Listen and Download @ http://driftedaway.staires.org

My taste in the last two months has shifted. It might be because of the influence of my ex-girlfriend (who seems to be becoming my girlfriend yet again) who’s into music you can actually move your idiot body around to, or my best friend, who’s also into music you can actually move your idiot body around to. My girlfriend’s taste falls more in the “happy wave your arms around and rattle your head” kind of dance. My friend’s falls more in the “go to a rave and get fucked up and maybe pass out and die from dehydration” kind of dance. These two people have seemingly massively influenced my listening habits.

It started before them, however, when I was recommended Dan Deacon by one of my closest Twitter friends. I wasn’t really able to enjoy Deacon’s Bromst on first listen because it is so noisy, that seemingly specific to Baltimore noisiness, but I heard something in it. I was so impressed by the fact that all his samples sounded so organic (and I learned later that this is not because they are good samples, but because actual musicians and instruments play his compositions) that even though I downloaded the album illegally at first, and didn’t even like it very much, I bought it on Amazon MP3 just to be sure I had a pristine copy free of encoding errors.

Things progressed from there and I wound up falling in love with Holy Fuck, Passion Pit, YACHT, Red Wire Black Wire, and a variety of other synthy/dancey music. Meanwhile Deacon’s noisiness influenced me into discovering noise rock acts like Marnie Stern, Wavves, Ponytail, and others not included in this playlist. At this point I felt I’d discovered enough new music to throw together a playlist of some kind.

My original intention was to create the “staires! dance party” playlist, composed almost entirely of, you guessed it, songs you can dance to. I thought I could construct a good mood, a good flow, over the course of 70 some odd minutes that would be a good example of what you’d hear if I threw a party I was DJing. Unfortunately I quickly realized two things: 1.) I don’t have enough dance music to make a full 70 minute playlist; 2.) I don’t want to leave out all these other great noise rock bands I’ve heard recently.

So, I set out to create a playlist showing the similarity between electronic dance music and noise rock.

This is not this playlist.

It is, but it isn’t at all what I expected. I felt a little like Frankenstein the first time I listened to this whole playlist in the presence of my best friend (on the way to see YACHT in San Diego) because the first half of it is so good. I build up this great mood with all the dance music and then I upend the plane and noise dive the mood right into the ground at full speed. The last portion of this is almost an endurance battle to get through (especially when you finally hit the Wavves song, at which point I almost felt like screaming) if you’re not prepared for it… and nothing in this playlist prepares you for the last sequence of six or so songs.

As it is, and although this is the first playlist I’ve constructed that I’ll probably never randomly listen to (or at least it will be a while before I recover), I feel no need to change it. I accomplished what I wanted to do (build a playlist segueing from dance music to noise rock) and although it’s listenability is in question, I kind of love what I did here. Maybe you will too. Or at least you’ll enjoy it up until about track 17.

1. Holy Fuck – Frenchy’s
2. The xx – Crystalised
3. Spoon – Don’t You Evah
4. Harlem Shakes – Sunlight
5. Battles – Prismism (intermission)
6. Archie Bronson Outfit – Dead Funny
7. Electric Six – Down at McDonaldz
8. Friendly Fires – White Diamonds
9. YACHT – I’m in Love With a Ripper
10. Matt & Kim – Good Ol’ Fashion Nightmare
11. Red Wire Black Wire – Gold for its Weight
12. Passion Pit – Moth’s Wings
13. Delorean – Seasun
14. Dan Deacon – Paddling Ghost
15. Marnie Stern – Shea Stadium
16. Cloud Cult – Must Explore (intermission)
17. Parts & Labor – Prefix Free
18. Ponytail – Beg Waves
19. Wavves – No Hope Kids
20. Evangelicals – Skeleton Man
21. Swan Lake – Settle On Your Skin
22. Frog Eyes – Reform the Countryside
23. The Beatles – Her Majesty (closer)

Do yourself a favor before you listen (if you download it) and run some sort of Replaygain/Soundcheck/Normalization on this. I didn’t, and the noise rock tracks at the end tend to vary in volume from quiet (Swan Lake) to ridiculously loud (Wavves) so, in order to save your ears, auto-adjust the volume somehow.

Listen and Download @ http://driftedaway.staires.org