2017 mix tape
(Direct link to YouTube in case this doesn't load)
Backstory if you care. Entirely optional:
- Severed Heads - Dead Eyes Opened (Love Experiment) (Love Experiment isn't available on YouTube at the moment; so the 1994 remix will suffice as Tom Ellard's just uploaded a good quality copy :)). We saw Severed Heads and Itch E and Scratch E live. Hell of a fun gig, felt like a big party.
- Itch E and Scratch E - Other Planets. Profane and fun. Part of a brilliant set.
- System of a Down - Sad Statue. Just a track that really grabbed me as I was driving around the deep northern suburbia of Sydney, picking up an ebay purchase for a mate. So this feels like bombing around semi-bushland with the radio cranked up. Nothing more or less :)
- Living Colour - Cult Of Personality. Saw them live, finally! One of those bands I thought I'd never actually see, having missed them a few times. Awesome gig at The Metro.
- The Algorithm - Autorun. I'd been listening to this a bit and had posted a couple of tracks somewhere. So a mate pinged me to see if I was interested in seeing them live - lucky since I didn't know about the gig! It wasn't a question, of course I went.
- Voyager - Misery Is Only Company. A great gig moment - The Algorithm were part of the lineup for Voyager's album launch. Being a Sunday night there was a moment we weren't sure if we'd call it a night having seen what we'd come for. But L and I had missed Voyager supporting Deftones last year, so I figured give it a couple of songs... and there was no way I was leaving after that. It was an awesome set, the crowd and band pumped and bouncing off each others energy. They even commented at one point that Sydney on a Sunday night was putting other cities to shame ;)
- Skunkhour - Sunstone. After the fun of last year's Skunkhour gig, we were back with bells on for Feed. The night didn't disappoint, great energy and a crowd in full voice.
- DJ Shadow - Nobody Speak. Really hard to pick a track from this. We saw DJ Shadow supposedly 'opening' for The Avalanches on the Opera House forecourt (harbour side), but he was by far the standout of the night(*). There were tracks off Endtroducing that I'd wanted to hear live for perhaps 20 years... it was almost overwhelming for it to finally happen. But as the show was for The Mountain Must Fall I eventually plumped for this one to go in the yearly list, particularly with the mad film clip that's a reflection of contemporary politics.
- Beth Orton - Moon. We saw Beth Orton in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, a headline show for Vivid Live. It was a gorgeous gig, it seemed a little unreal. I listened to this track a lot leading up to the show.
- Mint Royale - Blue Song. I think this clip was mentioned somewhere almost being a pilot for the movie Baby Driver. But with a catchy hook and a great clip with Noel Fielding lip synching I played this a bunch of times.
- The Hillbilly Moon Explosion - My Love For Evermore. A track I'd run into on a huge rockabilly playlist ages ago, but got a bit obsessed with when I heard it again.
- Dan Sultan - Hold It Together. A crazy night with the gig interrupted by a fire alarm and full evacuation of The Metro. Genuinely a full evac as the crowd realised the band was in the back alley with them. One thing leads to another and we end up with a sing-along of Hold It Together. The building was cleared and we went back in... the band reprised this song and the crowd went nuts.
- Caiti Baker - Thursday. Debut album came out and this is the track that stuck in my head the most. Soul meets trip hop :)
- Leo Moracchioli featuring Rabea & Hannah - Africa (Toto cover). So much fun. After posting some of Leo's covers, we spent the best part of a day on twitter with people mining the back catalogue and posting them back :)
- Leo Moracchioli featuring Rabea & Hannah - the Africa outro. Leo's outros are usually silly, but in this case they made a whole extra song and the comments are full of people asking them to release this separately.
- Rag'n'Bone Man - Human. L grabbed me to come and listen to to this. Pulled up the video of an unlikely looking lad and a song starts slowly, but about a minute in when he really lets it out... just wow.
* No Avalanches track in this list despite the gig. It was a big musical moment for this year, but not a happy one. Their show wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. It made me realise the new incarnation is simply a different band; and not an even an Aussie band. They weren't excited to play in front of the Opera House, they sing about the 'subway', all of their references are American and that's the market they want. This isn't a problem (good luck to them!), it just means that the band I loved doesn't exist any more; and the notion that they are an 'aussie band' should be left to history. The specific gig left a bad taste as it was billed as Since I Left You played in full; and actually it was just their usual new-album set with a couple of old tracks grudgingly thrown in. Half the band looked bored with the old material, which isn't a surprise really given they had nothing to do with it.
That one duff note (hah) notwithstanding, it was a great year for music. Saw a bunch of great gigs including a couple that were decades overdue (DJ Shadow and Living Colour); and found new artists, both new-new and new-to-me. Pretty much what you want as a music geek :)
Labels: mix tape
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