Best Butter Team Mixes of 2k9

Oh snap, 500th post. It's been a pleasure. I'll be shutting down BT to work on some other sites (including Sketchy Santas, Sketchy Bunnies and Urlesque), but please enjoy this wintry mix + my other two favorites from this year. Be sure to sign up for email updates on the right for a few mixes in 2k10.


Butter Team Winter 2k9 Mix (right click to download mp3)

Tracklist:
1. The Avalanches - Little Journey
2. Royksopp feat. Fever Ray - This Must Be It (Thin White Duke edit)
3. Discovery - Osaka Loop Line
4. Fleetwood Mac - Dreams (Mingus Rude/Avalanches edits)
5. The Outcasts - Loving You, Sometimes
6. Okkervil River - On Tour With Zykos
7. The Zombies - I Can't Make Up My Mind
8. Benji Hughes - The Mummy
9. Ruby Andrews - You Made A Believer Out of Me
10. Q-Tip - Won't Trade
11. Avalanches/Daft Punk/Cut Copy - SuperNightVisions
12. VEGA - Kyoto Gardens
13. Mark Mothersbaugh - Look At That Old Grizzly Bear
14. Sufjan Stevens - That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!








Summer Sanka Mix (Deux) - right click to download

Tracklist:
1. Electric Light Orchestra - Livin' Thing (Avalanches redux)
2. Instant Funk - Got My Mind Made Up (Avalanches redux + Spank Rock intro)
3. The Main Attraction - Everyday
4. Atlas Sound feat. Panda Bear - Walkabout
5. Beach Boys - You Still Believe in Me
6. Bullion feat. J Dilla - You Still Believe in Dee
7. Roy Ayers - Running Away
8. Kid Creole & the Coconuts - Stool Pigeon
9. Organ Morgan - Cocaine Afternoon
10. The Avalanches - Slow Walking
11. Tough Alliance - 25 Years and Runnin'
12. The Very Best - Yalira
13. Junior Byron - Dance to the Music (LCD Soundsystem redux)





Buttery Soul Mix (right click to download)

New Holidays - Maybe So, Maybe No (1969)
Smokey Robinson - If You Can Want (1968)
Ruby Andrews - You Made a Believer Out of Me (1969)
The Jarmels - A Little of Bit of Soap (1961)
The Impressions - Seven Years (1969)
The Mad Lads - No Strings Attached (1969)
Betty Padgett - Sugar Daddy (1975)
Harvey Averne - You're No Good (1968)
Jackson Sisters - I Believe in Miracles (1976)
The Johnny Otis Show - Watts Breakaway (1969)

Keep reading...

Collapse post

The Man Who Saved Christmas Music

With the exception of Vince Guaraldi or Wham!, most Christmas music is super played out and should only be enjoyed on or around the actual holiday. Sufjan Steven's Songs For Christmas collection, however, is so money you can keep it on blast all year.

You probably already knew that - but did you know the tradition continues with Songs For Christmas: Astral Inter Planet Space Captain Christmas Infinity Voyage, Volume VIII, which was quietly shared with superfriends earlier this week? And that it's now available for all to enjoy? Sample one below and dl the rest over at the V Knob.


Sufjan Stevens - Do You See What I See?

Bonus:
Fully Fitted Holiday Mixx Massacre
Wham! - Last Christmas video (or Karaoke version)
Archers of Loaf - Assassination on X-Mas Eve (via Fluxblog)

Keep reading...

Collapse post

That Was The Worst _____ Ever!

In only a few short months the familiar sounds of Christmas music will trigger your Pavlovian urge to spend, spend, spend in hopes of attaining those perfect but elusive holiday moments. It may also trigger the annual series of self-evaluation and actualization questions (am I happy at clown college?), or just your deeply cynical resistance to the commercialization of all things Christmas.

Either way, you'll need good music to get by. Last year Sufjan Stevens did us all a solid by releasing Songs For Christmas, a collection of original and classic singalong EPs he recorded every December with friends, roommates, and musical peers. Armed with a Reader's Digest Christmas Songbook (and a mug of hot cider) Sufjan & friends concocted new musical fruit cakes each year, implementing every musical instrument they found lying around the house: banjo, oboe, Casiotone, wood flute, a buzzy guitar, hand claps, sleigh bells, Hammond organ, some tree tinsel and more sleigh bells.

It's essential for holiday survival; but many of Sufjan's original compositions can also provide year-round aural catharsis for whatever ails you (think b-sides to "Casimir Pulaski Day"). One of your goats is missing? Bad day on the Edwards campaign? Just kick off your shoes, put on the earplugs and substitute "Christmas" for your own non demoninational sad lib.


Sufjan Stevens - That was the Worst Christmas Ever! (from Ding! Dong!: Songs for Christmas, Vol. III, recorded December 2003)

This is easily one of my top three Suf jams from the entire catalogue. While the first verse begins with classic pre-TV Xmas activities (shoveling snow, sledding, etc.), the existential questions that follow should be asked more than once a year: "Can you say what you want? Can you say what you want to be?"

Keep reading...

Collapse post