The Story of Mixed Triples...
This past August, I wanted to make a dancy mix that wasn't paced as fast as typical house-progressive mixes, but something you can groove to while hanging out at a friend's house for a BBQ. I like these mixes because they are a lot of fun and do not make you feel like you have to take speed in order to keep up with the music. After a few frustrating weeks, I couldn't mix about 2 hours worth of music. There wasn't any flow and it wasn't making any sense. The beats and hooks were there, but I couldn’t get the tracks to flow properly.
That is until I discovered the addictive auditory guilty pleasures of Polish hip-hop. In the process of making dinner with my friends, my friend Greg played a Polish song that resonated with me. Simply put, there was something about it that had me hooked, whether the instrumentation, the rhymes or just the song as a whole. Soon after this, I discovered that, for me, Polish hip-hop is just as addictive as tea, chocolate or any other drug. A co-worker also gave me a copy of K.A.S.TA.’s Kastaniety, a CD that lived on my Win-Amp play list for several weeks. It was the perfect background music to listen to while writing a poster for SFN's annual meeting in Atlanta. My coworker also shared with me PFK Company’s website. My curiosity about Polish hip-hop proved to be so addictive that I have acquired about 100 albums worth of Polish hip-hop. Now only if I understood what these guys were rapping about…
To resolve my issue with the dancy music, I incorporated Polish tracks, thereby expanding the 2-hour list to about 3-hours. I also listened to Mixed Doubles, in an attempt to figure out why it was one of my favorite mixes. In my opinion, it is a perfect mix: dark undertones and solid beats with a slight eerie quality to the instrumentation. For me, the arrangement just flowed. I loved listening to it at night. With that in mind, I wanted to do another mix or two that incorporated not 2 tracks from an artist, but 3 tracks. I wanted the mix to be dark and to be listened at night. So 3 hours of music grew to 10 hours. Eventually, after adding tracks of various styles by artists from over 10 countries, the play list grew to 17 mixes totaling 22-hours music.
Through the ambitious undertaking of constant listening and rearranging over the last 5-7 months, I arranged 17 mixes such that each mix could stand alone. However, if you listened to the mixes continuously in the order of release, they will comprise one very long mix. In other words, it is a mix within a mix.
After several months of arranging, I am pleased to release Mixed Triples. Each mix in the series is associated with a pair of cities. Some cities are randomly assigned to the mix, while others have a significant and/or personal meaning. Over the last 8 years, I have visited some of the cities, while I want to visit others in the near future. There is a story for each mix, but one thing is certain: I could imagine myself listening to these mixes while perambulating the city or traveling by train to arrive to the city, preferably at night.
That is until I discovered the addictive auditory guilty pleasures of Polish hip-hop. In the process of making dinner with my friends, my friend Greg played a Polish song that resonated with me. Simply put, there was something about it that had me hooked, whether the instrumentation, the rhymes or just the song as a whole. Soon after this, I discovered that, for me, Polish hip-hop is just as addictive as tea, chocolate or any other drug. A co-worker also gave me a copy of K.A.S.TA.’s Kastaniety, a CD that lived on my Win-Amp play list for several weeks. It was the perfect background music to listen to while writing a poster for SFN's annual meeting in Atlanta. My coworker also shared with me PFK Company’s website. My curiosity about Polish hip-hop proved to be so addictive that I have acquired about 100 albums worth of Polish hip-hop. Now only if I understood what these guys were rapping about…
To resolve my issue with the dancy music, I incorporated Polish tracks, thereby expanding the 2-hour list to about 3-hours. I also listened to Mixed Doubles, in an attempt to figure out why it was one of my favorite mixes. In my opinion, it is a perfect mix: dark undertones and solid beats with a slight eerie quality to the instrumentation. For me, the arrangement just flowed. I loved listening to it at night. With that in mind, I wanted to do another mix or two that incorporated not 2 tracks from an artist, but 3 tracks. I wanted the mix to be dark and to be listened at night. So 3 hours of music grew to 10 hours. Eventually, after adding tracks of various styles by artists from over 10 countries, the play list grew to 17 mixes totaling 22-hours music.
Through the ambitious undertaking of constant listening and rearranging over the last 5-7 months, I arranged 17 mixes such that each mix could stand alone. However, if you listened to the mixes continuously in the order of release, they will comprise one very long mix. In other words, it is a mix within a mix.
After several months of arranging, I am pleased to release Mixed Triples. Each mix in the series is associated with a pair of cities. Some cities are randomly assigned to the mix, while others have a significant and/or personal meaning. Over the last 8 years, I have visited some of the cities, while I want to visit others in the near future. There is a story for each mix, but one thing is certain: I could imagine myself listening to these mixes while perambulating the city or traveling by train to arrive to the city, preferably at night.
posted by Meera Devi at
12:43 AM
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