Collaborative Mixtape Experiment #5: The Anti-Valentine's Mix

How-to: right-click on the title, save-as, listen, enjoy.



JD's Sleevenotes
You know what? Screw it: you all know what this is about, and the tape is singing proof of it - and of the great universal madness that is love. I'm gonna let the music speak for itself: if you ain't emo, you ain't human.
[Diskjammy: powered by 100% pure love] Enjoy.



The Brief: Anti-Valentine's Mix

Admit it: you DO give a shit about Valentine's day. Not because of the event, which - for most of us, romantically engaged or not - passes unmarked at worst, and anti-climactic at best. But because of everything it represents. Because of everything we're supposed to feel about love.

Valentine's day is 1000 Hallmark clichés stuffed into a single arbitrary day. Like Christmas it's come to stand for conspicuous consumption - giving and receiving stuff, big expensive gestures - but unlike Christmas, there is no sacred or historical event to celebrate or commemorate. We don't even know for sure who Saint Valentine was, or if he was any kind of lover to speak of; it's like the whole thing just got made up at some point to sell shit and make people feel inadequate.

Couples fall over themselves trying performatively to do romantic things for one another, often failing to hit the [Hall]mark; probably because their gifts carry the stench of obligation and guilt, and only highlight the fact that love cannot be bought. Singles feel sad that they're alone. Everybody wants to get a valentine, but nobody sends one. Commercial radio stations play twenty-four hour blasts of overplayed love songs that have lost their meaning through years of misuse and over-contextualization; and love - which is complex and painful and universal - is represented as a big fluffy ball of candyfloss: sweet, pithy, melt-in-the-mouth; leaving a nasty aftertaste and a longing for something real.

Love is a wave, a flood, a storm of hormones and energetic plasma, a biological reaction, an involuntary psychological crisis of bipolar proportions, a shower of fireworks, a cloud of butterflies.

And love doesn't always work out. But I don't have to tell you that, do I?

I want your love songs. I want the songs that talk about love as you see it: the real thing, in all its glory and abjection. I want the broken-hearted ballads that get you every time. I want instrumental pieces that eloquently illustrate the moments lovers have no need for words. I'm asking you to send me an anti-valentine's card in sonic form; right from the heart.



1. Wunschmachine [Requiem] - Jesse Darling & her lovers
2. Bluish - Animal Collective
3. Love is Like a Bottle of Gin - Magnetic Fields
4. Word - Girl Band
5. Sunshower - Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band
6. You Feel You Must Go, Don't Go! - Of Montreal
7. Baby What You Want Me to Do - John Cale
8. A World So Full of Love - Roger Miller
9. Forget Me Not - Wu Tang vs The Beatles
10. Safari - Holy Fuck
11. Pass This On - The Knife
12. Paradise Circus - Massive Attack
13. Sea Song - Robert Wyatt
14. Opfer Deines Liedes - Pipilotti Rist
15. Flowers for Friedrich - MXML
16. Szomoru Vasarnap - Rezso Seress and Laszlo Javor
17. La Chanson des Vieux Amants - Jacques Brel
18. I Put a Spell on You - Diamanda Galas
19. Vermillion - Slipknot
20. B is for Burning - Zs
21. I'm Not in Love - Talking Heads
22. No Children - Mountain Goats
23. I Want You - Elvis Costello
24. Walk The Line - Zoe Darling & her Dad


Thanks to Nick, Rodrigo, Harry, Jedidjah, Daniel B., Daniel P., Joshua, Arthur, Stijn, Jarvia, Elena, Stewart, Mirko, @MXML, Kevin, Kata, Rick, Theron, Ben, Tom R., Tom W., Zoe, & all the lovers. xxx

This transmission was brought to you by The Open-Sores Foundation for Collaborative Entertainment and Experimental Living// This transmission would not have been possible without your participation// The Author is dead, long live the Author [names withheld to protect the innocent]//





kthxbai