsearch. However, most of these blogs have very poor internal quality control, and their backlogs are clogged with the plaque of boring, derivative records that no one in their right mind would ever want to actually listen to. What I'm saying is that it takes quite a bit to make it into my own personal reading list, and I Could Die Tomorrow is one of the select few. Adam and co. really get it done over there by having great taste and running a smooth operation. Pretty much anything goes as long as it rules. If you like what I'm doing, you will like what they are doing. Thanks, Adam, for doing this cool guest mix, and thanks for putting Trouble Funk on it.

When I make mixes for someone (usually friends, but sometimes babes), I tend to abandon any sort of coherence or theme and just bludgeon the listener with whatever it is I think they’ll like, songs that remind me of them, or just shit I’ve been listening to lately, so that’s just what I’m going to provide for you, the distinguished reader of Primitive Future.

My mixes tend to not only be disjointed affairs, but also overly-long and, therefore, potentially annoying; my mixes are practically a representation of myself. The shit has got to have hardcore, shoegaze, sludge, twee pop, noise, funk (or Go-Go for all you D.C. natives!), black metal, hip-hop, and random, obscuro shit. This guarantees that the listener will enjoy at least one song on the mix and will, hopefully, hangout with lonely Adam.

For this super guest mix, I’ve included “When You Smile” by bedroom pop masters Veronica Lake. What does this mean? Let’s just say that if I make you a mix without this song, you ain’t shit. But don’t fret, Primitive Future reader, you are shit and I have included it for you. I care. You’ll probably hate it, but oh well. FTW.

Lastly, I would just like to apologize for forcing you to have to sit through my uninteresting narcissism. I’ll just end this here, though, because this write-up is played out like the Jheri Curl.

-Adam

p.s. Thanks, Todd, for giving me the privilege of doing this! It was fun.

1. Ramleh - Pit Bull
2. Warhead - Fight With No Fear
3. The Charlottes - Are You Happy Now?
4. Sutcliffe Jügend - Falklands National
5. Iron Cross - Psycho Skin
6. Tubeway Army - Are 'Friends' Electric?
7. Grief - Virus
8. Brenda Hutchinson - Me And My Rhythm Box
9. Kristallnacht - For Resurrection Of Our Movement
10. The Cherry Smash - Nowhere Generation
11. Trouble Funk - Hey Fellas
12. Jupiter Sun - Violet Intertwine
13. Brain Handle - Cold Pavement
14. Talk Talk - John Cope
15. Wale - The Perfect Plan
16. Medicine - Sweet Explosion
17. Deep Wound - Time To Stand
18. Veronica Lake - When You Smile
19. Disco Inferno - Footprints In Snow

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Guest Mix Vol. 5 - DJ The Tornado

So stoked on this guest mix, as my knowledge of electronic music doesn't extend much past Detroit techno & Chicago acid house. Steve Adler aka DJ The Tornado is much much smarter than me at knowing about electronic music, so the fact that this guest post even exists is a wonderful learning experience for me. Also, I have been at many ragers that Tornado absolutely devastated, so this helps to fill in my mental picture of belt-slapping and Jordan jerseys. So if you have a party, what you need to do is hire the man DJ The Tornado in order to make sure that your party is a cool place to be. Links:
http://soundcloud.com/djthetornado
http://www.facebook.com/pages/DJ-The-Tornado/21263807805
myspace.com/djthetornado

I've been DJing for about nine years. Since then my tastes have evolved from spinning mostly hip-hop, funk, and house into buying primarily drum & bass and dubstep. Whenever I play out, I usually play for a long period of time and thus incorporate an amalgamation of sounds into each set. I might start out with a top 40 hip-hop banger and later go into some electro-house before finishing with dubstep, other times I blend a Young Gunz instrumental with Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia" - it all depends on what you like and, more importantly, what your audience is feeling. When I was commissioned to make this mix for Primitive Future, I wanted to do two things - first, show off my skills and hopefully get booked and raise my profile. Second, I wanted to introduce the readers of Todd's blog to something new. I feel it's important to note that so many times people think that just because I play a certain kind of music out that that is all I listen to at home. As a matter of fact, I listen to music that is all across the board and love being introduced to new things. I could have easily made an ambient mix, a shoegaze mix, or something like the mixes already posted. The fear I have in posting this is that it won't be taken as seriously as traditional, band-based music because so often people think that any music with a rude bass line is meant for the clubs, or maybe the gym, but not for home listening. This is what makes putting together a studio mix extremely hard. When making a mix of any sort of "dance" music, it has to be just that - danceable. I have to contrast that with knowing that most readers of this blog will be listening to this on their MP3 players on the bus ride to and from work, not before they go out to the club (although you can do that, too).

Another layer to this is being able to put together a mix of music that is not listened to by most people. How do I introduce a genre (drum & bass) to people when it is seen as too fast, too loud, or too heavy to the general public? How do I represent a very diverse scene in a short time and leave people with the impression that this music is worth listening to and worth promoting? At the same time, how do I stay true to the genre's roots and "keep it real"? I want to play quality music that has crossover appeal. A daunting task, indeed.

For the second half of the mix, I decided to slow it down a bit and focus on the dubstep sound which has slowly been gathering steam in the underground for years. It has achieved critical acclaim due to albums from producers like Burial and Benga, but has also destroyed dancefloors thanks to heavy hitters like Skream, Plastician, Caspa and Rusko. A genre which grew out of the grime, garage, and drum & bass scenes in the UK, dubstep has become more and more popular stateside in recent months, thanks to DJs like Diplo and Craze incorporating the sound in their sets. I tried to show off what I think are the best representations of dubstep - there are the deeper bits, the wicked impact tunes, more commercial tracks, and a cheeky bootleg remix - with a classic hardcore tune thrown in, strictly for the heads that know.

Some might say I take DJing too seriously, but I think anyone who is passionate about their music needs to represent their shit right.

Enjoy.

1. Sub Focus - Rock It - Ram
>>>Q Project - Ask Not VIP - Advanced
2. Dillinja - Shiners - Valve
3. Serum vs. Northern Lights - Dangerous - Zombie
4. Break - Is This What You Want? VIP - Symmetry
5. Friction & K-Tee - Set It Off - Shogun Audio
6. Commix - Justified - Metalheadz
7. Calibre - Let Me Hold You - Signature
8. Icicle - Frozen - Renegade Hardware
9. Fresh - Fantasia - Digital Sound Boy
10. Zen - Dark Em Up - Grid
11. Danny Byrd - Red Mist VIP - Hospital
>>>Hazard - Killers Don't Die - Playaz
12. Chrissy Chris & Youngman MC - Kick Snare - V
13. Chimpo - Like No Other - Contagious
14. Jakes - Rock The Bells - Hench
15. Rusko - Mr Muscle - Sub Soldiers
16. Soulja Boy feat. Lil Wayne - Turn On My Swag (Remix) - Interscope
17. DZ - Old Timers - Black Acre
18. Liquid Wicked - Dubwar (Von D VIP Mix) - Destpub
19. MRK1 - Dubelek - Contagious
20. Skream - Memories of 3rd Base - Digital Sound Boy
21. Plastician - Export - White
22. MRK1 - Borderline - Contagious
23. Deadmau5 feat. Kaskade - I Remember (Caspa Remix) - Virgin
24. Mahanee vs. Von D - S.A.G.E. - Destpub
25. Giant - Rocker - Dub Police
26. The Art of Noise - Moments In Love (Caspa Remix) - White
27. Barbarix - Low Freqz - Aquatic Lab
28. Skream - Burnin' Up - Digital Sound Boy
29. 2 Bad Mice - Bombscare - Sm:)e Communications
30. La Roux - In For The Kill (Skream's Let's Get Ravey Remix) - White

*Link Removed due to Copyright Claim*
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Guest Mix Vol. 4 - Joaquín Chávez

One of the things about touring with bands is that you meet a lot of people. Now, I am not much of a "people-meeter," but sometimes you really end up being surprised by how much you have in common with a total stranger. I met Joaquin in Albuquerque, and it quickly became clear to me that we are both dudes with a "music problem." As such, I'm really stoked to present this cross-section of JC's music brain. Besides, he has a Burt Bacharach tattoo, so you know he's doing something right. Joaquín posts records at Never Get to Heaven, does whatever happens on Tumblr here, and plays hateful, frowning riffs with Dead Hours and Excruciation. A Burt Bacharach tattoo! How great is that!

When Todd asked if I would be willing to contribute a guest mix, I couldn't have been more into the idea. There is no other blog for which I have more respect. As I sat down to string this thing together, my dilemma was not unlike Andys. Do I flex nuts so that Todd and his readers know what a sick guy I am? Do I let the blog world know what a nerd I am by putting the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody"* on a mix fifteen times? Well, after scrapping a few initial ideas and possibly saving myself some embarrassment by nixing a couple of tracks, I decided to just keep it simple. Here is a mix of songs that, along with the weather, have assisted in making sure the molecules in my body move a little less rapidly. And although that might make me a little less punk rock, considering that as I put this mix together my roommate is probably busy smashing mirrors, listening to the Total Abuse demo in his room, after all the rage summer brings, it's nice to stop and smell the string arrangements. Enjoy.

*Phil Spector's production only, for the record.

01. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
02. El Chicano - Sabor A Mi
03. Joan Of Arc - I Love A Woman (Who Loves Me)
04. Big Star - Morpha Too
05. Shop Assistants - She Said
06. Dionne Warwick - Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets
07. Fergus & Geronimo - Glistening Smiles
08. Sebadoh - Got It
09. The Zombies - This Will Be Our Year
10. The Velvet Underground & Nico - I'll Be Your Mirror
11. Blake Babies - Girl In A Box
12. The Lemonheads - Hannah & Gabi
13. Electric Light Orchestra - One Summer Dream
14. The Beach Boys - Unreleased Pet Sounds Backgrounds
15. Stevie Wonder - Knocks Me Off My Feet

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Guest Mix Vol. 3 - Bo Lueders

Bo Lueders, purveyor of internet wisdom at www.bosxe.com and highly active stage presence in Harms Way and Convicted (RIP), has been kind enough to do a guest mix for your mind. Harm's Way, who kind of sound like Bolt Thrower (this is cool), are currently out for a few days with Rise & Fall (also cool). Their LP "Reality Approaches" is one of the better things to be released in 2009, regardless of whether I know them as people or not. Anyway, Bo has provided us with some quintessential late October jams, so load it down.

I am a huge fan of shuffle when it comes to listening to music. The only problem is I end up shuffling between maybe 10-15 bands and have a hard time getting new music into my library. Add the fact that it's October to that mix, and I end up with a pretty limited play list. October for me has always been Misfits month, I listen to the entire collection on shuffle pretty exclusively; so when Todd asked me to do a mix-up I was actually a little troubled to put some diversity into my list. So I decided to with a “semi-obvious” mix-up, meaning not “Halloween” but another creepy Misfits song instead.

I ended up finishing it with only 2 Misfits songs and 1 Danzig song, out of 13, so for me that's an accomplishment. (Now that I think about it though “Thirteen” is a Danzig song that Cash covered… dam it) It was also an eye opener reading both Andy and Steve's mix-ups, especially Steve's, because I can honestly say I have never heard a single band on his list (yet). That, of course, is the beauty of these mix-ups and music in general.
So here you go, enjoy my take on the fall mix-up:

1. Theme For a Jackal (Static Age version) - The Misfits
2. Still Ill (1984 s/t version) - The Smiths
3. Two Minutes to Midnight - Iron Maiden
4. Walking On the Moon - The Police
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls - Metallica
6. It's Not Up To You - Björk
7. Montana - Rocky Votolato
8. Am I Demon? - Danzig
9. Cough/Cool - The Misfits
10. Dechristianize - Vital Remains
11. Bark at the Moon - Ozzy Osborn
12. Behind the Crooked Cross - Slayer
13. Thirteen - Johnny Cash

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Guest Mix Vol. 2: Stephen C. Kane

Steve Kane is one of the funniest people that I know, and also the biggest Cold Cave fan I know. I'm pretty excited to be posting his mix here, as Steve has a lot of specialized musical knowledge that is very different than mine, and I enjoy new things. Steve has cornered the market on internet endeavors with the name Harsh Distractions, with his internet radio show on Tuesdays from 7-9pm CST at www.fearlessradio.com and his music blog Harsh Distractions. Did you click all of those links? Let's go, Steve:

Somewhere between the brutally humid summers and the arctic winters is a brief flirtation with a temperate climate where, for about two weeks of the entire year, the weather in Chicago is absolutely perfect. Without reiterating too much of what Andy said, autumn is my favorite time of year. It's easy to get nostalgic about fall because I associate so many things I love with this time of year. Namely, the music that reminds me of cooler evenings, new semesters, drinking hot coffee on rainy afternoons, sweaters, and pumpkin flavored everything. This isn't a mix of my favorite fall weather songs of all time, but rather a mix of old favorites and new songs that fit into the mood of the season. Hopefully you agree.

Tracklist:

1. Cold Cave - Love Comes Close
2. Seam - Get Higher
3. Desolation Wilderness - Boardwalk Theme
4. King Khan & The Shrines - Welfare Bread
5. Calypso - Casually Sad Mercedes
6. Wild Nothing - Summer Holiday
7. The Chamber Strings - Everyday Is Christmas
8. Hum - Why I Like The Robins
9. Grouper - Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping
10. Black Tambourine - Black Car
11. The Love Language - Sparxxx
12. Gliss - Morning Light
13. Alcian Blue - See You Shine
14. The Clientele - (I Want You) More Than Eve
15. The House Of Love - Sulphur
16. (Smog) - I Was a Stranger
17. Vampire Weekend - Campus
18. The Radio Dept. - Always A Relief

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Guest Mix Vol. 1: Andy Nelson

I have a lot of friends involved in a lot of cool stuff with a lot of good opinions on music. As such, the new thing is that my friends will be doing guest mixes for my blog and everyone will thoroughly enjoy this new concept. For Volume One, I present the opinions of my multi-talented (music, jokes, drawings, etc.) roomie Mr. A. Nelson, who plays music in Like Rats & Weekend Nachos and records music at Bricktop Recording (for a very reasonable rate, I might add). So, take in Andy's mix and also visit the internet homepages related to his activities. Also, become excited about this new fun feature and look forward to it every few weeks. Here's ol' Nelly takin it over in his own words:

There are certain pressures I feel when commissioned to make a mix. These pressures are intensified when the mix is for a blog written by a dear friend whose taste in music I very much respect. An irritating self-consciousness sets in when I try to decide on what angle to come at in my song selection. I listen to plenty of music and I feel like my tastes are pretty diverse, but do I want this mix to be some sort of cross-section of my harddrive? Am I trying to impress Todd's loyal readers with a stunning blend of genres, obscurity and controversial mainstream gems? I could do that, but I already applied to the fuckyoucrew several years ago (and was denied). At this point, trying to give less and less of a fuck is a very real goal for me, so whatever, I'm making a mix that I'd enjoy listening to.

It's fucking chilly in the apartment and leaves are turning orange and yellow outside, so my scope has been narrowed to a fall theme. None of these songs have overt fall references (at least I don't think so), but every one of them has some aesthetic quality that I find particularly appropriate to listen to around this season. I guess a few of these songs might make me look like a bit of a sad bastard, but that comes with the territory when you pick and choose tracks in this context. This is my favorite time of year and there's a certain kind of dull melancholy that sort of feels right when things look the way they do outside. It's like nature's last, epic stand before another crushing Chicago winter sets in.

So pop this shit in on a long drive out to the pumpkin patch. Drink some cider and plan your Halloween costume. Wear a nice sweater and get some outdoors-time in before it's too fucking cold to do anything.

Tracklist:

01 Chapterhouse - Breather
02 Danzig - Her Black Wings
03 The Chameleons - Monkeyland
04 Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again
05 Mayhem - Life Eternal
06 Cocteau Twins - Evangeline
07 Brainiac - Nothing Ever Changes
08 The Cure - The Figurehead
09 Death In June - The Calling
10 Slowdive - When the Sun Hits
11 Hot Chip - And I Was A Boy From School
12 Burzum - Spell of Destruction
13 Bailter Space - Begin
14 The Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored
15 Iron Maiden - Hallowed Be Thy Name

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