San Cristobal De Las Casas, Mexico

I’ve been mind-numbingly bored with the mundane nature of working life recently. I’ve also come to the conclusion that countless others reach within months of getting their first ‘big kid job’: the only thing that helps the days pass is planning a vacation…. And so I planned, ferociously, day in and day out, with my two best friends. The plan was to go to Mexico City in search of our friend Luis Carlos Armando Manzanilla Priego Ramos (yes that’s one person). With Luis as a our spiritual (read: Mexican) guide, we would seek escape from our subfusc concrete realities back home.

Thank you Luis, you gave us tacos, jungles, lagoons, villages, ruins and lomas like we could have never dreamed of. Best 10 days of my post-post-academic-life.

As any good trip should have, this one has a soundtrack. So in this spirit, I bring you a mixtape full of happys and sads, mind-fucks and beauty, new and (really)old World Music and North-American trash: a pastiche of my life on April 4th to April 14th, 2k9.

Hope you enjoy. El gusto es mio.

Spring: From Here We Go Subfusc (zSHARE)

Tracklist after the break…

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UrbanDictionary.com:

Hyphie-West Coast/Bay Area’s way of being crunk

usage: “this party is hyphie.”

There are certain places where music just sounds different. It’s intangible, but there’s something in the air that sound and light travel through better. After spending a week in the highest of places (that would be California), you can’t help but think about the interaction between music and illicit substances, music and nature, and music and your brain. And whether you’re climbing Mushroom Trees in Santa Cruz or cruising down an East Bay freeway with a Golden State native throwing blunts and forties at you (occupational hazard), shouting about spreading the gospel of hyphie to colder climes, Northern California is a place where music sounds really, really good. And if there’s anything California’s taught me, it’s that life is about two things: getting stoned and going stupid.

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There was a time before Animal Collective and associated Merriweather Post Pavillion album art was a meme. A time where even the more adventurous indie-leaning alt-rock listener would have felt like they had got lost and ended up in the wrong part of town if they had happened upon one of their albums inadvertently while looking for the new Arcade Fire Album. Admittedly, even I was a little frightened by the sudden interruption of shouts and screams into otherwise peaceful numbers, and I listened to The Get Up Kids in high school. This music was for lack of a less offensive term, tribalistic and I was the outsider, and this tribe was no Akron/Family who just wanted to teach me that love is simple, instead they told me frightening tales of Reverend Green.

Animal Collective – For Reverend Green

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It’s hard to say exactly what’s changed since then. Was it just really good album art? Is there something about Merriweather’s songs that are inherently more accessible and universally appealing? I don’t think so. I think it’s us who have changed; Animal Collective has stayed the same. We live in a world where the alternative, as it gains momentum, eventually gets picked up by the mainstream and repackaged for mass-consumption. We are forced to venture beyond our original level of comfort to find something new, something, I cringe to say, authentic. In that light, I predict Xiu Xiu’s next album will sweep the blogosphere in a way that make Merriweather more like the exploding mentos meme.

But does that mean that you’re going to hear My Girls on the floor of your local disco anytime soon? Yes and No. If you live in Kingston, you are likely to hear it only by request in the basement of your local co-operative housing unit. In a larger metropolis you may chance to hear it at some alternative venue, but the original lacks some features that would lend it to both mixing and dancing, namely a consistent drum-line. Luckily, some others out there in the tubes have already taken care of this for us. So I leave you with as many as I could find.

Happy Valentines!

Animal Collective – My Girls (Straight Up! Remix)

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Animal Collective – My Girls (Dave Wrangler Remix)

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Animal Collective – My Girls (Mexicans with Guns Remix)

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