About

I used to love making mix tapes. I’d spend hours sat in front of the hi-fi with a stack of records (and later CDs) at my side, picking the perfect songs to complement each other or communicate a message to someone else. Mostly that message would be “listen to all these cool songs – I’m sure you’ll love them too!”, but occasionally it would be a little more personal: “listen to all these cool songs – if you love them, you’ll love me too”. Not that this ever worked as a seduction technique, but it kept me off the streets.

They say the internet killed the mixtape – easy downloading and playback makes everyone’s record collection one giant mixtape – but I happen to think it died long before the mp3 invasion. Cheap recordable CDRs gave us the option of higher quality mixtapes mix-CDs, but it was never the same. The easier it became to make a mixtape, the less effort people put into it.

I don’t make mixtapes any more, except my annual Best Of The Year CD which I inflict on a few friends in lieu of a Christmas present…and probably ends up straight in the bin. But I’ve always loved talking about music, writing about music, and trying to get people to discover music they’ve never tried before. I’ve been doing it for years over on my other blog, Sunset Over Slawit, but that wasn’t enough anymore. So I’ve started this, an endless online mixtape filled with old songs, new songs… and songs that are about something. (I’ll try to tell you exactly what they’re about…and if I don’t know, I’ll make it up.)

On this blog you’ll hear indie, rock, pop, soul, country, easy listening, metal, rap…maybe even a little dance (but not much). My tastes are varied. You won’t like every track, but stick with it and you might discover something new. If just one person gets turned on to a record they’ve never heard before because of this mixtape, then it’ll all be worth while.