WARMER MIXTAPES #1405 | by Russ Marshalek (Silent Drape Runners), Niabi Aquena (Niabi, Starfawn, Radiana, The Whores, Project Skyward) and Bridgette Miller (BRAINCANDY) of a place both wonderful and strange
SIDE A | by Russ Marshalek
1. Tori Amos | Tear In Your Hand
This is beyond a doubt my favorite song of all time. Everyone that’s actually into Tori Amos has a story about how she saved their life, because her Music is that kind of Music. This song is the one that’s kept me alive many, many nights. The World exists in the pause between the words goodbye and now, the final time she repeats them.
2. New Order | True Faith
True Faith is what people mean when they say that New Order was a singles band. This song was never really on an album, existed solely for a singles compilation, and yet to me it's the best damn thing they ever recorded. There's an earnest, yearning sense of Hope in this song, like being awake and on the best drugs ever at 8am and seeing the Sun rise and feeling as though you're going to live forever.
3. 10,000 Maniacs | Scorpio Rising
True facts: 90% of current bands I'm really into just want to sound like Fredonia-era 10,000 Maniacs. Natalie Merchant was my first female crush, the first celebrity I was obsessed with, and 10,000 Maniacs was my first favorite band. Their early, abrasive stuff took a very long time to catch hold in my heart, but now I love that you can cue up anything from The Wishing Chair in a DJ set and blow people away thinking it's a Pitchfork Buzz Band. This song, the lyric Treat me to an honest face some time... Amaze me now!--the honest in that blows my mind.
4. Kate Bush | The Morning Fog
How very Kate Bush for the most beautiful song on her most perfect album to be the shortest and last. While Waking The Witch remains a massive touchpoint for me in terms of why I began making Music, and why I make the type of Music I do, The Morning Fog, the HAH-aye HAH-aye at the end, grabs at my throat. I always want to repeat the song, again and again, but I never let myself. The song is nothing without the album's journey. D'ya know what? I love you better now.
5. Mara | Desanitize
Raving was a fundamental part of my life for the most formative years of it, my High School and College days. Mara, the husband and wife duo of Barry Gilbey and Sarah Whittaker-Gilbey, soundtracked like 90% of that time. I had piles and piles of their mixes, and would force them upon anyone who happened to take a ride in my awful white Dodge Neon. Their live PA setup informed a lot of the way I perform and sequence shows today, and Desanitize stands as one of the most powerful pieces of Music they ever created. I wish everyone would listen to it. I put it on a mix I did for Cultwave Radio.
6. Jean Grae | Before The Summer Broke
I would have killed myself in 2013 if this song did not exist.
7. Janet Jackson | Rhythm Nation
WE ARE A PART OF THE RHYTHM NATION. This song is why New Jack Witch exists--to remind this generation to stop acting the fool and starting acting up.
8. The Knife | Pass This On (Silent Shout: An Audio Visual Experience DVD Version)
When I saw The Knife live for the first time, on the Silent Shout tour, before Karin could even get the first verse out of her mouth I was on the floor of Webster Hall sobbing. This is a great song, but the way it was reimagined live on this tour specifically brings out an ache that consumes.
9. Mira Calix | I May Be Over There (But My Heart Is Over Here)
This is just one of the most beautiful, aching pieces of Electronic Music I've ever heard. It haunts me.
10. Azar Swan | In My Mouth
Zohra Atash's voice is a weapon. The percussion in this song is a weapon.
SIDE B | by Niabi Aquena
1. A DEAD FOREST INDEX | Distance
Turning the distance into a pattern. I want to hang out with this band. I feel that Russ, Bridgette and I would very much get along with them. They play notes that strike somewhere deep within me, and there's a sense of Recognition. I first heard this track from a mix that my friend did on Spotify. He and I are birds of a feather artistically and we've known each other, well forever. Check his mixes out, you won't be sorry.
2. Zola Jesus | Sea Talk
I don't really know Zola Jesus's Music besides this song. I appreciate what she does though and I like her aesthetic. This song feels powerful to me. I don't remember when or where I heard it, it’s not one of her more popular ones... I don't think... I love the drums and strings - the orchestral feeling of it all. It's when you've given and given and given but it's still not enough and never will be. I’ve been there, I was there once.
3. The Sight Below | Dour
This is a Minimal Techno track that pisses off my neighbor downstairs. I guess it's the throbbing beat. I love it. The guy behind The Sight Below became a friend who ended up mixing/mastering my first solo EP. I love the subtle intensity.
4. Depeche Mode | Behind The Wheel
I used to be really into vintage motorcycles and Italian scooters. Part of the appeal of this track is definately the Music Video, if you watch it you'll see what I'm talking about in terms of vintage Italian scooters. I love the feeling of Control in the words and the beat. The narrative is hot - he's giving her the authority to be dominant. This song was given to me by an ex lover who was much older than me. He lived in LA and we communicated a lot through letters and mix tapes. He put this track on one of my mix tapes he made for me. Romantic right? Letters and real mix tapes.
5. Dntel | (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan (Superpitcher Kompakt Remix)
A great track for walking through NYC. It keeps a good pace. I was given this track on a mix CD by an ex who was a DJ. He was nuts, our relationship was nuts, but I got some good Music out of it. He had a way of hooking me back into his world with the Music he'd play for me. "I won't let go, I won't let go". It made my stomach flip in the best and worst way. He definitely didn't last, but I still love this song despite the strange memory and I've given it to many friends in mixes even though it's a little dated, I think it's timeless.
6. The Cure | Maybe Someday (Acoustic Mix)
One of my best girl friends put this on a mix CD for me. I was going through heartbreak, in a relationship (my first big one)... Feeling alone yet together. So lonely and kinda apathatic, the words and instrumentation hit my heart so hard.
7. Tori Amos | Winter
It's really hard choosing just one Tori song, she's such a major influence and Little Earthquakes especially, every song is my song. Let's just say that she has gotten me through some really hard times and made me realize that I wasn't a huge weirdo... Or that it was OK to be a weirdo. And that bad things happen to good people and you survive and live through. And it's growing up to accept it all, the Pain and the Triumph. I wish I could tell her that in person. Maybe one day.
8. Jez Kerr | Reasons I Feel Like An Alien
A cautious song, I can relate to caution. And I can relate to feeling alieniated from the world around me. Especially when I want to reach out and connect. It's hard isn't it? I love the bass line here, and I love the repeted lyrics. "there was no need to talk we could just feel".
9. Slowdive | Blue Skied An' Clear
If ever I were to marry someone they'd have to be OK with this track being the processional... Starting when that gorgeous guitar comes in and Rachel starts singing. You say Love and it sounds so good, you say Love and it sounds so sweet. It's the ultimate Love song. It’s finger tips touching. What an honor!. It's a huge breath in and a sigh of relief. It's finally finding a place to rest your head that is safe and real. It's what I think Real Love is, if it were vocalized in a song.
10. Elite Gymnastics | Here, In Heaven 4 & 5 (CFCF Remix)
Is it OK to go through Life being untouchable?... Is it? I ask myself this often. Most of the time I'm good with that. Somedays are different. I straddle a paradox of Warmth and Distance.
+11. Dot Allison | Message Personnel
A pretty painful song to admit I feel a connection to. The lyrics say it all. Repeated over and over again. I used to play Music with a guy - and he introduced me to Dot Allison, and there's a story there, but I won't go into it. I'm not a fan of the rest of her Music, it’s just OK, pretty forgetable. But this track. God. It kills me everytime I hear it. There's a longing there... To connect, to be here, to be present, but Fear. Huge crippling Fear. Embrace me, release me! Deny me then feed me! I loan you then lose you. So distant, so near me. It's devastating.
+12. School Of Seven Bells | Iamundernodisguise
I want to tell you that I don't have anything to hide. This is why I choose this one. During the time when I was making my solo EP, I shared a practice space with SVIIB. This was after the twin sisters had an argument and one of them broke up with the band, and Benjaman Curtis was still alive. Ale and Ben were an amazing duo, they were honest and transparent which I think is reflected in this song.
SIDE C | by Bridgette Miller
1. Nico | These Days
Just a perfect song, and, like, as corny as it is to admit, definitely the story of my life. I will always love it, even if it will always make me think of Gwenyth Paltrow getting off a damn bus for at least a second.
2. The Cardigans | Lovefool
Growing up, I listened to whatever my parents listened to in the car— if I was in my dad's truck, it was Country Music, and if I was with my mom, it was Classic Rock or the Godspell soundtrack. That all changed when I heard Lovefool on the School bus radio on a Fourth Grade field trip. I thought it was the greatest song I had ever heard, so asked the bus driver what station was playing, and then asked my parents if we could listen to that station. I'll never forget how scared I was to ask my mom to turn on the Top 40/Pop station, though I'll never understand WHY I was so scared. Ultimately, Lovefool was like the gateway drug for most of the terrible Music I listened to for years after that, and is almost singlehandedly to blame my encyclopedic knowledge of mid-to-late-90s Pop Music. Plus, The Cardigans really loved Black Sabbath, and that was cool, and I have a deep, abiding love for all Swedish Music, from Ace Of Base to Bathory.
3. New Order | Ceremony (Joy Division Cover)
It's hard to pick a favorite New Order song, but there's something so cinematic and special about Ceremony. If anyone (me) ever makes a movie about my life, I would want this song playing during either the opening credits or at the end.
4. ESPN Presents The Jock Jams | The Jock Jam
The greatest medley of all time. I did a burlesque act to this song that I ended up doing almost every night for five weeks on tour, so I feel like I know The Jock Jam better than any other human. Once I was doing this act and the CD skipped and cut out, so I sang The Jock Jam A Capella while I did the act (it's an act in which I perform graphic, intense air sex, by the way...).
5. Kate Bush | Wuthering Heights
When I'm sad, I put on my thick, furry black bathrobe and blast this song and do the complete video choreography. It almost always helps.
6. The Sonics | The Witch
I first heard this song, like many great songs, in a Skateboarding video. It will always be on any go-go dancing playlist I make, until the end of Time.
7. Fleetwood Mac | Planets Of The Universe (Early Demo from Rumours - 2004 Deluxe Edition)
The demo version with just Stevie and piano. It's heartbreaking, and then at the end, Stevie stops and tells the sound engineer that she fucked up the end and the whole thing "wasn't wonderful or anything.” Stevie Nicks' shitty take of Planets Of The Universe is better than anything I or anyone else will ever do in our pathetic lifetimes. We are human garbage. Steve Nicks is a goddess.
8. The Drifters | This Magic Moment
If you don't love this song, you are a monster.
9. Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats | I'll Cut You Down
I later realized that Uncle Acid totally ripped off Davie Allan & The Arrows' The Devil's Rumble really hard, but I still love this song. It makes me want to ride a motorcycle and dance and do drugs and have sex and commit crimes, which is what Music should make you feel.
10. Black Sabbath | Changes
I used to think this song was the lamest Black Sabbath song, but then I got older and went through, uh, changes, and totally got it and now it's one of my favorite Black Sabbath songs. That mellotron! Ugh.
1. Tori Amos | Tear In Your Hand
This is beyond a doubt my favorite song of all time. Everyone that’s actually into Tori Amos has a story about how she saved their life, because her Music is that kind of Music. This song is the one that’s kept me alive many, many nights. The World exists in the pause between the words goodbye and now, the final time she repeats them.
2. New Order | True Faith
True Faith is what people mean when they say that New Order was a singles band. This song was never really on an album, existed solely for a singles compilation, and yet to me it's the best damn thing they ever recorded. There's an earnest, yearning sense of Hope in this song, like being awake and on the best drugs ever at 8am and seeing the Sun rise and feeling as though you're going to live forever.
3. 10,000 Maniacs | Scorpio Rising
True facts: 90% of current bands I'm really into just want to sound like Fredonia-era 10,000 Maniacs. Natalie Merchant was my first female crush, the first celebrity I was obsessed with, and 10,000 Maniacs was my first favorite band. Their early, abrasive stuff took a very long time to catch hold in my heart, but now I love that you can cue up anything from The Wishing Chair in a DJ set and blow people away thinking it's a Pitchfork Buzz Band. This song, the lyric Treat me to an honest face some time... Amaze me now!--the honest in that blows my mind.
4. Kate Bush | The Morning Fog
How very Kate Bush for the most beautiful song on her most perfect album to be the shortest and last. While Waking The Witch remains a massive touchpoint for me in terms of why I began making Music, and why I make the type of Music I do, The Morning Fog, the HAH-aye HAH-aye at the end, grabs at my throat. I always want to repeat the song, again and again, but I never let myself. The song is nothing without the album's journey. D'ya know what? I love you better now.
5. Mara | Desanitize
Raving was a fundamental part of my life for the most formative years of it, my High School and College days. Mara, the husband and wife duo of Barry Gilbey and Sarah Whittaker-Gilbey, soundtracked like 90% of that time. I had piles and piles of their mixes, and would force them upon anyone who happened to take a ride in my awful white Dodge Neon. Their live PA setup informed a lot of the way I perform and sequence shows today, and Desanitize stands as one of the most powerful pieces of Music they ever created. I wish everyone would listen to it. I put it on a mix I did for Cultwave Radio.
6. Jean Grae | Before The Summer Broke
I would have killed myself in 2013 if this song did not exist.
7. Janet Jackson | Rhythm Nation
WE ARE A PART OF THE RHYTHM NATION. This song is why New Jack Witch exists--to remind this generation to stop acting the fool and starting acting up.
8. The Knife | Pass This On (Silent Shout: An Audio Visual Experience DVD Version)
When I saw The Knife live for the first time, on the Silent Shout tour, before Karin could even get the first verse out of her mouth I was on the floor of Webster Hall sobbing. This is a great song, but the way it was reimagined live on this tour specifically brings out an ache that consumes.
9. Mira Calix | I May Be Over There (But My Heart Is Over Here)
This is just one of the most beautiful, aching pieces of Electronic Music I've ever heard. It haunts me.
10. Azar Swan | In My Mouth
Zohra Atash's voice is a weapon. The percussion in this song is a weapon.
1. A DEAD FOREST INDEX | Distance
Turning the distance into a pattern. I want to hang out with this band. I feel that Russ, Bridgette and I would very much get along with them. They play notes that strike somewhere deep within me, and there's a sense of Recognition. I first heard this track from a mix that my friend did on Spotify. He and I are birds of a feather artistically and we've known each other, well forever. Check his mixes out, you won't be sorry.
2. Zola Jesus | Sea Talk
I don't really know Zola Jesus's Music besides this song. I appreciate what she does though and I like her aesthetic. This song feels powerful to me. I don't remember when or where I heard it, it’s not one of her more popular ones... I don't think... I love the drums and strings - the orchestral feeling of it all. It's when you've given and given and given but it's still not enough and never will be. I’ve been there, I was there once.
3. The Sight Below | Dour
This is a Minimal Techno track that pisses off my neighbor downstairs. I guess it's the throbbing beat. I love it. The guy behind The Sight Below became a friend who ended up mixing/mastering my first solo EP. I love the subtle intensity.
4. Depeche Mode | Behind The Wheel
I used to be really into vintage motorcycles and Italian scooters. Part of the appeal of this track is definately the Music Video, if you watch it you'll see what I'm talking about in terms of vintage Italian scooters. I love the feeling of Control in the words and the beat. The narrative is hot - he's giving her the authority to be dominant. This song was given to me by an ex lover who was much older than me. He lived in LA and we communicated a lot through letters and mix tapes. He put this track on one of my mix tapes he made for me. Romantic right? Letters and real mix tapes.
5. Dntel | (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan (Superpitcher Kompakt Remix)
A great track for walking through NYC. It keeps a good pace. I was given this track on a mix CD by an ex who was a DJ. He was nuts, our relationship was nuts, but I got some good Music out of it. He had a way of hooking me back into his world with the Music he'd play for me. "I won't let go, I won't let go". It made my stomach flip in the best and worst way. He definitely didn't last, but I still love this song despite the strange memory and I've given it to many friends in mixes even though it's a little dated, I think it's timeless.
6. The Cure | Maybe Someday (Acoustic Mix)
One of my best girl friends put this on a mix CD for me. I was going through heartbreak, in a relationship (my first big one)... Feeling alone yet together. So lonely and kinda apathatic, the words and instrumentation hit my heart so hard.
7. Tori Amos | Winter
It's really hard choosing just one Tori song, she's such a major influence and Little Earthquakes especially, every song is my song. Let's just say that she has gotten me through some really hard times and made me realize that I wasn't a huge weirdo... Or that it was OK to be a weirdo. And that bad things happen to good people and you survive and live through. And it's growing up to accept it all, the Pain and the Triumph. I wish I could tell her that in person. Maybe one day.
8. Jez Kerr | Reasons I Feel Like An Alien
A cautious song, I can relate to caution. And I can relate to feeling alieniated from the world around me. Especially when I want to reach out and connect. It's hard isn't it? I love the bass line here, and I love the repeted lyrics. "there was no need to talk we could just feel".
9. Slowdive | Blue Skied An' Clear
If ever I were to marry someone they'd have to be OK with this track being the processional... Starting when that gorgeous guitar comes in and Rachel starts singing. You say Love and it sounds so good, you say Love and it sounds so sweet. It's the ultimate Love song. It’s finger tips touching. What an honor!. It's a huge breath in and a sigh of relief. It's finally finding a place to rest your head that is safe and real. It's what I think Real Love is, if it were vocalized in a song.
10. Elite Gymnastics | Here, In Heaven 4 & 5 (CFCF Remix)
Is it OK to go through Life being untouchable?... Is it? I ask myself this often. Most of the time I'm good with that. Somedays are different. I straddle a paradox of Warmth and Distance.
+11. Dot Allison | Message Personnel
A pretty painful song to admit I feel a connection to. The lyrics say it all. Repeated over and over again. I used to play Music with a guy - and he introduced me to Dot Allison, and there's a story there, but I won't go into it. I'm not a fan of the rest of her Music, it’s just OK, pretty forgetable. But this track. God. It kills me everytime I hear it. There's a longing there... To connect, to be here, to be present, but Fear. Huge crippling Fear. Embrace me, release me! Deny me then feed me! I loan you then lose you. So distant, so near me. It's devastating.
+12. School Of Seven Bells | Iamundernodisguise
I want to tell you that I don't have anything to hide. This is why I choose this one. During the time when I was making my solo EP, I shared a practice space with SVIIB. This was after the twin sisters had an argument and one of them broke up with the band, and Benjaman Curtis was still alive. Ale and Ben were an amazing duo, they were honest and transparent which I think is reflected in this song.
1. Nico | These Days
Just a perfect song, and, like, as corny as it is to admit, definitely the story of my life. I will always love it, even if it will always make me think of Gwenyth Paltrow getting off a damn bus for at least a second.
2. The Cardigans | Lovefool
Growing up, I listened to whatever my parents listened to in the car— if I was in my dad's truck, it was Country Music, and if I was with my mom, it was Classic Rock or the Godspell soundtrack. That all changed when I heard Lovefool on the School bus radio on a Fourth Grade field trip. I thought it was the greatest song I had ever heard, so asked the bus driver what station was playing, and then asked my parents if we could listen to that station. I'll never forget how scared I was to ask my mom to turn on the Top 40/Pop station, though I'll never understand WHY I was so scared. Ultimately, Lovefool was like the gateway drug for most of the terrible Music I listened to for years after that, and is almost singlehandedly to blame my encyclopedic knowledge of mid-to-late-90s Pop Music. Plus, The Cardigans really loved Black Sabbath, and that was cool, and I have a deep, abiding love for all Swedish Music, from Ace Of Base to Bathory.
3. New Order | Ceremony (Joy Division Cover)
It's hard to pick a favorite New Order song, but there's something so cinematic and special about Ceremony. If anyone (me) ever makes a movie about my life, I would want this song playing during either the opening credits or at the end.
4. ESPN Presents The Jock Jams | The Jock Jam
The greatest medley of all time. I did a burlesque act to this song that I ended up doing almost every night for five weeks on tour, so I feel like I know The Jock Jam better than any other human. Once I was doing this act and the CD skipped and cut out, so I sang The Jock Jam A Capella while I did the act (it's an act in which I perform graphic, intense air sex, by the way...).
5. Kate Bush | Wuthering Heights
When I'm sad, I put on my thick, furry black bathrobe and blast this song and do the complete video choreography. It almost always helps.
6. The Sonics | The Witch
I first heard this song, like many great songs, in a Skateboarding video. It will always be on any go-go dancing playlist I make, until the end of Time.
7. Fleetwood Mac | Planets Of The Universe (Early Demo from Rumours - 2004 Deluxe Edition)
The demo version with just Stevie and piano. It's heartbreaking, and then at the end, Stevie stops and tells the sound engineer that she fucked up the end and the whole thing "wasn't wonderful or anything.” Stevie Nicks' shitty take of Planets Of The Universe is better than anything I or anyone else will ever do in our pathetic lifetimes. We are human garbage. Steve Nicks is a goddess.
8. The Drifters | This Magic Moment
If you don't love this song, you are a monster.
9. Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats | I'll Cut You Down
I later realized that Uncle Acid totally ripped off Davie Allan & The Arrows' The Devil's Rumble really hard, but I still love this song. It makes me want to ride a motorcycle and dance and do drugs and have sex and commit crimes, which is what Music should make you feel.
10. Black Sabbath | Changes
I used to think this song was the lamest Black Sabbath song, but then I got older and went through, uh, changes, and totally got it and now it's one of my favorite Black Sabbath songs. That mellotron! Ugh.
