At the moment I'm digitising mixtapes, and it's a time-consuming task. Let me first clarify that I'm not on the actual case of audio casettes (still carefully filed downstairs alongside the Man from U.N.C.L.E novelisations and the Minic ships) so I'm skipping setting up some sort of lash-in to do the cross-channel ripping and scrubbing up my rusty audio-processing skills for the chopping and cleaning. No, all I'm doing is importing a mix CD and (where the track list has been lost) identifying the tracks, where possible.
Yes, this is me, with my phone to the speakers, with Google listening, poking away at What's this song until a match pops out. Or doesn't, in the case of a lot of the mid-90s stuff, where I was drifting through lo-fi, riot-grrl, anti-folk circles and bands popped in and out of existence like mushrooms with stickered guitars and brightly coloured hair.
In all of this, one of my old comp-swap friends Whatsapped me to say he was thinking of getting a comp swap going again. Sounds like a good idea, I said. I still treasure them all, my happy old mixtapes, and what's more, I have a slightly shameful secret. I make a mix-tape every single month, using the following basic selection methodology:
And then I started tagging in the mixtapers old and new, following my usual rhythm, adjusting the aesthetic to be something a bit more public-facing:
and then somebody asked the question, like they always do:
Yes, this is me, with my phone to the speakers, with Google listening, poking away at What's this song until a match pops out. Or doesn't, in the case of a lot of the mid-90s stuff, where I was drifting through lo-fi, riot-grrl, anti-folk circles and bands popped in and out of existence like mushrooms with stickered guitars and brightly coloured hair.
In all of this, one of my old comp-swap friends Whatsapped me to say he was thinking of getting a comp swap going again. Sounds like a good idea, I said. I still treasure them all, my happy old mixtapes, and what's more, I have a slightly shameful secret. I make a mix-tape every single month, using the following basic selection methodology:
- Pre-load a music player with the long-list (recently added + random top-up for me)
- Bookmark all tracks that resonate
- Rearrange the list till it feels like a mixtape
- Publish online in some way
And I do this absolutely irrespective of whether anyone else is listening. I don't need to be in a swap to do comping, which is good, as most swaps only last 6-24 months anyway, until people feel they can't handle the new stuff to listen to every month, or that they can't get it together to make the comp, or worst of all, that no-one's interested in what they think is good music and are sick of hearing their music collection.
Not that any of that isn't true. No-one else likes the music you do in the way that you do; it's one of the creases of your individuality. You're obviously too busy. No-body's been bored for years now; the world has moved into a space where everything is happening all of the time. Who has the time to be interested in anything? New awesome things fling themselves beneath your feet at every turn.
Nevertheless, if it's something you can do lightly, folded into life as normal, then it becomes a regular enhancement, a reliable pleasure, a road you like to walk down, an idea that blooms reliably and regularly, like a daisy on a well-trodden lawn.
So yeah, I though. Why not, I thought:
And then I started tagging in the mixtapers old and new, following my usual rhythm, adjusting the aesthetic to be something a bit more public-facing:
and then somebody asked the question, like they always do:
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