Mixtapes, Music

A Mix For Midnight

Years ago, when I could still say the word with a straight face, I made a mixtape. It was good, or so people said. It was a collection of music that made me smile and want to be creative and go through my work-day punching programming problems in the face, be able to attend meetings without caffeine injections and handle annoying colleagues all without losing that smile. Sometime later, I made another one, dedicated to The God of Indian Contemporary Music. My last attempt was for a short-lived site called Muxtape (for everyone reading this and wondering WTF a ‘mixtape’ is, this link should give you an idea of what one looks like, at least). The theme for that happened to be female electronica vocalists – and once the site went down, taking my playlist with it, I gave up on the idea of trusting third-party sites to host any music content. Until recently, when I thought it was time to, y’know, revive the franchise.

Captain Obvious and his sidekick Private Meh-mori speaking: Tapes are no longer around – the last time I tried looking for one was in 2008, when I got the weird idea of making a “permanent” mixtape – buying a walkman, filling up a 90-minute blank cassette with songs, sticking it into the walkman. Really sticking it in forever. That cassette would be all that the walkman would play, and then it could be thrown away. I have no idea why I thought that was a cool idea. But it was there in my brain, for a bit, and when I saw that there were no walk-men to be found in the cluster of grey-market shops in Abids and Koti – and these guys, they would stock everything – I gave up on the quest. Sayonara, TDK and Denon and Meltrack, even you, T-Series, you were cheap and terribly bad but you were there for a penniless student when he needed The Corrs and Michael Kamen and could not afford to buy both. You’re almost-science-fiction now, tiny little tremors in my neural impulses, though you still exist in Nick Hornby books and wiki pages about Metallica, and overly sentimental blog posts.

“Please say mix-tape, man, it’s ok” my friend said, when I told him what I was up to. I tried very hard to come up with an alternative title. Mix album. Compilation. A Mix. (“You could be the local bhel puri guy”, he retorted. *Snicker*) Well, call it what-the-fuck-ever. I know it’s sucky to go all meta about a bunch of songs arranged together – but please bear with me. The  collection’s 16 songs, 115 MB zipped, about 60 minutes long, which is about all the time I can borrow from you fine folks. The titles exist, the artiste-names don’t – just to keep some element of surprise intact. Try to listen to all of them without skipping any, even if you might know quite a few – I am fairly sure you do. Hmm, what else? Oh yeah, try to listen to them at night, with your choice of beverage, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, hot or cold, doesn’t really matter. I think the songs work best at low to slightly below-medium volume, but whatever floats your boat.

Ok, I am done. Download here.

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5 thoughts on “A Mix For Midnight

  1. Shruti says:

    Thank you very much for your mix! Rest assured.. even though I am an inveterate lurker on your blog, I do very much enjoy your mixtapes.. led me to a lot of good bands and music :) Id be really happy though, if you can put your ARR mix up again (The link’s broken). Somehow missed that post and regret it now :P

  2. Shruti says:

    Very much obliged.. the Rahman mix brought back a lot* of music that was stored in the deep dark recesses with longing nostalgia… and this midnight mix.. lets just say, thanks to you, I have enough new artists to fill my most recent musical slump. :)

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