Welcome to the first 2009 hypothetical mixtape. Sure, it's five months old, but you should be used to that by now. No thought has gone into the sequencing. Build your own.
"Taken Too Young", by TTA. A song from Sweden that echoes both Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and "Sorrow", and features vocals, by Victoria Bergsman of The Concretes, that are from the school of Tracy Thorn. In other words, a lot of personal buttons are being pressed (surely not "cynically manipulated"?) in the course of this drifting, melancholy pop song.
"What Did He Say", by Nite Jewel. I fell in love with this song when I first heard it. If my ardour has cooled somewhat in the interim, that is only because what I have heard of Ms Jewel's subsequent work suggests that perhaps this song's blend of minimalist glamour and cheap electronics wasn't the direction that she intended to go in. Which would be a shame. I can't put a finger on any particular forebears (although the song hasn't just fallen from outer space). So I won't. (Okay, you win: Kathy Diamond if you replaced Maurice Fulton with a very young Boyd Rice.) But its charms, icy, frosty and/or steely as they may be, are all its own.
Pacifika, "Sweet (Quiet Village Remix)". It's hard to tell what's organic and what's electronic here. The acoustic guitar sounds too real to be really real. There's no actual song here, just the impression of one. Ooh look, they're Canadian.
Ducktails, "Beach Point Pleasant". Some kind of otherworldly, disembodied pop music. You could use it as the soundtrack to a children's television programme if you were in the mood to watch kids running away from the screen and hiding under their parents' bed. It reminds me a bit of the non-vocal aspects of the first Broadcast single (thanks, Bart).
I-Robots, "Frau (Kid Alex Minimal to Disco Mix)". It is perhaps strange that I have been attracted to German techno music, as I have long studiously shunned both of its selling points: drugs and dancefloors. But this song has all of the elements that I am drawn to. You can tap your feet to it. You can hear the connections to one particular strand of my beloved post-punk records in the flat German vocals. You can marvel, nay thrill, to the sheer breadth and depth of the electronic sounds that are continually being thrown at you and then shifting, almost surreptitiously, as you try to grasp them. You can allow yourself to be absorbed into the tension-and-release dynamics that are so expertly set up by the music. This particular example also sets itself apart from the seamless one-song-into-another aspect of much of this music by allowing itself to fall apart at the finish.
Jeremy Jay, "Love Everlasting". Rudimentary synths, electric guitar lines, bass playing and drumming conjures something much, much more than the sum of the parts. This is a gloriously expansive bedroom pop number, and the first release on K Records that we can remember getting excited about since, oh, about 1989? Dude looks like he just walked out of a 1979 New Wave Time Warp. We won't hold that against him.
Peter Dundov, "Oasis (Gavin Russom Remix)". Gavin Russom has been quiet since his and Delia Gonzalez's "The Days of Mars" analogue space synth extravaganza. (And whither Black Leotard Front?) Happily, this 12-inch b-side takes up where that record left off. It sounds much like what "Days of Mars" might have if they had pressed it on top of a sheet of vinyl containing modern electronic dance music rather than on a clean piece of acetate.
Cotton Jones, "Gotta Cheer Up". This song wants to be your friend. Not in a needy, clinging-to-your-leg kind of way, but in a gentle, sweet kind of way. It doesn't have any tickets on itself, it just wanders in, does what it does, and wanders out again. Its roots are clearly enough in sixties garage pop, but it also draws on the kind of dreamy driftwood that Beach House have made their own. Also, it takes the organ used on Nick Cave's "Your Funeral ... My Trial" and conjures a gorgeous melody from it.
Emiliana Torrini, "Jungle Drum". Worth it just to hear her sing "doonga doonga googadooga doong goong" (approximate translation). This may be only place in the whole wide Internet where you can see Emiliana Torrini referred to without a corresponding reference to Bjork. Oh, blast.
Ofege, "Gbe Mi Lo". Psych rock funk guitar as it was done in Nigeria circa 1973. We can't get enough of that fuzzy wukka-wukka sound.
Shinichi Osawa, "Star Guitar". Big, fat drum and guitar sounds from the "rock" end of electronica, with some sweeping MBV (or, for a more recent example, M83) style chord changes to knock you off your feet. Leavened, gorgeously, by the voices of those Au Revoir Simone girls.
Coralie Clément, "Samba De Mon Coeur Qui Bat". And I melt. The album cover has her looking stunning in the manner of sixties French film stars. That's enough for me. Or so I thought. But she also sings like an angel. Where have you been all my life?
Muslims, "Walking With Jesus". Yes, it is *that* "Walking With Jesus". What I particularly like about this version, aside from the fact that it picks up the song and frogmarches it promptly back into the garage, is that the whole enterprise, from the sound quality to the cover art, is pure late-80s seven-inch-single heaven.
Real Estate, "Black Lake". Almost Google-proof, Real Estate refuse to reveal any secrets to me aside from this song. It's a quiet gem. The influence of Beach House is turning up in a lot of places these days. One day we will be sick of the sight of them, but today is not that day.
John Carpenter, "Assault on Precinct 13 (Main Theme)". It just seemed right to end a list that relies rather a lot on old and creaky analogue (and, in the case of the Gavin Russom remix, home-made) synths with the real thing. A film director who does his own soundtracks. No, it's not Hal Hartley. (Where did he get to anyway?) According to Wikipedia this was partly inspired by "Immigrant Song". The word "loosely" might be well employed here.
