OÍR / April 2024 Mixtape
A nostalgic collection of "electronica" tracks from the late 90's/early 2000's
Download the the mixtape here →
I have a hit or miss relationship with nostalgia. I’ve never really been sentimental for the past, never really wishing I could go back (though being a kid again and not having the responsibilities of adulthood might be a nice reprieve for a month or so). My relationship to music is similar. I do have iconic albums from my teens and 20’s that I revisit every now and then, but my taste has changed so much since then that these albums are far and few between. For a very long time, Radiohead was my favorite band and I coveted OK Computer and Kid A. Nowadays, I would much prefer to visit Yo La Tengo’s back catalog of classics, hits like Electr-O-Pura or I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the music of my late teens, specifically my time in high school and directly after, roughly ´96 to 2001. It was a formative time for me, as it is for so many of us, and music was such an important part of my growth. Back then I discovered music in two main ways: Dimple Records and 120 Minutes. Dimple Records was the small but mighty record store in my hometown of Roseville, California. Many a weekend was spent glued to the listening stations, trying to find the new artists and albums that we read about in magazines, or buying a new album on a whim because of the rad looking cover or packaging. Plus, my friends had amazing taste in music, which didn’t hurt either. 120 Minutes was a show on MTV hosted by Matt Pinfield and it was the place I discovered so many artists that I don’t think I would have normally found. It’s Sunday at midnight to 2am time slot made the show feel like something exclusive, like I was putting in the work to discover these hidden gems.
I thought it would be fun to create a snapshot of what that time sounded like to me. The genres on the mix span from electronic, to drum and bass, to trip hop. You’ll hear a through line. between tracks, like a streak of DJ Shadow showing up in his own track “Organ Donor” as well as on the UNKLE and Handsome Boy Modeling School tracks. Dan the Automator also gets a double nod with HBMS and Deltron 3030, which honestly, I wanted an excuse to get some Del and Sean Lennon in there. I also included artists like Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers but not necessarily the tracks that people would know them for, just the songs that I really loved at that time. In the end, I ended up making this mix twice. There were a lot of artists I wanted to include, acts like The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, Propellerheads, Dr. Octagon, Beth Orton, and The Beta Band, though they didn’t quite fit the vibe. I did manage to add Lemon Jelly and Mr. Oizo who I assume are unknown to many.
Hope you enjoy the mix, shoot me an email or leave me a comment if you liked this trip down memory lane or discovered a new artist 💙
Download the the mixtape here →
When I was in high school, I listened to this indie/punk show on the local Acorn radio station in Dallas, which was very formative for me! That show was on from midnight to 2am on Sunday (aka Saturday night, which shows you how kewl I was 😎). Also, when I was a DJ for my college radio station, I would often play “Space walk” by Lemon Jelly, and more than once, someone called in to ask, “what song is this???” 💛
Oh my word, this mix is spot on, thank you. Like a nostalgia explosion for a very specific time of my life.