A little over one year ago a mix was posted on here called “Sparkwood and Twenty One“, in reference to the nighttime meeting point of various characters in the cult TV show Twin Peaks. It was intended to be filmic and mysterious, like wandering around late at night in the snow through some secretive forest.
This mix, Winter Waves and Cryptic Caves, carries out the same theme but broadens the stylings somewhat. It’s also worth noting the release years of the tracks included span over thirty years! Incorporating psychedelic drones, film soundtracks, electro-acoustics, slow ballads and minimalist electronics; the track selections for this total is a hair of being just under two hours of material, so grab yourself a beverage of choice and sink into where you are sitting. Best enjoyed in various states of consciousness or contemplation. I say this as I have a tendency to listen to such music when going to sleep or when sick in bed.
Try it on. Stay in out of the unforgiving weather. An atmospheric mix for listening to under the influence of medication (whether legal or illegal) or staring out the misted window thinking about bird’s feathers and dark matter.
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1. THE FOR CARNATION | Being Held 2000
2. BLACKOUT BEACH | Biloxi, In A Grove, Cleans Out His Eyes 2009
3. LICHENS | Vevor of Agassou 2007
4. THIS MORTAL COIL | Waves Become Wings 1984
5. YELLOWKNIVES | Sweat Logic 2007
6. TANGERINE DREAM | Creation (Soundtrack to Sorcerer) 1977
6. MATER SUSPIRIA VISION | The Afterlife 2010
7. SUBPOENA THE PAST | Altitude On Ice 1998
8. AIX EM KLEMM | The Girl With The Flesh Coloured Crayon 2000
9. LALO SCHIFRIN | Main Theme (Soundtrack to THX 1138) 1971
10. RAMASES | Molecular Delusion 1971
11. CINDYTALK | Disintegrate 1989
12. TAMARYN | Golden Song 2009
13. UNWOUND | Abstraktions 1993
14. I†† | Ph▲sing 2010
15. ELISA WAUT | Russia 1985
16. BRUCE GILBERT | Work For “Do You Me? I Did.” (Part 3) 1982
17. COLIN NEWMAN | Fish 4 1982
18. SUSAN JUSTIN | Titles (Soundtrack to Forbidden World) 1982
19. JOHN FOXX | Film One 1980
20. CABARET VOLTAIRE | Partially Submerged 1978
21. GROWING | In The Shadow Of The Mountain 2005
22. ZOLA JESUS | Run Me Out 2010
23. SECOND LAYER | Black Flowers 1981
I’ll save the long-winded personal reflections for this mix and just deliver it straight as it is: a representative slice out of the pool of synth-saturated, future-thinking music that I love, namely between the years of 1978 to 1985. A number of these tracks have been with me for a long while, thrown in crusty old mix tapes for people or rotated as vinyl on the decks back when I used to DJ quite frequently in the early naughties. Some of them are more recent discoveries. Some are recommendations or discoveries from friends over the years. Some of the tracks are by bands that had some notable popularity at the time and others more obscured by time (well, we can all admit blogging and the internet has unearthed quite a few of them!).
This is a continuation of a little story, a narrative told in music from the previous installment of the White Lodge, number 003 to be exact. This is collection of tracks that as a whole aim to document the stylistic “shift” in music of artists coming out of the haze of the hardcore/punk/indie maelstrom of the early to mid 90s happening mainly in the US. This shift all being from a amber-hazed viewpoint of a contemporary version of myself recollecting how I viewed it all when it was actually happening: the bands I picked up on and the threads I started to observe being developed.
Small town idyll and angst-y emotional unrest…
This is the second mix that I have managed to get around to assembling out of a pool of theoretical mixes that I want to do. Time is a pretty precious commodity these days but hopefully this is the first of several more that I’ll cough up over the coming months.
