Mole's Mega Mix '04

1. The Advantage - Megaman 3 - Dr. Wiley Stage
2. Annie - Me +1
3. Art Brut - Formed A Band
4. Cyndi Lauper - She Bop
5. Destiny's Child - Lose My Breath
6. Demon Vs. Lady Fury - Gash (remix)
7. Fabolous - Breath
8. Terror Squad - Lean Back (remix) ft. Ma$e, Eminem and Lil' Jon
9. Gravy Train!!!! - Burger Baby
10. Gravy Train!!!! - Mouthfulla Caps
11. Joanna Newsome - The Sprout And The Bean
12. Lady Sovereign - Sad Arse Stripah
13. Lady Sovereign - Ch-Ching (Cheque 1, 2)
14. LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Clap-a-pella mix)
15. LCD Soundsystem  - Yeah (Stupid Mix)
16. Munk - Kick Out The Chairs ft. James Murphy
17. Snoop Dogg - Drop It Like It's Hot ft. Pharrell Williams
18. TV On The Radio - Mr. Grieves
19. Tom Tom Club - Genius Of Love
20. Joanna Newsome - Cassiopeia

Do you remember where you were when you first heard Drop It Like It's Hot? I do. It really was a moment when I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing. It shouldn't have made sense as a song but it did. So much. Its composition sounded like a work of complete madness but its catchiness was undeniable.

I was in George's new small basement flat on West Nicolson Street September 2004, where we made this mix together. If I had to guess the exact date I'd probably say it was Sunday the 12th. He'd lived with me and Luke on Gilmore Place for a few years prior but he had moved out not long before that evening. I guess the relentless mess of that party flat had gotten to him. I was round visiting, seeing the place and having a little drink and catch up. The conversation turned quickly to music. It always did. It was either gonna be that or films or books.

There are about 3 people that I can think of who have had a profound influence in how I consume and experience music. George is on that list. He constantly exposed me to records (and films and books for that matter) that I might never have otherwise come to and would get as enthused as I was when I brought stuff I knew he'd like to his attention too. It was a support system for music nerds. He, however was always a much bigger nerd than I. Encyclopedic knowledge of culture and art. 

One evening after being at the cinema or seeing a band or something, this would've been around March/April 1999, we were walking home from town excitedly discussing what music we had been enjoying. George suggested we go back to his to drink some whiskey and listen to some tunes, his mum was away so we could turn the music up loud. Sounded good. So we went back. I was saying that I'd become a bit obsessed with Mogwai's recently released Come On Die Young album and G asked if I'd heard their first album; Young Team. I hadn't and he had a copy. So he put on Like Herod and we sat on the bottom bunk of the bunk bed that was in his little room and sipped our whiskey. We had to hunch a little as there wasn't a huge amount of space between bunks. I was telling him some story, he looked like he was way more interested in the story than it was interesting and I barely registered the mischievous grin on his face as he slowly turned the volume up on the stereo as I spoke. In my head I thought he was really enjoying my tale so I kept going and going and then 02.57 happened and I jumped out of my skin. So hard that I smashed my head on the underside of the top bunk. That lurch from quiet to loud still gets me, how George didn't even flinch I will never understand and I will never forget how hard he laughed. The bastard. Once I got over the initial shock and pain I saw the funny side too. It was a mean prank but a really good one.

That same night I believe he introduced me to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and to Will Oldham and his many guises. He was always giving me so much. It always felt like a personal triumph whenever I was the one doing the enlightening. It wasn't often but it did happen.

Anyway, back to September '04, we were doing the usual talking about what we'd been listening to recently and were downloading stuff to play to each other. This compilation is what came together from the evening. Looking at the list now I can still tell what tracks were the ones he showed me, which ones I downloaded and which were the ones we found together. 

The Advantage was definitely an act that he showed me. He knew that the very idea of this band was right up my street. A band who's modus operandi was to cover every song from every Nintendo Entertainment System game ever released. Sold! They're still together but their last few records have been live recordings and b-side reissues. Their first record preceded the whole Chiptune revival movement by about 8 years, they basically invented the genre but favoured old fashioned guitars and drums over electronic sounds. They were the proto-Anamanaguchi.

Gimmicky bands and ideas like this were the kind of thing that George would find amusing initially but would become tired of real fast. But he knew well enough that this existing at all would delight me and it did. Hearing this again reminded me of how good their version of Cyndi Lauper's Goonies R Good Enough from The Goonies II game was.

Swedish pop music has a strong lineage from ABBA to Roxette to Ace Of Base to Max Martin, and Annie is definitely an under-celebrated part of that. Of course that's probably because she's from Norway, but whatever, Scandi-pop is Scandi-pop. She's had a few minor hits but so much of her output deserved to be massive. Her brand of pop was intensely colourful, ultra bright, super catchy and pneumatically bouncy. And so much fun. We would have downloaded this after having read about her, the music press and blogs at the time got briefly very excited about her. Me + 1 is a hell of a tune and a bit of a shocker that it wasn't a single. G and me were both fans of her first album Anniemal which also would've probably been the first time I'd become aware of producer Richard X for his work on the first half of the record. I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me was a slight return for Annie in 2008 but it never really happened for her, which was a shame as her second album Don't Stop was excellent too.

Formed A Band is 100% an NME recommendation. This was exactly the kind of record that the writers of the New Musical Express in 2004 would pissed their pants over. I feel like this era was very much the start of the very steep decline of that magazine that has continued to today. Sad to think how good it once was. Remember they put Godspeed You Black Emperor! on the cover? Kelis too. And At The Drive - In. And The Strokes. Aphex Twin. So Solid Crew! And they used to write in-depth pieces on these bands and artists. Fuck, I used to love that paper.

That's not to say that Art Brut are in any way to blame for this decline. Formed A Band is really actually quite a fun tune. Written literally moments after the band was formed (allegedly), it's scuzzy and funny and kind of charming. The lyrics are hilarious with their bold ambitions; to make "Israel and Palestine get along" and that they're gonna play Top Of The Pops for "8 weeks in a row" and that they're gonna make sure "everyone knows everything is gonna be okay". These goals are yet to be achieved but that band is still together so there is still time.

I mentioned Cyndi Lauper's Goonies R Good Enough earlier and I guess seeing her on the TV in The Goonies when I was a kid would've probably been when I became a fan of hers. Years later I was given a copy of her best of compilation Twelve Deadly Cyns...And Then Some on cassette for a birthday or Christmas and I nearly wore that tape out. On this evening George had just downloaded her debut solo LP She's So Unusual and was really enjoying it, I hadn't heard it for years but immediately demanded he put She Bop on. We danced like fools. It is a perfect pop gem about female masturbation. There are some really good songs about female masturbation.

Exactly how we came across it I'm not sure but the new Destiny's Child single Lose My Breath had just premiered, on AOL I think, and George and I got super hyped at the news. It'd been a few years since the Survivor LP had been released so we were excited as hell to hear new material from them.

Years previously, I remember one peculiarly hot day in Edinburgh in the summer of 2000, we were walking into town to buy some CD'S and George announced he was planning on picking up a copy of The Writing's On The Wall. This was a record I knew quite well but refused to admit enjoying. I knew it because my sister, Annika was a fan. I, on the other hand, was into 'real' music, y'know,  with guitars and stuff? Like Oasis. What a little twit. I used to give Annika a hard time for liking all that 'crap RnB nonsense. They can't even play any instruments'. Tell you what instrument I was; a trumpet.

So I was somewhat confused with this guy whose taste in music up to this point I had considered to be very cool; lots of metal and rock and gangsta rap. I could get on board with that stuff. Why then, would he want to buy an RnB record? Even a cheesy pop record like a Britney album or something, I could vaguely understand. What didn't I get? He explained to me how he thought the album had 4 of his favourite singles of the last year on it. His enthusiastic explanations of what he liked about each one completely changed the way I thought about them. My perspective was shifted. Permenantly. To the extent that now RnB records take up a large amount of my listening time and is a genre that houses some of my favourite ever albums.

When we hit play on Lose My Breath I remember us saying how much we couldn't wait to hear it in a club. I think we even burnt a copy to CD and took it to the Thursday night regular spot; The Snatch Club at The Liquid Rooms and got a friend who was DJing to play it. It is still is a banger even if it hasn't aged as well as some of their earlier singles. Fun fact about it; Jay-Z wrote the hook for it before he'd even been played the beat.

Grime is something I can legitimately claim to have turned George on to. He would have got to it by himself eventually but I was there first. Not that it was a competition or anything. But I was there first. Definitely. *strong arm emoji *. I'd bought a copy of Dizzee Rascal's I Luv U on the day it was released and after having played it on repeat all that day I was out for a drink with G in the evening and was telling him how amazing it was. We were living together at the time and when we got home drunk and high from the club we banged it on in my tiny box room. Really loud. Many times in a row. We were so gassed. It sounded so exciting and new. And after that we tracked down as much other Grime stuff as we could. He always had better sources than I had so more often than not he'd bring me the most amazing new songs and artists from the genre.

The Demon Vs. Lady Fury track on this comp is one that he was excited to share with me. An aggressive and angry sounding instrumental is matched by the equally aggressive and angry MC's spitting their bars of misogyny and misandry in a grueling gender battle. The content of these kinds of lyrics is always problematic but when the delivery is as impassioned and skilled as this it is incredibly thrilling. I don't actually remember hearing anything else by either artist but I'm intrigued enough to seek some other tracks out now.

MTV Base kept me in the loop with regards to what was going on in mainstream rap at that time. Many hours were spent slouched on the sofa in Gilmore Place watching videos by Usher and Cam'Ron and Busta and 50 Cent and the like. I don't remember it specifically but I'm fairly sure I caught the video for the Just Blaze produced facemelter Breathe by Fabolous one afternoon while lazing around. I would've definitely sat up to attention upon hearing that beat. It still packs a hell of a punch and Fab rhymes and flows on it better than he ever had or has since. I can probably still rap it top to bottom. Has to be one of my top 5 Just Blaze beats. It's so hard and so dramatic and so catchy and so danceable.

So yeah, it would have been one of my suggestions.  As would Lean Back by Fat Joe's Terror Squad which I'm sure would've been discovered the same way as Breathe. I can't be sure how we came across the remix included here but at that time Lil' Jon was omnipresent. It is a weird line up to appear on a track together and it kinda works but the original version of this song is infinitely better, with Remy Ma's verse being particularly hard. This mix is just a nice curio. 

Gravy Train!!! are a George inclusion. I remember he'd been listening to a lot of their stuff around that time and was psyched to play me some of their songs. I really liked the 2 included here. When I read the tracklist I remembered the band and had an idea what they sounded like but couldn't remember the songs, as soon as I hit play I was like 'oh yeah, I remember this song'.

Burger Baby has the weird House of Horrors-type of kitch-y scream on the chorus that is pretty fun over the lo-fi Casio keyboard beat and with the stupid lyrics about being in love with a hamburger. It also had a really fun animated video. And even more mental is Mouthfulla Caps which is just a big, ol' mess. But a really fun mess. It's basically a bunch of badly sung interpolations and re-appropriated lyrics from CeCe Peniston and Foreigner and is about asking how exactly one raps with a mouthful of caps.

This evening was also the first time I heard Joanna Newsome. I was completely oblivious to her existence but George was already obsessed. I remember him describing her as 'a harp player with a voice like Lisa Simpson but who looks like, basically, my dream girl' or something like that. I was intrigued. He played me a few tracks from her first album The Milk-Eyed Mender and after initially being unsure about her voice I too fell in love with her. The Sprout And The Bean is lush and pretty. Just her, her harp and some backing vocals. She can really play that thing. As always with her, the lyrics have depth and room for many interpretations. If it is about abortion then it must surely be the most beautiful song ever on the subject.

A thing that happened around this part of '04 that is wholly inexplicable is this; Jentina. What was that all about? If she had just been a singularity that would've been weird enough but the subsequent beef between her and rising Grime MC Lady Sovereign made things even more outlandish. Full disclosure; when Bad Ass Strippa first dropped I was on board. I thought 'pretty white gypsy girl who raps? This should be interesting' and convinced myself not only that the single wasn't that bad but that it was actually good. My delusion is embarrassing. At any rate, quite why Lady Sovereign decided to take it upon herself to take shots at this aspiring pop sensation is unclear. What is clear is how savage a takedown she delivered.

Sov we had already heard earlier in the year on the awesome remix of Fit But You Know It by The Streets where she appeared with and upstaged other rising grime MC's Kano, Donae'o and Tinchy Stryder. She absolutely bodied that track. We were impressed, so I guess G had been keeping an ear out for her and it was with glee that he played me Sad Arse Stripah. She spat her 'nightmare', career-ending verses with ferocious vitriol. This is what Sov sounded like in her early years. It was astonishing and exciting. Chi-Ching (Cheque 1, 2) had the same energy and vibrance. G and I went to see her live a year or so later in Edinburgh on the same night that we'd seen Dizzee Rascal in Glasgow a few hours earlier and I remember she really sounded like the future and made Dizzee sound past it. And then she went on Celebrity Big Brother and collaborated with The Ordinary Boys and it all went to shit. Real pity.

Speaking of losing your edge, George and I were already fans of James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem limited output up to this point. Give It Up was still on heavy rotation for me and I was glad to hear new stuff by them. George played me a few versions of their latest tune Yeah. The Clap-a-pella mix seems to have disappeared from the internet but is exactly what it sounds like; a short 2 minute version of the song with just their voices, hand claps and little else to it. I love this version. He also played me the Pretentious mix which doesn't appear on the mix. It's 11 minutes long so I guess I opted to include the then monikered Stupid mix which later was dubbed the Crass mix which was only 9 minutes long to save space. It is the superior version to be fair. It's more immediate and varied as it builds steadily to it's house-y/techno-y conclusion. The MC5 referencing track by a band called Munk and featuring LCD's main man was also another sweet find by George. I never heard anything else by these guys but this song was great.

A lovely acapella cover of the Pixies song Mr. Grieves by TV On The Radio was a rarity George had discovered. Again, we were both already fans but as always George was diving deeper into their releases and finding hidden gems that he was more than happy to share with me. And I think the inclusion here of Tom Tom Club's much covered and sampled classic Genius Of Love would have come at the tail end of the night, when nice and drunk on red wine, we were just putting 'on our classics and we'll 'av a little dance, shall we?'. Presumably Annie's Chewing Gum which samples from it would've reminded us of how much of a tune it was. The compilation closes out with a further moment of gorgeous Joanna Newsome dreaminess with the wondrous Cassiopeia.

12 years later and I still love this collection. It really takes me back to that night. And the most enduring memory I have from that night is the epiphanic moment George and I shared when we first heard that new Snoop Dogg and The Neptunes collaboration. A further reminder of how amazing music can be. I'd heard there was a new Snoop track featuring Pharrell floating around from my friend Georgia. I think she asked me in a club if I'd heard it and I was like 'you mean Beautiful?' and she was like 'no, stupid! Its called Drop It Like It's Hot'. So a few nights later I told George we had to find it and he tracked it down fairly quickly. When it started we just stared at each other. Was this really a track built around someone clicking their tongue, a base drum, the sound of a spray can and someone saying 'Snoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop'? And then that synth stab. Oh my god. It was unusual too that Pharrell took the first verse as the featured artist. Probably still his best verse ever. The whole thing was so eccentric and funky. Snoop slays on it too.

When it finished George and I burst out laughing. We were blown away. We started it again. I can't be sure how many times we played it that night, but it was a lot. I can't quite believe it was 12 years ago either. It still sounds like it was sent from the future. And the video, when it came out weeks later, wow. I was already a Neptunes fanboy but this cemented it.

I love how excited we both got. We had many moments like that. Too many to count but not enough that I don't miss having them now. George lost his battle with complications related to non-Hodgkins lymphoma on the 29th of March 2014. It had been a long struggle and he had fought so hard but he needed to rest. He needed peace. And so he left us. But for those he left behind, he left us with so much. He gave me more than he will ever know or understand. He was a friend like none I'd ever had before and one the likes of I'll never have again. But I still have these memories. These moments. And when a simple song or film or photo or CD can bring them alive in my mind so easily I know just how important they were.

The last message he sent me was about the first gig we went to together which was Asian Dub Foundation at The Garage in Glasgow and also him asking me to bring him a copy of Super Furry Animal's MWNG (I did). Right up to the end we communicated and related to each other through art and specifically music. And so it is still with regularity that after hearing a new record or seeing a new film or going to a gallery that I wonder what he would have made of it. And I wish I could ask him because I could never guess. He surprised me constantly and challenged me in all the best ways. He was a very beautiful and special man who enriched my life immeasurably.

To George; I will never stop missing having you around. I still think about you every day. I love you, pal. Rest easy.