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I’ve been watching a lot of Anthony Bourdain lately. Netflix just moved most of the seasons to it’s instant viewing service. Needless to say, I’ve been spending a good bulk of time wading through food porn and off beat sightseeing, rather than studying for exams. Oh well.
I’m not really sure where I was going with that. Anyway, this week’s mixtape is an ode to all musical miscellany from the other continents…”not” made in America, if you will. I tried to be as legit as possible on this: no English lyrics (maybe a phrase here or there tossed in ironically) and definitely no campy sort of mutant hybrids of influences (I’m talking to you Herb Alpert).
Track list after the jump. Happy…weekend.
(More…)
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We’ve been meaning to do a “house” mix for some time now. A collection of quick tempo songs designed to keep the night moving. We’re not usually into hip hotel lounge tracks (although there is a mixtape in the works that’s tenitively titled “Help I’m Trapped in the Lobby of a Trendy Hotel…”), but sometimes they’re needed. And even in this mix, there’s a balance between house (Just One Of Those Things) and regular music (Sweet Disposition).
So anyway, without further ado, here’s the ninth installment of The Apples and VCRs Mixtape. The night is young. Keep it that way…and Happy Valentine’s Day.
In This Week’s Mixtape…
01. Sweet Disposition // The Temper Trap
02. Woman (Mstrkrft Remix) // Wolfmother
03. Just One Of Those Things (Brazilian Girls Remix) // Blossom Dearie
04. Quiet Dog // Mos Def
05. If Everybody Looked The Same // Groove Armada
06. Always Like This (Thee Loving Hand Remix) // Bombay Bicycle Club
07. Lisztomania // Phoenix
08. Can I Kick It? // A Tribe Called Quest
09. First… And Then // Handsome Boy Modeling School
10. Night In Tunisia (DJ Jazzy Jeff Remix) // Duke Jordan
11. Whatever Lola Wants (Gotan Project Remix) // Sarah Vaughan
12. The Gentle Rain (RJD2 Remix) // Astrud Gilberto
13. Summertime (UFO Remix) // Sarah Vaughan
14. At The River // Groove Armada
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Sometimes, things are hidden right in plain sight. You just can’t see them. Take the little tykes on the album cover; my guess is that they have no clue where they are or what they’re doing… and neither do I.
But the point still stands, that there are times in life when you’re oblivious to the possibilities and circumstances that surround you. So that brings us to the theme of this week’s A&V Mixtape… it’s an ode to all those times in love, life, employment, or whenever, that you realize that the thing you had been looking for was in front of you the entire time. Some tracks (01, 02, 16, etc) revolve around the oblivion of romance while others (04, 05, 13, etc) highlight the mystery of simply being.
Woah. Deep.
Enjoy.
In This Week’s Mixtape…
01. Arrows of Eros // Golden Silvers
02. Click, Click, Click // Bishop Allen
03. Slow Glass // Noah and the Whale
04. Woozy With Cider // James Yorkston
05. Hot Pink // Halloween, Alaska
06. Fake Palindromes // Andrew Bird
07. How Long Has This Been Going On? (MJ Cole Remix) // Carmen McRae
08. Brother Where Are You? (Matt Herbert Remix) // Oscar Brown Jr.
09. Class System // Handsome Boy Modeling School
10. Don’t Give Up // The Whitest Boy Alive
11. Serpent Charmer // Iron & Wine
12. Know How // Kings of Convenience
13. College Town Boy // Dent May
14. Never Knew Your Name // Mason Jennings
15. The Truth Is The Light // The Wood Brothers
16. I Won’t Stand In Your Way // Brian Setzer
17. This Is My Story, This Is My Song // Thelonious Monk
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FINALLY. Right? It’s been like, a month since our last Mixtape. Happy 2010. Christmas jokes. All that. We’ve been busy hooking up the odds and ends of a shiny new layout for the Apples and VCRs site. Now that that’s all done, we’ll be back to posting everyone’s favorite quasi-legal blog entry, The Apples and VCRs Mixtape, each and every Friday (or thereabouts). Huzzah.
So, to start things off, we’re channeling the land of silly hats, silly walks, and silly foods: Great Britain. The gang’s all here, from Jamie Cullum, Jamie T, Roots Manuva, Groove Armada, Goldfrapp and Noah and The Whale. Oy, it’s smashing good. Lifts. Kippers. And so on.
In This Week’s Mixtape…
01. Always Like This // Bombay Bicycle Club
02. Chaka Demus (Ben Bones Remix) // Jamie T
03. Don’t Stop The Music // Jamie Cullum
04. Blue Skies // Noah and The Whale
05. Banquet // Bloc Party
06. Ooh La La // Goldfrapp
07. Children’s Story // Slick Rick
08. Purple Haze // Groove Armada
09. Witness (1 Hope) // Roots Manuva
10. Fit But You Know It // The Streets
11. Ketto // Bonobo
12. Postcards // Faithless
13. Season of the Witch // Donovan
14. A Brighter Beat // Malcolm Middleton
15. Merry Happy // Kate Nash
16. Glorybox // Portishead
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So…The Flight of the Conchords officially announced last week that they will not be returning for a third season. Yes, I had myself a good cry. It helped with the healing- a little. But to truly soothe the kiwi sting, I had to fire up the iTunes and Iisten to what once was. And while I love Business Time (who doesn’t?), I’ve also always had a soft spot for the less popular The Humans Are Dead (I mean, did you hear that binary solo?). So, that’s this week’s theme: Robots* It’s a soundtrack for the impending Robot Revolution. The Robolution, if you will. So, get the kids in the bomb shelter, stock up on canned peaches, sit back and relax. It’ll all be over soon enough.
*the number of exclamation marks is at your discretion, given the stage of the Robolution. I chose three because they’re about to release a new version of the Kindle. Spooky.
In This Week’s Mixtape…
01. Robot High School // My Robot Friend
02. Falcon Jab (Copy Remix) // Ratatat
03. Organ Donor // DJ Shadow
04. Lisztomania (Alex Metric Remix) // Phoenix
05. Music Sounds Better With You (Mux Mool Remix) // Stardust
06. Vessel // Jon Hopkins
07. Mirando #2 // Ratatat
08. Deadbeat Summer // Neon Indian
09. Don’t Wait for the Needle to Drop // Dosh
10. Fireflies // Owl City
11. Brand New Colony // The Postal Service
12. Electric Feel (Mogi Grumbles Remix) // MGMT
13. Diskoteq // Uncle Skeleton
14. Capricorn One // Anti-Pop Consortium
15. Leyendecker // Battles
16. In the Hall of the Mountain Queen // Raymond Scott
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It’s finals week at Cornell. Everyone has gone their separate ways, scuttling off to some obscure corner of campus in an effort to devour an entire semester’s worth of knowledge in an afternoon. They’ve all vanished. So, that’s the theme for this week’s mixtape: being alone. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s inevitable that certain times in life, it’s going to be just you and yourself. And there’s a certain power that comes from solitude, where you have a chance to assess yourself. Where you are. Where you want to be. And so on. So this week I’ve put together a ragtag mix of people making music by themselves. In an effort to draw away from the cliched acoustic guitar sound, I’ve tossed in some electric cello (Ben Sollee, Yo-Yo Ma), piano (Richard Swift), tabla (Ravi Shankar), and even some jaded beat poet (Allen Ginsberg). Enjoy.
In This Week’s Mixtape
01. A Change Is Gonna Come // Ben Sollee
02. The Songs of National Freedom // Richard Swift
03. Dad // Keith John Adams
04. Do We Not Live In Dreams? // Franz Nicolay
05. Skinny Love // Bon Iver
06. The Gardner // The Tallest Man On Earth
07. Tabla Solo In Ekial // Ravi Shankar
08. Overkill // Colin Hay
09. New Romantic // Laura Marling
10. Fogtown // Michelle Shocked
11. Fuck It, I Love You // Malcolm Middleton
12. Look At Me // John Lennon
13. Big Rock Candy Mountain // Harry McClintock
14. America // Allen Ginsberg
15. Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major // Yo-Yo Ma
16. Such Great Heights // Iron and Wine
17. Ripchord // Rilo Kiley
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Today marked the first real snowfall in Ithaca. There’s something fascinating about snowfall. The way it seems to make the world stand still. The way it makes people break their routine, go outside, and act like kids again. Build a snowman. Make Hot Cocoa. Play football all afternoon. No sun, no sky- just a light and inconsequential giddiness that seems to infect everyone. And that’s pretty much the theme behind this week’s mixtape- that electric hush that fills the air. It’s ambient noise to stay inside and hang out with family and friends you care about and forget about anything that’s been bogging you down.
That was probably an unnecessarily deep introduction, but…oh well. Tracks like “White Christmas” and “Thank You Mario” even things out a little bit (I’ve been pretty harsh on the Mountain Goats in the past, and rightly so, but this track is actually pretty good). I did a little editing on the last track to incorporate a little audio from A Charlie Brown Christmas, just because. So. That’s all that.
In this week’s A&V Mixtape:
01. Skating // The Vince Guaraldi Trio
02. Selfless, Cold and Composed // Ben Folds Five
03. Sleeping In // The Postal Service
04. Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers // Kaki King
05. A Breaks B // Andrew Bird
06. VCR // The XX
07. Mrs. Cold // The Kings of Convenience
08. Badges and Badges // Andy Hull
09. Mt. Washington // Emily Wells
10. Cello Song // The Books
11. That’s Me Trying // William Shatner and Ben Folds
12. Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle // The Mountain Goats
13. White Christmas // Clyde McPhatter
14. Georgia On My Mind // Dave Brubeck
15. Un Jour Comme Un Autre // Brigitte Bardot
16. Love Vigilantes // Iron and Wine
17. Heartbeats // Jose Gonzalez
18. Sing It Again (w/ Linus Dub) // Marco Benevento
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I like covers. Sometimes more than the original. This week, I’ve put together a partial list of the covers I’ve been listening to lately, which are either as good (Flim, Golden, Stairway to Heaven) or better (Common People, I Can’t Live Without My Radio, Heart it Races) than the original. And yes- that really is William Shatner on there.
In this week’s Mixtape:
01. I’m On Fire (Bruce Springsteen Cover) // A.A. Bondy
02. Flim (Aphex Twin Cover) // The Bad Plus
03. High and Dry (Radiohead Cover) // Jamie Cullum
04. Golden (My Morning Jacket Cover) // Marco Benevento
05. Common People (Pulp Cover) // William Shatner, Joe Jackson, and Ben Folds
06. I Can’t Live Without My Radio (LL Cool J Cover) // Halloween Alaska
07. Heart It Races (Architecture in Helsinki Cover) // Dr. Dog
08. Juicy (Biggie Smalls Cover) // Emily Wells
09. Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd Cover) // The Bad Plus with Wendy Lewis
10. Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin Cover) // Rodrigo y Gabriela
11. Green River (CCR Cover) // M. Ward
12. Mr. Grieves (Pixies Cover) // TV on the Radio
13. Sesame Street (Joe Raposo Cover) // Joshua Radin
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Oh Balloon Boy- how you captured the hearts of 24 hour news channels everywhere. Sure it was a hoax, but who cares. I’d like to imagine BB as he never was, floating carefree above the Colorado country side. And that’s where this week’s A&V Mixtape came from; think of it as an ode to the Great Colorado Ballon Hoax of Ought Nine. The first track provides a nice retrospective introduction to the whole shebang. Like, weirdly appropriate. Same goes for the closing track…I like to think this will be Richard Heene’s defense at the trial. Enjoy.
In this week’s Apples & VCRs Mixtape:
01. Sunshine (Groove Armada Sunset Dub) // Handsome Boy Modeling School
02. Sunny’s Song // The Benevento/Russo Duo
03. Uphill City // I am Robot and Proud
04. Little Bird Courage // Old Canes
05. Ain’t No Direction // The British Columbians
06. Ozone Street // Tim Williams
07. I Can’t Fly // Dr. Dog
08. This Wind // The Tallest Man on Earth
09. Ray Dawn Balloon // Trey Anastasio
10. Hey Come Back! // Horse Shoes
11. Section 9 (Light & Day / Reach for the Sun) // The Polyphonic Spree
12. Symphony 9 & the Sunshine // Emily Wells
13. Back to the Ground // Jamie Cullum
14. State Trooper // Halloween, Alaska
15. Little Lion Man // Mumford and Sons
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It’s almost Thanksgiving, and with it comes car rides and road trips. So…for the first A&V Mixtape, it seemed appropriate to build a playlist around a car/transportation motif. Sort of. Ezra’s kind of the odd one out (but isn’t he always?).
In this week’s Mixtape:
01. Vagabond // Wolfmother
02. Rollerskate (Radio Edit) // Matias Aguayo
03. Avery M. Powers Memorial Beltway // Fear of Pop
04. Home // Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
05. Take Off Your Sunglasses // Ezra Furman and the Harpoons
06. Will You Return // The Avett Brothers
07. Pagan Angel And A Borrowed Car // Iron & Wine
08. Wheels // Jamie Cullum
09. Bus Ride // Marco Benevento
10. Red Travellin’ Socks // Malcolm Middleton
11. Diner // Martin Sexton
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