WARMER MIXTAPES #1119 | by Alex Knight of Kins

1. R.E.M. | Everybody Hurts
One of those sacred songs that becomes very personal, very easily. For example, the earliest memory I have of being alive is hearing Everybody Hurts on the radio.

2. Swans | Stay Here
4 years ago a friend introduced me to Swans by playing me their 1983 debut Filth from start to finish. I can’t remember saying much during the session apart from jeez and fuck. Stay Here is the opening track on Filth and even after countless listens, it’s vicious and Apocalyptic strains still inspire the same mono-syllabic exclamations.

3. Converge | Hope Street
Just over a minute of pure fury. Converge are one of the few modern bands that manage to wield the spirit of grubby 80’s Hardcore groups like Die Kreuzen and Void while at the same time being grotesquely heavy.

 4. Dead Can Dance | How Fortunate The Man With None
Solomon, Caesar and Socrates each receive a verse sung in their honour on this sad and hypnotic album closer and that alone gets my vote. Dead Can Dance staked out their territory in the early 80’s and since then not one group has laid a foot on it.

5. Public Image Ltd. | The Order Of Death
When I was a youngster, my Dad would often give me a solemn introduction before playing me a song to ensure I listened with the proper veneration. When it came to The Order Of Death he gave me the oddly straight-faced instruction that it be played at his funeral.


6. Patsy Cline | Sweet Dreams (Don Gibson Cover)
No one does bitter-sweet better than Patsy Cline and it’s this particular track that really showcases the warmth and depth of her unmistakable voice.

7. Wilhelm Richard Wagner | Tristan Und Isolde: Liebestod (Performed by Vladimir Horowitz)
I've not heard any other piece of Music that so cleverly accumulates tension in the way that Wagner has in this climatic aria. There’s a brilliant recording of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz performing Liszt’s transcription on YouTube, only a few mouse-clicks away.

8. Miles Davis | Little Church (with Hermeto Pascoal)
A desolate, narcotic dream-scape that’s both eerie and gorgeous.

9. Sebadoh | Spoiled
Anyone that’s seen the movie Kids will recognise this song as the modest Exit-Music that perfectly resonated with the traumatic events of the film. It’s the way Lou Barlow sounds so thoroughly exhausted and void of Affectation that really does it for me.

 10. Young Fathers | Deadline
Deadline is tidy example of the Sincerity, Conviction, and overall Vigour of Young Fathers’ sound. Kins have played alongside this lot twice now and both times I've come away feeling like I've been deeply educated in some way.