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My new Yahoo! Music Unlimited playlist is the absolutely horrible 'This Beat Is Technotronic' [YMU link], and spans from some kind of minor breakdown I had when deciding what high quality mix I was going to do next for YMU Playa - and resolving to do a low quality one instead.
As the playlist description explains: "An absolutely horrific playlist, bookended by 2 tracks by Technotronic, featuring some of the cheesiest (or darn catchiest) pop-techno hits to come out of the early '90s. These are the songs, from 2 Unlimited through C+C Music Factory and even Rednex (ack!) that get played too often at sports stadiums, but we keep coming back for more - suckers!"
(Tragically, Haddaway's 'What Is Love', as used in the Saturday Night Live club sketch, wasn't available in its original version, but there's a cheesier newer version available instead.)
BONUS LINKS: an excellent 'Mojo Top Tracks Vol.1' mix [YMU link], presumably from the UK music magazine, by 'ad1s0n', and featuring awesomeness from Keane, Doves, Supergrass, Super Furries, etc. Plus I spotted that Samantha Fox's album 'Touch Me' [YMU link] is available on YMU, if you're into topless pinups transformed into bubblegum pop superstars. Which I'm sure you are.
My latest Yahoo! Music Unlimited playlist is called 'Ambience Into The Ether' [YMU link], and tends toward the distinctly chilled, since I decided to compile some of my favorite ambient artists into one longform playlist.
The description in YMU itself is as follows: "[This is] my playlist of the most pulsing, most spaced slices of ambient I could find on YMU. It mainly includes some of the genre's originators, including Brian Eno, Harold Budd, and ex-Tangerine Dream-er Klaus Schulze. But it also drifts into the 'avant-garde composer' realms (Terry Riley, Steve Reich) and features some newer ambient standouts (Biosphere, Pete Namlook). Enjoy!"
Nothing much else to be said about this, other than the playlist is only 10 tracks, but about 2 hours long, thanks to some mammoth track lengths, heh. Oh, and that there are some semi-miscredits on YMU's listing, due to co-composed albums, such as the first track from 'Ambient 2' being by Brian Eno and Harold Budd, not just Budd, and one of the Namlook tracks being co-composed with Move D - you can tell if you squint at the album covers.
[Also, Harold Budd's The Serpent In Quicksilver/Abandoned Cities album [YMU link], of which one track makes it onto this playlist, is one of my favorite albums of all time - completely gorgeous piano-based ambient.]
OK, as threatened a couple of posts ago when I talked about Ninja Tune, I got round to doing a playlist of UK hiphop label Big Dada, named, logically enough, 'Say Hello To Big Dada' [YMU link].
Here's the description attached to the playlist: "This UK-based Ninja Tune offshoot releases some of the best alternative hiphop from the UK and US scenes, from mainstay and British hiphop icon Roots Manuva, through the Anticon guys' Clouddead project and the awesome MF Doom alter ego King Geedorah, all the way to new signing Spank Rock's electrotastic 'Rick Rubin', Super duper recommended."
And that's about all I need to say, really, other than the fact that I like how international Big Dada ends up being, since it hoovers up a lot of the alt.hiphop that's just too wired and weird for U.S. labels, as well as important people from elsewhere in the world, such as France's TTC - here's a really good interview with them. Go listen!
Back again from out of country shenanigans, and let's start with an album YMU recommended to me, and I actually adore - Bruce Cockburn's 'Anything, Anytime, Anywhere' [YMU Link], which is subtitled 'Singles 1979-2002', according to Wikipedia.
Actually the Wikipedia entry is useful on Cockburn, who I suspect is slightly better known in North America than he is in England (where I was til '99, lest we forget), but it turns out he's a wonderfully understated Canadian singer-songwriter. I reckon he was dismissed as cheese by many at one point in the '80s, but a longer listen reveals extremely smart, literate power pop, at least imho.
The entry on him also notes: "In addition to a highly successful solo career, Cockburn's songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Barenaked Ladies ("Lovers in a Dangerous Time"), Jimmy Buffett ("Pacing the Cage", "Anything, Anytime, Anywhere", "Wondering Where the Lions Are" (in the movie "Hoot")), Lori Cullen ("Fall"), Anne Murray ("One Day I Walk", "Musical Friends"), Ani DiFranco ("Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long"), and the Jerry Garcia Band ("Waiting for a Miracle")." Fun!
