Welcome to the Mixtape Corner

 
 

This is a cozy little section of the site dedicated to playlists.

While I’m still critical of Spotify and all that the streaming model entails, I am not immune to a good playlist. I guess when you spend all day listening to music (regardless of platform), your brain just automatically starts to categorize and sequence things in a way that makes sense.

I have around 600 playlists on Spotify, and if that sounds like a lot, you’re right! I don’t use them all, but they have each served a different role in my music fandom at one point or another. Some playlists are decade-spanning compendiums of an artist’s work organized chronologically; others are goofy jokes based on some superficial connective tissue. Some of these I listen to every week, others are an attempt to capture a specific time and place in my life. The point is that my Spotify sidebar is long and full of playlists, so I created this as a place where I can share some of my favorites and discuss them in short form.

 
 
 

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Mixtape #15 - Advance Base Christmas Mixtape (Deluxe Edition)
Mixtape #15 - Advance Base Christmas Mixtape (Deluxe Edition)

Christmas time is here, and to me, that means I’m playing a lot of Sufjan Stevens, but also a whole helluva lotta Advance Base. Maybe it’s all the songs with ‘Christmas’ in the title or the fact that Owen Ashworth goes on a yearly seasonal tour playing those songs, but the association is strong. I mean, just look at the cover of Animal Companionship and tell me that dog doesn’t scream ‘holidays!’ I guess I just find it really cool and admirable to watch someone build out such a specific body of work across many years and multiple projects. The songs are so good they’ve been covered by legends and only seem to grow in reverence each year, but I guess that’s how the holidays are, huh? 

A couple of years back, Ashworth bound all his Christmas songs together in one 30-minute mixtape. This is a single half-hour track that I freakishly cut up in Audacity so I can listen through on my own, but also built out with recent additions from Horrible Occurrences and collaborations, and capped off with “New Year’s Kiss” for what I’m calling the “Deluxe Edition.” Please enjoy this seasonal treat. 

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