WARMER MIXTAPES #268 | by Jeremy Krinsley [Human Resources]

Been making tapes and CD-Rs as Human Resources since 2008. I recently released Oxyc Woody, a free CD-R of pissed-out synth chop stuff, and I have some singin' hazey pop songs coming out in early 2011 on Ghosthunters Club Co-Op to be accompanied by a VHS tape by Eye Bodega: First vinyl release ever. First VHS tape release ever.

1. Unknown Artist | 543 Years Ahead Of You
This is a sort of arbitrary choice within the radio-focused Sublime Frequencies releases. People can get their panties twisted about some kinds of musical tourism and appropriation, but these releases are tap water straight from the source and thanks to the limited recording techniques available in a lot of the countries where these releases were made, there's an eerily familiar quality to the warm and fuzzy production. And while I'm on that kick...

2. Omar Souleyman | Jani
This is a track off of Souleyman's newer Sublime Frequency release, Highway To Hassake. If you're uninitiated, he's one of Syria's most popular wedding singers, no small order in a country where that's a lucrative gig for musicians. Omar Souleyman's voice is obviously the center of gravity in his music, but the way his keyboardist blends Syrian traditional scales (on a pitch-adjusted synth!) with straight balls-out techno beats makes this stuff my favorite to blast in cars. (Especially while rolling past custom officers and homeland security dogs?) Another cool note: Much of the singing is actually dictated into Souleyman's ear live, by a poet, Mahmoud Harbi. Another cool note: Souleyman has recorded 500 albums??

3. Missy Elliot | Work It
My favorite pop music video. How did she hang out with all those bees? Every time someone says they got their hair did Missy should get some residuals.

4. This project called Opiate I think | This song I heard seven years ago by that project I can't find it anywhere
I used to use Soulseek a lot, and I downloaded a project called Opiate (I think) on a whim in 2003. One track was a repetitive sample, probably of backwards Rhodes or something synthetic and it was, yes, opiate-like, and I was pretty sure it was just a one-off bedroom recorder who made it, circulating his stuff slightly before the explosion of blogs made this even less of a big deal (and way before I dipped my hand in that trough). Beyond the short track being something I returned to regularly for pleasure, I fantasize that some of my *most obscure stuff that I release unannounced lands in stranger's files in the same kind of ways. If this guy is in fact a Billboard 200 artist, let me know.

5. Sister Nancy | Bam Bam
Whenever I DJ, this song brings the room together into worldly sisterhood like no other. The way the opening bass drops in and out and then IN is also genius.

6. Peaking Lights | Silver Tongues Soft Whisper
I caught Peaking Lights open for Indian Jewelry at Cake Shop a few years ago. As far as I could tell they brought their entire basement with them. Record players, shelving for record players, modified pre-amps, radios, thrift store gadgets, and of course Indra Dunis' keyboard, which she played on this song, one of my favorites bummer piano ballads of all time, in no short order thanks to the tinkered-with side-effect feedback mazes her hubbie Aaron Coyes conjures. That show marked the moment I was inspired to fuck with EQ-controlled feedback, a bedrock of the past two years of my home recordings.

7. The Beatles | Blue Jay Way
A true George Harrison sneak attack that pulls the rug from under my favorite album by those guys. Highly influential for my little kid self hearing glimpses of Weird in a household that organized its classical music chronologically but stopped a little past Schubert.

8. Ela Orleans | Myriads
The overall production quality Ela achieves approaches that watery dream state I think we'd all like to imagine we get to now and then. This is a very pretty song.

9. Sparkling Wide Pressure | Facing The Nothing World
Very well known to those who know him, Frank Baugh puts out truckloads of gorgeous music as Sparkling Wide Pressure, basically every fricking month. Facing The Nothing World is actually the whole Stunned Records CD-R he released at some point last year. If you're a long-spun instrumental freak than you probably have already felt kind of emo and squishy off the first track on this one, called Mood.

10. The Velvet Underground | Who Loves The Sun
Perfect. In any clime.

+11. Psychic Ills | I Knew My Name
I love what Psychic Ills are doing now with their long form slinky music that doesn't build or collapse and just kind of keeps going for ten minutes, but there are a few tracks on Dins that go really far towards being timeless rock music. I return to the vinyl of this like it came out yesterday. Especially this song.