Due to the ongoing battle against COVID-19, many of us throughout the world are currently experiencing various states of lockdown and isolation. That’s not a situation that looks like it’s going to change significantly for the foreseeable future, so today i’m beginning a new weekly series of mixtapes on 5:4 – The Isolation Mixtapes. i very much hope that these regular doses of fabulous, fascinating music will go some way to relieve the monotony and make our time isolated from friends and loved ones a little more bearable. Just as importantly, they’ll provide plenty of ideas for music worth buying – and thereby help to support the industry a bit.
The Isolation Mixtapes will be a separate strand from my usual quarterly mixtapes (which i’ll be pausing during this period), and while they won’t have a specific theme, i have given myself some simple rules in order to be able to compile them relatively quickly. i’m making these mixtapes an opportunity to look back over the last decade, so everything will have been released during the years 2010 to 2019. In tandem with this, i’ll be working my way through the alphabet, one letter at a time, so this first mixtape in the series features composers, artists and groups that all begin with the letter A. Two tracks from each year are allowed, making for a total of 20 in each mixtape, and the tracks should be no longer than 7 minutes’ duration. None of the tracks will have been included in any of my previous mixtapes, and in general, i’m going to be favouring music by artists whom i haven’t featured before. So those are the rules, and i hope they’ll make for an interesting, eclectic whistle-stop tour through some of the very best things i’ve listened to during the last ten years.
Here’s the tracklisting in full, together with approximate timings and links to obtain the music – and now, more than ever, if you like what you hear, do please buy the music.
- 00:00:00 Aidan Baker – Shapes (from The Shape of Snakes – free download)
- 00:02:55 aTelecine – Never Was A Dreamer (from A Cassette Tape Culture)
- 00:05:01 Angelo Badalamenti & David Lynch – Mysterioso #1 (film version) (from Twin Peaks Archive)
- 00:08:05 Arlene Sierra – Birds and Insects – Book 1 – IV. Titmouse (from Music of Arlene Sierra Vol. 1)
- 00:09:08 Alizbar – Estuary (from Harp’s Fairytales)
- 00:13:12 Alone Architect – The Incision (from Alone Architect – free download)
- 00:18:04 Access To Arasaka – — – – – (from écrasez l’infâme)
- 00:21:42 Anouk – Kill (from Sad Singalong Songs)
- 00:25:47 Alexei Borisov & Jelena Glazova – Anti-Motherhood (from Macbeth – free download)
- 00:31:31 Autumn’s Grey Solace – Árænan (from Monajjfyllen)
- 00:35:26 Arca – Ashland (from Mutant)
- 00:40:30 Andrew Hunt – Automatic Music Making (1893) (from Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde)
- 00:47:08 Anna Meredith – The Vapours (from Varmints)
- 00:53:36 Aufgang – Backstabbers (from Turbulences)
- 00:56:45 Angharad Drake – Bullet (from Ghost)
- 01:00:02 Anna Madsen – Devil’s Garden (from Whisper)
- 01:03:12 Alice Glass – Stillbirth (Zola Jesus Remix) (from Alice Glass (Remixes))
- 01:05:42 Anna Thorvaldsdottir – Illumine (from Aequa)
- 01:12:47 Alex Baranowski – Elysian Fields (from A Streetcar Named Desire (Original Score))
- 01:16:54 Amanda Palmer – They’re Saying Not To Panic (from There Will Be No Intermission – free download)