WARMER MIXTAPES #359 | by Thomas Michael [Ghibli]/(Jaded Hipster Choir)

1. Gold Panda | Vanilla Minus
I remember the first time I heard this track. I was walking back from Shamira's (Jenni's partner) office, where I borrowed her iPod cable so I could put this album on my iPod, and this track played I was crossing a pedway from one building to another at my university. I remember instantly feeling weak in the knees and needing to sit down with some shitty excuse of anemia or skipped-breakfast or something because I couldn't really function while listening to it. 200 plays later, and there's hardly a thing I don't do without this song soundtracking it. It just has this perfect syncopation in the opening loop, the right amount of gentle fuzz, and the best sequencing of clips. Beautifully simple.

2. GOBBLE GOBBLE | Seizure To The Metronome
I had the extreme joy of going to this annual Solstice Hippie Festival 6 hours North of Edmonton last year, because two of my favourite bands were playing (Braids and GBL). During those three days, I caught GBL three times, and one of those times was at 7PM in a weird forest-clearing (i.e broad-daylight). I had never heard Seizure live before, but dancing with the 100 or so people who either came to see the show or were just hippies meandering from venue to venue made for this really weird environment of what I like to call subtle dance. Not to mention the song is fucking insane, production wise.

3. Destiny's Child | Bootylicious
Speaking of fucking insane, production wise, this might be the most insane mainstream song I've ever heard. Post-Timbaland drum production (digitized cabasa, alternating hi hats, watery claps), crazy clean horn samples, a drippy base-line, and a fucking Stevie Nicks sample. Not even a vocal appearance by the terrible Michelle Williams can ruin Rob Fusari's golden child of a song.

4. Janet Jackson | Son Of A Gun (feat. Missy Elliot)
Jesus Christ On Mount Sinai, I Love Missy Elliot. Janet Jackson is okay too. The baseline + chorus makes the whole song come alive for me, tho. That whole melodic interplay between the uneasiness of the bassline and the crazy-let-me-touch-you-softly-so-I-can-rip-yr-skin-off positiveness of the hook sell this.

5. Munch Munch | A Squirrel
The sound of someone literally having a panic attack, recovering for a brief moment, and the seizing up and dying in the most joyful and alienating way possible.

6. Owen Pallett | Honour The Dead Or Else! (Music Gallery Version)
...Also Owen's Birthday Version... Two completely different versions about 2 or 3 years apart. The Music Gallery (or He Plays Shows) version is him in either 2007 or 2008 with a string quartet performing directly after covering a Jan Arden song (Good Mother). I remember trying to show this version to 4 of my classmates in highschool in grade 11 in the drama theater (we had essentially this tiny gymnasium-esqe space to do whatever the fuck we wanted when our teacher was doing more important shit like grading papers or whatever), on the sound system in there, and they literally were like What The Fuck Is This Bullshit, Björk, Jesus Christ, what the fuck do you listen to?... The other version is taken from when Owen put on this birthday show in 2009 where he went on at like 2:30PM by himself and was re-debuting this song since he hadn't played it after the Music Gallery show.

7. Braids | Same Mum
I was debating putting Lammicken instead of this song, but Same Mum is filled to the brim with restraint and insistence to the point that I don't think humans are playing anymore whenever I listen to it.

8. Black Eyed Peas | Don't Phunk With My Heart
Man, this song is so, so, so, so terrible. I cannot get enough of it. Especially the ever-expanding-auto-tuned-2-death choir of Fergie's belting out of O NO NO NO DUNT PHUNK WIT MUH HAAAARRRRHT...

9. Oscar McClure | Weeds
Everything Leaving Records puts out is guaranteed to make you go OH SHIT and appreciate the insane quality of musicians and producers coming out of California right now.

10. Gold Panda | You
There are three mentions of You on Lucky Shiner. One is the trunk-rattler opener. The second is a bi-polar syncopated head-nodder. The third is the one I'm in love with. I was friends with this guy in high school named Robert, and he and I were best friends. We were very on-and-off friends throughout the three years together, but something minor happened one night that totally finalized everything in terms of us never talking to each other again, with the threat that if I talk shit to any of our (read: his) friends, I'd get jumped somewhere by his cousins or whatever. Which was fine by me, because I had enough of the whole situation as soon as it started. And I was doing pretty well for the first few months post-fight, but every now and again I see him, or one of my friends see him, and I instantly get lightheaded, nauseas, and want to leave from wherever I am at the moment. Like an actual physical effect comes over me whenever we make eye-contact. Not that I'm like blah, blah, blah, my life is so hard I listen to this song and it makes it all bEtTeR~~~~** or whatever, but I've attached this weird remedial feeling to this song, where I feel like it deals with the sort of messed up shit that people can do to each other without physically doing anything, you know? I listen to You and I feel like other people know how fucked up we are.