Mixtape 216 • Hey! Music!
Trademarking the most elemental of particles is a bold move, but a fitting one for Atom™.
Trademarking the most elemental of particles is a bold move, but a fitting one for Atom™.
It’s a bitterly cold night, though the thermometer is not the lowest it’s been this winter. Warming things up is King Tuff, whose twisted bedroom psychedelia is heating up my house in the manner of an unexpected early spring. It’s a strong start for an extended set of sounds simultaneously catchy and powerful. Technical note: The Mixtape sounds best when recorded on TDK SA90 cassettes. Do not attempt to do this on Maxell XLIIs.
It’s been about six months since the previous compliation of music that was played on the 11pm-midnight section of the Mixtape — the late-night temporal space that receives music that is strange, harsh, and/or repetitive that is known as The Final Hour. This is the second anthology from this pool of music, presented through the entirety of tonight’s Mixtape to allow those whose schedule leans towards the earlier hours a chance to experience. Hark!
After a dormancy of a few years, The Dodos have re-emerged and proven to be anything but extinct. This duo makes a sound that is easy to recognize but hard to describe, a sort of acoustic progressive metal filled with droning rhythms and cascading guitars that you can clearly hear on the appropriately-titled “Unicorn”.
The three-hour live shows have settled into their own rhythm, with the stranger and more electronic offerings drifting into the territory of The Final Hour, between 11pm and midnight. This show is for the early risers who might be familiar with the upbeat indie pop that gets played at the top of the show but are missing out on the darker moods that are featured near the end.
Taking a vibrantly psychedelic sound and drenching it in cavernous production has made sure Lilys have always floated through time with a sound that is clearly from the past but also obviously from the future.
Canadian indie guitar geniuses Born Ruffians have released two great albums in less than a year, and easily earned the distinction of being the first artist to twice be featured on a Mixtape.
It's Member Drive time, and nothing says "support your community radio station" louder than three hours of Dub Night. Not a whole lot of funding was raised, but no matter! Three hours of heavy bass rhythms were played.
Among the lockdown detritus of 2020 is this gem showing the introspective jazzy musings of one of the most important dub and post-punk bassists of the last 40 years.