Here we go, mix #13:
Track 1: Opens with no build up, a combination of horns, piano, and banjo. And then there's the vocals that give away the artist at first blow:
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- Tom Waits.
This one's a quick little number that doesn't waste a moment. I like little bits and pieces of this guy's music, but overall I'm not real into him. This isn't a song that I would place on the more enjoyable end of that spectrum, but it's not bad.
Track 2: A little more electronic influence in the opening to this one, but then it reveals itself as a pretty funky tune. More horns, though I'm pretty sure those are samples from old funk releases.
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- Is this one Beck?
Lots of little production touches all over this one that connect together the little mini riffs and other disparate elements. Nice song for the mix, though not really connecting to me. The little outro bit's amusing, though.
Track 3: Another song that makes me think I know who this mixmaker is early on.
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- This one's Feist - "The Bad in Each Other."
I like the rhythms on this one, along with the very subtle use of horns. Actually, there's nice arrangements all around. The singer's vocals have an oddly muffled quality that I haven't really noticed in other song's featuring her, so I don't know if that's just a thing here or what.
Track 4: Slowing things down a bit, we have another easily recognizable artist within moments of the vocals appearing. And yet again, I must say I think I know who compiled this based on this song and the three preceding it. I've spoken about my feelings on this band before, and how they're not very strong either way. This song's just got a nice, low, simmering vibe about it. There's lots of potential energy built up in it, but the tension is just allowed to slowly seep without a big explosion, though it does cause the whole thing to fall apart into noise at the end.
Track 5: Here's the first song that made me think maybe I was wrong about the mixer on this one.
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- This song's Bonnie "Prince" Billy or some other alias of Will Oldham.
This song's built on a foundation of piano and a really nice little backbeat that has touches of guitar and harmonica adorning it. Another instantly recognizable singer, and one that I quite like despite not knowing very well. There are also some female backing vocals that are kind of "soul," but don't really add greatly to the tune.
Track 6: Here the energy picks up again, and we've got a very "new wave," post-punk style driving rhythm. The vocalist featured here sounds familiar, but I can't quite place him; that's a first for this mix. Beyond that propulsive beat and the vocals, there's little else going on here. There's subtle keyboard noises throughout, and something that might be considered a guitar solo towards the end, but it really falls more safely into the realm of an instrumental break. Not particularly remarkable.
Track 7: I cheated and googled this one because it sounded like Bob Dylan, but not really. Instead, it's more like a Dylan impersonator.
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- The search engine tells me that it's Dan Bern, whose name sounds vaguely familiar.
Anyway, the Dylan takeoffs are numerous in appearance here: primarily the vocal stylings, but there's also the twangy slide guitar, the harmonica, the "profound" lyricism, the general vibe of "America." Not my thing by most accounts, but it slides nicely into this mix, which has been well put together so far.
Track 8: Every time I hear this one, the first note makes me think it's something else that I know, but I can't remember what it is because the rest of this song plays rather than the other one. That ever happen to anyone else? Anyway, this one's a sparse and moody number, with some dry guitar tones married to a rich, but subtle organ and some some chiming notes that I can't name. The vocalist fits this one really well, too, with the just the right amount of existential drama to complete the song.
Track 9: This one's an odd one. The arrangements are fairly sparse, but pretty; there's some piano, some strings, a bit of organ, an accordion and mandolin here and there, and a bass guitar whose timbre melds at times with the deep male vocalist to become indistinguishable. I also looked this one up out of curiosity and discovered that it's
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- Leonard Cohen, furthering my suspicions of the person behind this mix.
Track 10: I posted before how the initial file containing this mix had the tags still applied to this one, so I do know who this artist is:
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- Amanda Palmer.
Now, without those tags, I never would have known who this is, and I probably wouldn't have my expectations of the song colored by the less than savory opinions I've got about this artist. Anyway, this one's got another really heavily produced arrangement with lots of little keyboard and synthesizer parts building it up. It also shifts gears a bit about halfway through and picks up a heavy drum beat that then takes over the direction of the song. Really, this is a pretty nice song despite knowing who it is.
Track 11: Hm. I want to say that I might know the singer here as well, but I can't name him. I like the tone of the guitar that opens the songs; it has a really nice sound with lots of echo. The rest of the song I'm not particularly fond of, though it is short and it still fits pretty well into the rest of the mix. Kind of "indie," which is weird, considering who I think this comes from.
Track 12: And we end with some ragtime, taking us back to the first artist in the mix. When I first listened to the mix, as I pointed out in an earlier post, this song played in either the third or fourth slot due to VLC's quirk of playing the playlist based on the file names. So it really threw me off hearing this artist appear twice so early in the mix and it initially turned me off pretty hard because of that. It doesn't help that I don't really like most of the stylistic choices on this one. I tend to like the darker material from this artist, with the noisier, more industrial arrangements, rather than this old-timey stuff.
Anyway, as I said, this is a really well put together mix, with seemingly lots of consideration placed on flow and tone. There's also a pretty strong focus on what I believe to many of the mixmaker's favorite artists. That said. I'm going to place my bets here on the person responsible for this one.
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- This is another Stip mix, is it not? There's way to many cues pointing towards him for it to be anyone else. And if it's not Stip, then it's someone doing a really good impersonation of him.
