The Signal: EP112 – Partying like giant turtles for 2015. 45 minutes of music for any 45-minute tasks you have to accomplish; a perfect accompaniment. I wonder if I’m going to go do some quick reading to find out if that semicolon is being used even remotely close to how it should be used. I think it’s wrong. Pretty sure that post semicolon bit needs to be a full, related sentence. Might be disqualified as a sentence fragment.
This file’s going to be online for a limited time only, so download away. We’ve got rock music, vaporwave music, the sound of foreign trains, distant mall music, hip hop, outlaw country, experimental music for cats, cumbia and funky organ. That’s a bunch! Holy cats! The track list can be read in the id3 tags of the mp3. Right-click on that sucker. Notes are below if you want to know more.
01. On bandcamp, I’ve stumbled across an entire genre that seems like the soundtrack to now-dated cyberpunk novels, complete with fresh-minted nonsense genre names that give no clue as to what you’re going to hear like: vaporwave, mallsoft and aislegaze. (These are all from the page of 식료품groceries if you want to go look yourself.) I love getting lost in a new set of sounds, so I’ve been stumbling around these tags listening to trap beats over keyboard sounds and the occasional JRPG sample or field recording. So this mix starts with riding on a subway, somewhere, listening to music leak in from distant department stores.
02. From commuting to “coming for you.” It makes a certain amount of sense. How great is that deep laugh sample?
03. And now we’re off and running… from “coming for you” to “coming down”, the Signal mix gains velocity.
04. A little bit of a music track scientifically designed to appeal to cats. It didn’t do much for ours, but I liked it, so here it is. Yowly strings and a computer doing its best purring rumble.
05. Some cumbia music to put some shuffle in your step.
06. Good times a-rollin’ with some modern sounds from a throwback musician. In the modern era, no musical genre ever has to die, so long as someone’s willing to buy up and maintain vintage recording equipment.
07. This is the second outlaw country song in the Signal mixes to focus on meth abuse. Long-time listeners can zip back to The Signal: EP099 for the other bookend of this meth pairing. If we’re assuming the Signal has a narrative, the “good times” are now chemically fueled, which is probably only going to work well in the short term.
08. And so sure enough, now there homelessness to be dealt with. Mostly with a healthy self-regard.
09. and 10. The narrative goes dark, post-meth and homelessness as the party ends with some bone dancing.
11. Some easy, post-life sounds to relax and ready us for whatever’s still to come.
12. People sneer at the organ, but damn if it hasn’t been the instrumental host of some funky artists and producers.
13. We must be doing better if we’re fitter and happier. But the end is coming, so time to start taking it down a notch with…
14. …a touching track about living in a violent neighborhood.
15. and 16. The train rumbles on and we close with a bit of melancholy guitar. This artist has closed a previous Signal mix (EP094) because the whole recording session these tracks came from hits the perfect mix of captivating and sad-making that I find works best for endings.
So there we are. Ended. Time to hit play again, maybe? Get back on that train?