If you’ve ever had the pleasure of spending time with a Canadian you’ll know that we’re sorry. Not for anything in particular, just generally. If you bump into one of us on the street, we’ll be the ones to apologize.

Like any country with running water and a stock market, we have had a checkered history with the original tenants of our land, and several run-ins with the French, but never has a country fetishized their sins as thoroughly as Canada has. Our airports and government buildings use Native art the way Persian homosexuals use leopard print, and everything we read is coupled with a French translation, even though I’m personally more likely to have a conversation in Tagalog. Our art funding goes disproportionately to multicultural projects, to a point where we haven’t just turned our guilt into an art form, we have adopted it as a national identity so pervasive that it makes one wonder what would be left if all that went away.
 
In the end, I still prefer living in a country that settles its grievances with art funding and tax policy to once which uses settlement camps and suicide bombers, and I like having the French language around, if only for aesthetics. That said, with America acting like Al Pacino during the last act of Scarface, the Middle East fighting their way back to the seventeenth century, and Europe resembling a great sweater that has seen one too many winters, maybe my countrymen can celebrate this Canada Day by grading the world on a curve, and letting ourselves off the hook for long enough to forge a culture of modernity, build on our accomplishments and not just our indiscretions.
 
A little glimpse of the part of our culture that doesn’t involve nature, aboriginals, or winter sports, here’s a mix of some Canadian rock and new wave from the eh-ties.

Trooper – The Boys In the Bright White Sports Car
Gino Vannelli – Black Cars
The Parachute Club – Rise Up
Platinum Blonde – Situation Critical
Loverboy – Working For the Weekend (Demo Version)
Martha & the Muffins – Swimming
Men Without Hats – Pop Goes the World
Gowan – You’re a Strange Animal
The Payolas – Eyes of a Stranger
Bruce Cockburn – Lovers In a Dangerous Time
Honeymoon Suite – New Girl Now
Rough Trade – High School Confidential
Glass Tiger – Someday
Chilliwack – My Girl
Doug & the Slugs – Who Knows How (To Make Love Stay)
Kim Mitchell – Patio Lanterns
Corey Hart – It Ain’t Enough
Barenaked Ladies – What A Good Boy
The Tragically Hip – Wheat Kings
Stompin’ Tom Connors – C-A-N-A-D-A (Cross Canada)

　
Electric Adolescence – we spell canada with lower case letters (right click to download) 45 mins/ 320 kbps/ 103MB

Download audio file (electric adolescence – we spell canada lower case letters.mp3)

In the year 2000, flying cars will be everywhere, and doors will open with a swish; a sound we will never grow tired of. The government will tattoo UPC codes into the back of our necks in a move that recalls the most harrowing aspects of Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future; surprisingly, we’ll eventually realize that it is actually an efficient system and that we all overreacted. In the year 2000, scientists will discover a cure for AIDS, however, the following year a new disease will emerge that will make HIV feel like a case of “the Mondays” and a new generation of Jews and Palestinians will have totally gotten over the whole Israel issue, electing to settle Gaza with a region-wide game of Laser Tag. In this new century, every household will have its own computer with which people will make music and exchange pornography, though not remotely in that order.

Lil Louis – I Called U (A Series of Events)
File 13 – Taste So Good
Benoit & Sergio – Full Grown Man
Marek Memmann – NTMYT
Session Victim – Memory Lane
Captain Comatose – Up In Flames (Glove Mix)
Underworld – Show Some Emotion
Lil Louis – I Called U (But U Went To the Party)
Move D & Namlook – Civilization There!
Ytre Rymden Dansskola – Kahluha Madness
Optic Nerve – Orgins Interlude
Optic Nerve – Orgins
Konrad Black & Selfparttwo – Still Waiting… Haven’t Even Started Yet
Gaiser – Oolooloo
In Flagranti – Brash and Vulgar
Circlesquare – Dancers (Taras3000 Remix)
Eberhard Schoener – Why Don’t You Answer
Billy Dallessandro – Fondue
Ricardo Villalobos and Los Updates – Driving Nowhere (Audio George Mix)
Oni Ayhun – OAR001-A
Jaydee – Plastic Dreams
Moodyman – On My Way Home
Stewart Walker – LA Walker
Omar S – 100% House
System 01 – Family Drugs
David Hasert – You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Melody
System 01 – Disembodied Voices
Philip Seymour Hoffman – Firing Missiles at Christmas and Easter Island
Instra:mental – Watching You
Colorpulse feat Carl Sagan & Stephen Hawking – Glorious Dawn
Steve Mason – All Come Down
King Midas Sound – Sometimes

Electric Adolescence – The Year 2000 80:00 mins/ 256 kbps/ 146MB

Download audio file (electric adolescence – the year 2000.mp3)

Unlike any other veteran rap act, the idea of rating the Digable Planets current output against that of their heyday is hardly laughable. Just as their easily digestible debut gave way to a more intricate and enduring sophomore release, the group’s afterlife has been riding a similar tide. 

Not that negotiating this post-Planets output has been easy. Ish “Butterfly” Butler seems to be deliberately keeping his comeback a secret, with the music press curiously playing along. 2004’s Cherrywine project spawned a grimy basement funk session that should have blown-up like a disenfranchised teenager in the Middle East, but went all but unnoticed. I then must have blinked during last year’s release of the lurid and unstructured Shabazz Palaces, which emerged as more aggressive and, true to form, more challenging than the music that paved its way.

Arranging this selection of Digable Planets remixes and rarities against highlights of Ishmael’s subsequent projects presents the same progression from accessibility to experimentalism that marked those first two albums, with the recent output comfortably standing on the same footing as anything the group did before and above anything anybody else does now.

Digable Planets – Intro from Amsterdam Reunion Tour
Digable Planets – Nickel Bags of Bites (Excerpt)
Digable Planets – Dedicated
Digable Planets – Where I’m From (Aural G Ride 12”)
Digable Planets – Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like That) (Crashing Giant Step Mix)
Digable Planets – Excerpt from CurrentTV Interview
Digable Planets – Nickel Bags (Sneak A Beshu Mix)
Digable Planets – Appointment at the Fat Clinic
Digable Planets – Califlower (Spiddyocks Go West)
Digable Planets – Three Slim’s Dynamite
Digable Planets feat Guru – Borough Check
Digable Planets feat. Jeru – Graffiti (Noise)
Digable Planets – Dial 7 (Axioms of Creamy Spies)
Digable Planets – 9th Wonder (Amina Remix)
Tek 9 feat. Butterfly – Gettin’ Down Again
Camp Lo feat. Butterfly – Swing
Cherrywine – See For Miles
King Britt feat. Cherrywine – The Sound
Cherrywine – Dazzlement
Shabazz Palaces – N. Splendored/ Find Out
Shabazz Palaces – Capital 5, Recorded After Hrs at the Gun Ballad Resource Centre
Cherrywine – 16th Minute
Cherrywine – Sleep Pretty Girl
Digable Planets feat. Lester Bowie and Melvin Watson – Flying High in the Brooklyn Sky
Digable Planets – Where I’m From (DJ Bonus Beats)
Digable Planets – Excerpt from CurrentTV Interview
Digable Planets – Marvin, You’re the Man

Electric Adolescence – The Many Moons of Digable Planets (right click to download) 60:00 mins/ 320 kbps/ 137MB

Download audio file (the many moons of digable planets.mp3)

Based on the single and a dramatic new video referencing Charles Burnett’s remarkable film, Killer of Sheep, I’d suggest Shabazz Places is poised to turn things upside down had I not made similar claims about Blowout Comb and Bright Black just before hip-hop devolved into genre of ring-tones. This time I’ll at least put my oar in the water with some bonus material taken from the group’s appearance on Seattle’s KEXP radio.

Shabazz Palaces – Live on KEXP (right click to download) 20:00 mins/ 320 kbps/ 45.8MB

Download audio file (shabazz palaces – live on kexp.mp3)

With vinyl aptly regarded for its sonic warmth and potential for album art, cassettes never gained the same fetishistic regard, regarded by many as an inferior stopgap between the adoption of records and compact disks. That said, this conventional wisdom is currently under siege by the growing trend of lo-fi bands running their recordings through analog tape as a means to remove the pristine polish and sharp edges that have dominated production since the personal computer became our generation’s electric guitar.

If the jury is still out on the issue of sound quality, it has surely adjourned on the fact that cassettes remain the greatest media for compilations, differentiating itself from digital mixes in the same way an original painting differentiates itself from a print. I’ve been lazily bridging this gap by creating digital mixes then dubbing them to cassette. My recent session has amounted to a schizophrenic bedroom mix, reflecting the severe extent to which my musical tastes are currently lost at sea.

How To Dress Well – How Could This Have Happened?
Atlas Sound – Reminder (Excerpt)
WU LYF – Concrete Gold
Cults – Go Outside
E and E – Gate
Shabazz Palaces – N. Spendored/ Find Out
Grand Puba – Get It (Caspa’s 80Eighties Remix)
War – Junk Yard (MTY Re-edit)
Guillaume & the Coutu Dumonts & Dop – Can’t Have Everything
Narcotic Syntax – Romantic Infinity
Onze – Bambam
Bobby Kondors – The Poem
Blunted Dummies – House For All (House 4 All Robots Mix)
Matthew Herbert – Manchester
Thomas Bjerring feat. David Skog – 2.45
Pogo – Lost
The Knife – Tomorrow In a Year
Time For Dreams – Breathlessly (demo)
Farah – Gay Boy (Vocal Mix)
Microphones – Mt. Eerie
Diamond Vampires – Friday Nights
Instra:mental – Let’s Talk
Boswell – Escape
Coyote Clean Up – Can’t Shake the Full Moon
Double Dee & Steinski – Message To Young People
Double Dee & Steinski – We’re In a Lot of Trouble
El Michels Affair – Mystery of Chessboxin’
Public Enemy – Contract On the World Love Jam
Junior Mafia – Get Money (Remix)
Erykah Badu – Turn Me Away (Get Munny)
Trus’ Me – Can We Pretend?
Warpaint – Billie Holiday
Wildbirds & Peacedrums – Today/ Tomorrow
Color of Clouds – Haunts Me (Acoustic)
Consequence – Farewell (Excerpt)
Cryo – Guantanamo Bay (Excerpt)
Dragging on Ox Through Water – Lilacs Sprang From These Apes
The Books – Beautiful People
Paul White – Anchor Records
The Wind-up Birds – There Won’t Always Be an England
Dr. Octagon – Blue Flowers (Instrumental)
Martin Buttrich – You Got That Vibe
Spiritualized – Angels Sigh (Alternate Mix 2)
Microphones – Do Not Be Afraid (Side B)

Electric Adolescence – Raised on Cassettes (right click to download) 80:00 mins/ 320 kbps

Download audio file (electric adolescence – raised on cassettes.mp3)

Under the forgiving guise of radio, John Peel never really aged- throughout his 37 years playing records on BBC 1. His aptitude for discovering talent stayed consistently ahead of his peers, from first plugging Captain Beefheart and David Bowie back in the seventies, to being the reason any of us ever heard of The Strokes.

Apart informing a majority of bands working today, John’s most potent recorded legacy resides in the vast number of “Peel Sessions” he recorded with some of the most notable acts of the last few decades. Originally conceived in 1986 as a means to fill air time with consideration for the BBC’s rigid broadcast standards limiting the amount of recorded music played, Peel had his favorite bands record what were normally four song setlists, rendering versions that sounded somewhere between a studio recording and a live set, with an added intangible quality that came from the legacy of studio and of the man behind the glass.

Had Peel not died of a sudden heart attack back in 2004, today would have been his 70th birthday. To mark the occasion, what follows is a compilation of some of the best of the Peel Sessions.

“Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don’t have any surface noise. I said, “Listen, mate, *life* has surface noise.”
- John Peel

The Peel Sessions.
The Wire – I Am The Fly
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps
The Strokes – The Modern Age
Gang of Four – I Found That Essence Rare
Pulp – Babies
New Order – Dreams Never End
Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart
The Cure – All Cats Are Grey
Young Marble Giants – Final Day
Mira Calix – She Keeps Her Secrets
The Human League – Being Boiled
cLOUDDEAD – Side A Part 1
Apparat – Van
Aphex Twin – Pancake Lizard
Autechre – Drane
Boards of Canada – Happy Cycling
Spritualized – Don’t Go
The Pixies – In Heaven (Lady In the Radiator Song)
Slowdive – Shine
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – The Film that Changed My Wife
Smog – I Break Horses
Graham Coxon – Shipbuilding

Electric Adolescence – A Tribute to John Peel 80:00 mins/ 192 kbps/ 109 MB

Download audio file (peel sessions.mp3)

Like the unfortunate phasing out of bench seats in automobiles or dueling to settle a grievance, our generation forgoing the slow dance strikes me less like a cultural evolution as it does a misguided regression by a society that has lost its way. It might sound fantastical to readers born post Purple Rain, but it wasn’t so long ago that a DJ would pitch things down and play a ballad at peak hour, and why not? It’s well recognized that an establishment can charge eight dollars for an ounce of down-market alcohol in exchange for creating an opportunity for semi-consensual human contact. So why have we forsaken an imbedded social custom whereby a simple change in music would speed this process along?

Perhaps it’s a cultural shift from those of us raised in an era where sexuality was presented bathed in blue light and accompanied by a saxophone solo on scrambled pay per view, to a generation whose visual representation of sex comes by way of sallow pornography made on the brutally honest medium of digital video. For all of the drawbacks of prudishness, maybe having a bit of shame about sex forces one to be more seductive when asking for it. Or maybe we’re just living through the blowback from rave culture and the libido crushing stimulants that traded the ritual of a slow dance for a 90 minute shoulder rub in the “chill-out room” like members of a benign, sexless cult.

Whatever the reason, I’d like to take this day of romance to offer this slow dance starter kit, a selection which also makes for a compelling Valentines Day mix whether you’re celebrating with a long time partner, courting someone new, or are at home alone, cutting yourself to recapture an ex-lover’s fancy.

Winter Family – Garden
Soko – I Will Never Love You More
The Velvet Underground – Some Kinda Love (Closet Mix)
Tommy James & the Shondells – Crimson & Clover
Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg – Je t’aime moi non plus
Beach Boys – Disney Girls
Hall & Oates – I’m Just A Kid (Don’t Make Me Feel Like A Man)
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – The Way
James Carr – What Can I Call My Own
Natural Four – Can This Be Real?
Otis Redding – I’ve Been Loving You Too Long
BloodStone – Natural High
Johnny Daye – Stay Baby Stay
The Flamingos – I Only Have Eyes for You
Duke Ellington and John Coltrane – In a Sentimental Mood
Chet Baker – My Funny Valentine
Os Mutantes – Baby
Shelly Duvall – He Needs Me
Steve Martin & Bernadette Peters – Tonight You Belong to Me
Leo Sayer – When I Need You
Prince – International Lover
D’Angelo – Feel Like Makin’ Love
Rufus featuring Chaka Khan – Sweet Thing
Shirley Murdock – As We Lay

Electric Adolescence – Bring Back the Slow Dance (right click to download) 80:00 mins/ 256 kbps/ 146MB

Download audio file (electric adolescence – bring back the slow dance.mp3)

The turning over a new year can feel a little jarring, like the moment after a record skips when a confused room attempts to regain their collective rhythm. With the mayhem of the holidays now shrinking in the rearview mirror, ‘tis now the season for exercise regiments marked with a shorter shelf life than that of the bushels of fresh produce bought in earnest, but destined to rot in the crisper drawer. As scores of people line up to start a race that few will ever finish, I stand boldly apart, letting myself off the hook in the area of physical improvement, even if my body is starting to resemble something one might find hanging in the window of a Chinese restaurant. 

Instead, my delightfully achievable New Years resolution involves a shift to more organic music, if that word still has any meaning. Having spent the better part of last year compiling mixes of obsessively arranged electronic music, I now find myself craving some audio roughage. In that spirit, this month’s mix forgoes laptops and synthesizers for a deliberately inconsistent blend of punk, funk, soul and psych; sounds to fill the silence as we sit with baited breath, waiting to see what the New Year might bring.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring – You Let Me Be Honest With You
Yuya Uchida & the Flowers – Intruder
The Pixies – Hey
Underworld feat. Brian Eno & Karl Blau – Beebop Hurry
WU LYF – Heavy Pop
Om – Cremation Ghat I
Andwella’s Dream – Cocaine
Mandre – Masked Music Man
Ofege – It’s Not Easy
Mister Holmes and the Brotherhood – Thrift Store Find
Soulphiction – Intermission
13th Floor Elevators – Blue and Peaceful
Paul Parrish – English Sparrow
Idiot Glee – All Packed Up
Nite Jewel – The Kamera Song
Airport One – Two Days
Gil Scott Heron – Where Did the Night Go
Ian France – High Places
David Shrigley – Don’t From Bits and Bobs
The Knife feat Mt. Sims and PlanningtoRock – Coloring of Pigeons
Prince – People Without (Live)
Sarah Webster Fabio – Juju For Grandma
Skull Snaps – It’s a New Day
The South Side Movement – Everlasting Thrill
Bob James – Nautilus
The Crystal Mansion – Somebody Oughta Turn Your Head Around
Moodymann – The Day We Lost the Soul
O.V. Wright – Motherless Child
The Persuasions – Another Night With the Boys
Black Merda – Think of Me
24 Carat Black – I Want to Make Up
Jackie McLean – Soul
Sam Cooke – Medley: It’s All Right/ For Sentimental Reasons

Electric Adolescence – Baited Breath (right click to download) 80 mins/ 256 kbps/ 146MB

Download audio file (electric adolescence – baited breath.mp3)

Evaluating this decade from a cultural standpoint feels, to paraphrase a report card comment from my 11th grade English teacher regarding my ability to focus, a little like nailing Jello to the wall. Unlike the eighties which brought us Back to the Future and hip hop and crack cocaine, this decade was rather short on original iconography, defining itself more by the manner in which past trends were recycled than the rate at which new ones were created. Even Bin Laden’s iconic attack of the World Trade Centre was so obviously lifted from the 1992 Steven Segal action blockbuster, Under Siege.

If forced to find a label, this decade this could perhaps be regarded as the age of irony, a generational fetishizing of bad taste that allowed brashness to trade as talent and cynicism as charm. While certainly a cultural masterstroke on the part of reality television hopefuls and sallow hipsters with no fashion sense who could pass themselves off as hip by hiding under fluorescent sweatshirts and trucker hats, what should have been a summer fad has all but consumed an entire decade, leaving some of us feeling how one does after eating dessert in lieu of dinner.

In summing up this decade’s output, I refrained from doing the standard list of the hundred or so greatest albums and songs, assuming I’d wind up with something as arbitrary as those greatest films lists which attempt to put titles as diverse as Star Wars, Annie Hall, and Casablanca in a definitive order of quality. Instead, I assembled a couple of super-sized mixes of some highlights from a decade when we used to listen to music on CDs, talk about how the Iraq war was really over oil, and about how we still had time to save the environment. It seems like only yesterday.

Part One – A Decade in Computers

Dapayk & Padburg – Black Beauty
Matthew Dear – Don and Sherri
Mandy vs. Booka Shade – Body Language (Konrad Black Remix)
Roxy Music – The Thrill of it All (Mandy & Booka Shade Mix)
Alex Smoke – Make My Day (Luisine Mix)
Matias Aguayo – New Life
Dave Aju – Crazy Place
!!! – Shit Scheisse Merde, Pt. 2
Chromeo – Needy Girl
Junior Boys – In the Morning
Metro Area – Miura
Miss Kitten & the Hacker – Madame Hollywood
Fischerspooner – Horizon
Radiohead – Idioteque
Ricardo Villalobos – What You Say (Edit)
Stephen Beaupre – Fish Fry
(a)pendics Shuffle – Looking for Me (Mossa Remix)
SCSI 9 – Mini
Enliven Dop Acoustics – The Dust (Enliven Deep Acoustics Mix)
Moodymann – Freeki Mutha F cker
Soulphiction – Get It Right
Elektrochemie – Don’t Go
Invisible Conga People – Cable Dazed
The Knife – One Hit
The Postal Service – Such Great Heights
Amadou & Mariam – Sabali
Woofly vs. Projections – Starlight
Jurgen Paape – So Weit Wie Noch Nie
Kraftwerk – Elektro Kardiogramm
Air – Run
Boards of Canada – In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country
Fever Ray – If I Had a Heart (Familijen Remix)
Clipse – Grindin’
Aaliyah – Try Again
Farah – Law of Life
Cassie – Me & U (Chopped & Screwed Version)
Theophilus London – Aquamilitia
Kid Cudi – Day and Night
Tessio – Luomo
Mount Kimbie – 50 Mile View
Damian Lazarus – Moment
Daft Punk – Something About Us
Playgroup – Hideaway
The Chromatics – Night Drive
The Orb – Before Because
Dntel – Anywhere, Anyone
Burial – Archangel
Ratatat – Cherry
Cassius – Nothing
Schneider TM vs. Kpt Michi Gan – The Light

Part One – A Decade in Computers (right click to download) 120 mins/ 256 kbps/ 162MB

Download audio file (electric adolescence a decade in computers.mp3)

Part Two – A Decade in Bands and Singer/ Songwriters

Andrew Bird – A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head
Fujiya & Miyagi – Collarbone
Of Montreal – Gronlandic Edit
Takka Takka – Everybody Say
These United States – First Sight
Angus & Julia Stone – Paper Aeroplane
Stars – This Charming Man
American Analog Set – Aaron and Maria
The XX – Basic Space
Phoenix – If I Ever Feel Better
Yeasayer – 2080
The Polyphonic Spree – Solider Girl
The Duke Spirit – Masca
The Strokes – Last Night
The Concretes – You Can’t Hurry Love
You Say Party! We Say Die! – Downtown Mayors Goodnight, Alley Kids Rule
Serena Maneesh – Her Name is Suicide
Sonic Youth – Peace Attack
American Watercolor Movement – Sweet Thursday
Panda Bear – Take Pills
Electralane – The Valleys
Amnion – Praise God For the Light Within Me
Wilco – Radio Cure
Yo La Tengo – Don’t Have to Be So Sad
Gregor Samsa – Jeroen Van Aken
The Owls – Isaac Beshevis Singer
The Wooden Birds – Seven Seventeen
Wildbirds & Peacedrums – I Can’t Tell in His Eyes
Taken Too Young – Too Young
Brightblack Morning Light – Everybody Delight
Sam Baker – Odessa
Alela Diane – The Rifle
Gravenhurst – The Diver
Goran Gora – Slow Down
Kings of Convenience – I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From
Iron and Wine – Lions Mane
The Rosemont Family Reunion – Ho Ho Ho
Sebadoh – Beautiful Friend
Antony & the Johnsons – Hope There’s Someone
Papa M – So Warped
Sigur Ros – Staralfur
Alaska In Winter – Horsey Horse
D’Angelo – One More Gin

Part Two – A Decade in Bands and Singer/ Songwriters (right click to download) 120 mins/ 256 kbps/ 165MB

Download audio file (electric adolescence a decade in bands.mp3)

This was the year that I finally ended a relationship that has been as integral to my life as it has been destructive, my tumultuous relationship with Time. While there have been more than a few good moments, we were never quite able to connect when it mattered. When I was younger, Time moved too slowly for me, as I got older, it started to move much too quickly.

I honestly couldn’t tell you how long it’s been since I lost track of Time. There was no dramatic fallout, just a series of incidences that caused us to drift apart: from the five minute wait for the bus that felt like an hour, to the unsubtle death threats Time would whisper into my ear all too often.

Now that we’ve separated, my reflections of this year will not be a montage delineating events over days, months, and years, the way it would have when I had a healthy relationship with Time. Instead, this year will seem more like the prose of an obscure Russian novel that expresses a lifetime of philosophies and ruminations in the time it takes for a drop of water to fall from the faucet down into the drain.

Dop – Lacy Lad
Clock Opera – Once and For All (Clive Tanaka Remix)
Azari & III – Into the Night (Nicolas Jaar Remix)
Matthew Dear – You Put a Smell on Me (Nicolas Jaar Remix)
Public Lover – Naked Figures
Sei A – Flicker
Shells – Clay
HISSY FIT – Hyper WovEZ
Lula Circus – White A
Jeff Phelps – On the Corner
Brandt Brauer Frick – Bop
Montauk – Magic
Methiah – Swim
Milton Bradley – The Unheard Voice From Outer Space
Robag Wruhme – Bierholer
Howse – Vyvanse
Shackleton – International Fires
Invisible Force – The Dream is Over
Ra Cailum – Close My Eyes
Boom Clap Bachelors – Girl
The Controllers – Stay (Extended Remix)
Redondo Beach – He Would Make Her Like Winter
Nightmares on Wax – Back Into Time
Henny Moan – Slayer of Gash
Vacation – Thinking About It All
Otis Redding – Good To Me

Electric Adolescence – From the Tap to the Drain (right click to download) 80 mins/ 320 kbps/ 183 MB

Download audio file (electric adolescence – from the tap to the drain.mp3)

It would be difficult to exaggerate Angelo Badalamenti’s contribution to David Lynch’s body of work. Unlike other director/ composer teams such as Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herman or Stephen Spielberg and John Williams, where the music was written to existing film, this collaboration began when the stories were still part of Lynch’s meditations. Like a patient to a therapist, Lynch would describe moods and feelings, dramatic through-lines that were yet to be connected, with Badalamenti at the piano improvising a musical response. This might explain how the music feels so integrated within the films, seeming to know what transpired behind the white picket fences in the suburbs of Blue Velvet, or between the owls in the forest surrounding Twin Peaks.

Theirs was a perfect pairing of two men who were equal parts twins and opposites: Badalamenti found life in Lynch’s imagination, in turn, the auteur found a welcome restraint in the composer’s formality. The result is a union forged so seamlessly that it becomes impossible to determine where one of them stops and the other begins.

The following is a mix of collaborations between the two, as well as selected pieces of pre-recorded music from Lynch’s films, without which some of Badalamenti’s efforts might feel incomplete.

“My musical world is a little bit dark… a little bit off-center. I think of it as tragically beautiful. That is how I would describe what I love best: tragically beautiful.”

- Angelo Badalamenti

Tracklisting:

In Heaven – The Lady in the Radiator (Eraserhead)
The Elephant Man Theme – John Morris (Elephant Man)
The Prophesy Theme – Toto w/ Brian Eno (Dune)
Sandy’s Dream – Excerpt from Blue Velvet
Main Title – Angelo Badalamenti (Blue Velvet)
Mysteries of Love (French Horn Solo) – Angelo Badalamenti (Blue Velvet)
Love Letters – Ketty Lester (Blue Velvet)
Blue Velvet, Blue Star (Montage) – Angelo Badalamenti (Blue Velvet)
Frank’s Toast – Excerpt from Blue Velvet
In Dreams – Roy Orbison (Blue Velvet)
Twin Peaks Tapes (Excerpt) – Special Agent Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks)
Twin Peaks Theme – Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks)
Fire Walk With Me Poem – The One Armed Man (Twin Peaks)
The World Spins – Julee Cruise (Twin Peaks)
Just You – James, Donna and Maddy (Twin Peaks)
Best Friends – Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks)
Twin Peaks Tapes (Excerpt) – Special Agent Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks)
Sycamore Trees – Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks/ Fire Walk With Me)
Love Me – Nicolas Cage (Wild at Heart)
Be-Bop A Lula – Blue Caps & Gene Vincent (Wild at Heart)
Perdita – Rubber City (Wild at Heart)
Song to the Siren – This Mortal Coil (Lost Highway)
Blue Spanish Sky – Chris Isaak (Wild at Heart)
Rose’s Theme – Angelo Badalamenti (Straight Story)
Laurens Walking – Angelo Badalamenti (Straight Story)
A Man’s Attitude – Excerpt from Mullholland Drive
Dinner Party Pool Music – Angelo Badalamenti (Mullholland Drive)
I’ve Told Every Little Star – Jerome Kern (Mullholland Drive)
Crying (Llorando) – Rebekah Del Rio (Mullholland Drive)

FEATURE: Follow this link to an audio/ video feature highlighting my favourite music from the world of cinema.

Also, for those wishing to delve deeper into the world of Twin Peaks, friend of the blog Tom Huddleston has co-written an outstanding guide to the series, including a particularly insightful essay on the feature length prequel, Fire Walk With Me. NotComing Guide to Twin Peaks

Electric Adolescence – The Music of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti 100 mins/ 256 kbps/ 109MB

Download audio file (david lynch and angelo badalamenti.mp3)