Arts Desk » Mixtape

The Death Set’s New Mixtape Loves D.C. Punk

Leor Galil — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 16:20:03 +0000

Brooklyn-via-Baltimore-via-Australia spazz-punk act The Death Set have kept pretty quiet since guitarist Beau Velasco died in September 2009. But the trio is starting to release some new tunes: Oin February, Ninja Tune will drop the band's new album, Michel Poiccard. To feed its fans' collective appetite, the group released a 43-song mixtape earlier this week called Artificially Sweetened.

Artificially Sweetened is best treated as something akin to a The Death Set for Dummies: Clearly, the dudes in The Death Set are big fans of all the artists featured on the mixtape, and the brief selections and odd mash-ups of hip-hop acts and punk bands certainly show their mark on the frenetic punk act.

A few D.C. acts make an appearance on Artificially Sweetened. Black Eyes shows up early on, as track No. 7 fuses the screeching "Deformative" with Jamaican dancehall artist Buju Banton's "Circumstances." Fugazi's "Public Witness Program" remains almost untouched for most of the 1:07 cut that's included on the mixtape. That is, until the end of the tune,when Notorious B.I.G.'s voice shows up to drop some rhymes from "Hypnotize." Bad Brains' "At the Movies" shows up at the end of the mixtape, though it's not mashed up.

You can grab the rest of The Death Set's ADD-addled mixtape over at Mishka Bloglin.

DC Re:MIXtape: An All-D.C. Music DJ Night

Ryan Little — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:26:51 +0000

If you're interested in the choicest cuts from DC's local music scene, the DJs at Black Cat's backstage tonight will be serving up an unpredictable survey of old and new homegrown tracks. In celebration of the releaseof his warped new DC RE:Mixtape, Shock Diamond is hosting a D.C.-only DJ night. Many of the bands whose music was gutted and dancified on the mixtape will be spinning their favorite songs from the area, and guest DJs include Protect-U's Aaron Leitko and former Black Eyes member Hugh McElroy. With genre limitations thrown to the wayside, there's no telling what deep grooves will get pulled from the archives. There's the obvious catalog of D.C. post-punk that made the Black Cat what it is, but plenty of jazz, hip-hop, and go-go has graced the city over the years, so you'll have to stop by to see what rare LPs get spun.

Sockets Summer Mix Vol. 2

Aaron Leitko — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:34:43 +0000

The weather may be cooling off, but Sockets isn't quite ready to pack up the shorts and deflate the beach balls. The label recently posted this mixtape–which includes songs by Food For Animals, BLDGS, and Edie Sedgwick–in the hopes of stretching the summer season out for a few more weeks.

Here's the tracklist:

1. "Love Showers" – The Dirty Church
2. "Tomorrow" – Buildings
3. "Would You Kill?" – The Cornel West Theory
4. "Fifty Seven" – Andrew Black
5. "Dope" (Ricky Rabbit Remix) – Food For Animals
6. "Preproduct" – Aaron Thompson
7. "Wilderness" – Roses They Won't Hurt You
8. "Doubting Thomas" (Sockets Mix) – Edie Sedgwick
9. "1000 Miles" – Metropolitan

Chris Grier Curates Sockets Mix

Aaron Leitko — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:16:50 +0000

Guitarist/noisemaker/gentleman Chris Grier–who has performed with Kohoutek, To Live & Shave in LA, and Scarcity of Tanks–recently assembled a digital mixtape for Sockets Records. It's the third in the Fringe Era series, which has also featured contributions by Occupational Athlete (aka Patrick Connolly) and Washington City Paper beer guru Orr Shtuhl. Greir has provided some choice cuts here, though–including as yet unreleased tracks by Love of Diagrams and Wylde Ratttz (the studio band composed of Ron Asheton, Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, Mike Watt, and Don Fleming) as well as a few old time favorites.

Sockets Summer Mix

Aaron Leitko — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:01:24 +0000

So far, summer is having a little trouble getting started. So far all we've gotten is a lot of rain, no Screen On The Green, and no Fort Reno schedule. But please, let this free summer mixtape, compiled by local label Sockets, be a salve to your bruised expectations. There are exclusive cuts by Maximillion Dunbar (Food For Animals rapper and Future Times label boss), Hume (recently back in DC after traveling through India), and Cornel West Theory, who have been M.I.A. since '06, or maybe I'm just out of the loop.

Tracklist:

1. Loveloop – Maxmillion Dunbar
2. Prophetic Suicide – the Cornel West Theory
3. Wise Light Born – Hume
4. Sleep In – Big Gold Belt
5. Tired – The Fly Girlz
6. Olds Achieva Care Bear – Framed Mistake
7. Come on the Deathbed – Chris Grier