01.09.08

borrowed & blue 01.09.08

Slight fuck-up on the quality means that this one is 320 instead of 128 - and therefore will take longer to download. I don't know whether it's worth bearing in mind that I see this mixes as kind of use-once-and-destroy bits of pop ephemera, they're intentionally disposable. I use them for myself as a daily mental-download of music that I would never have listened to if I hadn't on some level forced myself to, and felt better because of it.

Doing this project has helped me, as someone who has worked in a semi-professional level in the music industry for 11 or so years, really reconnect with music as pure pleasure, something to immerse yourself in for no other reason other than it feels good. Not work. Musical comfort food.

• 1965
• 1979
• 2000
• 2007
• 1983
• 1988
• 1997
• 1982
• 1978
• ?
  

31.08.08

borrowed & blue 31.08.08

Shove this up your mind!

• 2003
• 2004
• 1986
• 2006
• 1979
• 1972
• 1969
• 1968
• 1970
• 2008
  
• 1970
• 2008

30.08.08

borrowed & blue 30.08.08

This mix opens with a song from an album with a very similar title to this blog...........................

• 2004
• 2006
• 1972
• 1973
• 2008
• 1973
• 1970
  

27.08.08

borrowed & blue 27.08.08

In just the few posts that we've done so far, the blogmixxes have managed to run the gamut of burlesque cabaret rock, death metal, avant-pop, art-glam, noise, skiffle, early country, bluegrass, folk, acoustic blues, electrosexx lo-fi pop, 'antifolk', experimental hip-hop, garage rock, unhinged Albinimess, slow jamz soul, skag rock, seventies MOR, child star teenpop, UK hip-hop, dubstep, industrial-dancehall, tweetronica, hardcore, visual kei, J-hop, psychobilly, goofball punk, goth, post-punk, prog, space rock, Disneymania and sheer fucking bubblegum.

But what I'm enjoying most about this experiment is just how hard it is to actually 'correctly' identify genre when it's mashed and pulped with so many weird juxtapositions here. It really fucks with the tyranny of taste.

I always loved listening to the radio late at night as a kid, and almost hated finding out what the songs were when the DJs broke the mood to talk. I remember loving Kylie's Confide In Me on first listen, and then balking when I found out who it belonged to. There are songs in these mixes that belong to the uncoolest of all bands, but with their edges warping and bleeding into the bleeding edge of modern music, they can sound just as futuristic and awesome.

The mixes are still something I'm getting the hang of, but the people who have heard them so far are loving getting off on the absurdities each one flaunts. I like the way they all sound different - my moods on different days of the week. It's not done for wilful eclecticism as much as a love for different sounds, colours and moods.

Today's timehaul:

• 1981
• 1988
• 2008
• 2008
• 1999
• 1979
• 1982
• 1982
• 1986
• 1978
• 1974
• 2005
• 1999
• 2000
  

borrowed & blue 23.08.08

Was listening to a lot of stuff from 2006 today. I can't remember what I was listening to in 2006, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't listening to so much dubstep. Perhaps hence the belated catch-up.

Our debut song from the 1990s sounds, meanwhile, like it was eerily pre-empting some of the sounds of 2006.

• 2006
• 2005
• 2007
• 2006
• 1997
• 2006
• 1982
• 2003
• 2006
• 2006
  

22.08.08

borrowed & blue 22.08.08

I guess what I really want for this blog is for people to treat these downloads like a goodie bag - the kind where you buy 5 mystery cds from your local record shop for a fiver - or as some kind of daily prescription, a musical pill.

Today's mix is brought to you by the years:

• 2002
• 1986
• 1973
• 1979
• 1969
• 2008
• 2005
• 2006
  

20.08.08

borrowed & blue 20.08.08

This is my first blog for Borrowed & Blue. Part of the intention is to try and strip preconceived ideas out of the way we listen to music. Bill Drummond recently gave up on the concept of recorded music altogether, although he admits that in stopping listening to CDs that by hearing music by chance, randomly, in unexpected locations, has reawoken a whole new love for songs which he'd previously been sick of. I agree, I love that randomness, the surprise. I want to try and create a forum for people to find music which they might haven't heard before sure, but also a place where people could rediscover music they heard maybe a long time ago, forgotten that they loved.

It's important for me to not include biography, because I want people to open their ears up and shut down their minds as much as possible. The 'blogosphere' is so overcrowded with judgements - just a few words arranged into a song title or a description can completely skew and screw with someone's expectations and perception of the sound. I just want people to listen and actually be surprised about music again.

Not all of the music I post here will be 'good', by most people's tastes.

And crucially, this isn't a quest into obscurism. There will be songs by a lot of 'obvious' artists, but maybe ones you've never heard before. This isn't me picking an approved reading list and saying 'LISTEN TO THIS', it's me getting off on this music which, on a daily basis, I'd never ever heard before and wanting people to listen with me.

This blog will undoubtedly be a hymn to OCD, but that seems so obvious that I don't need to explain it any further.


The years that make up our first mix are these:

• 1985
• 1988
• 1982
• 1973
• 2008
• 1958
• 1947
• 1928
• ?
  
• 1969
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005

This first blog is a test post. If I do more mixes they'll probably be shorter, easier to digest. Maybe.