If you know a few of these songs, you’ll be able to anticipate the Venn diagram vibe of this mix: funky, loopy, moody, samply, jazzy, and 1990s electronica-tinged, but mostly played by bands and reaching around chronologically. Dark-tinged funk for winter nights.
Several years ago, from somewhere between Maine and Los Angeles on a solo road trip, Jonathan Lethem phoned to tell me that a version of this mixtape CD had served him well. I’ve been making some favorite playlists permanent ahead of my next Apple OS update disturbance, and this one seemed worth sharing in a time of darkness, when slinky, late-night dancing with the ambiguous future might be essential to personal survival.
71-minute mp3 mixtape here (tagged to be its own album)
- Under Your Skin (Luscious Jackson)
- Roadkill (Rickie Lee Jones)
- I Cover the Waterfront (Billie Holliday, James Hardway remix)
- Ocean (Brazzaville w/Joe Frank)
- Do the Wrong Thing (The Lounge Lizards)
- Red Right Hand (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)
- Of These, Hope (Peter Gabriel)
- Rising Above Bedlam (Jah Wobble)
- The Hop (Radio Citizen, featuring Bajka)
- 19 (Acetone)
- Mood Swing (Luscious Jackson)
- Sway (Shriekback)
- Rain (Jon Hassell)
- Souvenir (Morphine)
- Might as Well (Acetone)
- Astroluxe (Bill Nelson)
- 200 Bars (edit) (Spiritualized)
The cover photo is a crop of a 2017 traffic stop iPhone photo in Chicago. Not quite right for the night-mood of this mix, but urban twilight enough to start it off.