raxmix vol. 7
Sep. 2nd, 2021 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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likealarkNew year new music
Surprise I worked on this in the hotel room lol. I spent so long without finding new songs for this mix that I was like, is that it?? Can I not make another mix?? And then so many songs piled in over the last month or so that I can't fit them all on this mix, lol. When it rains it pours. Anyway 2021 still sucks, just in new additional ways compared to 2020 but at least there's always new music. I started listening to a lot of spotify playlists, so several of these songs are hot on the radio right now. As a result this mix may be less eclectic than usual (while also having some weird outliers, as is the custom). Several of these songs have stories that I'm excited to share with you. Anyway yes ok I'm coming over now.
Sorry that many of the files are messily named and don't have proper metatags; I couldn't edit them for some reason? I can't figure out why.
I think I worked harder on this cover than any previous raxmix! It is the cover to "Spinal Fluid Explosion Girl," which is a track you've probably heard of. If you haven't, please check it out, it's fantastic and the lyrics are as outrageous as the title. It's also one of my favorite DDR stepcharts.
If you are not Rax but also like music, you're welcome to give this a listen too?
> DOWNLOAD <
( Spotify Playlist )
01. BENEE - Find an Island
This track is so lazy and breezy. This particular singing method of "murmuring really close to the mic" was popularized by Bilie Eilish on a previous raxmix. I like slightly raspy voices, and this song is just so relaxing. This is the nicest way to tell someone to pound sand that I've ever heard.
02. GHOST ft. DEX - Honey I'm Home
This producer is a recent find for me, but since you like english vocaloid fandom you're probably familiar with their work. Digeridoo? In MY raxmix?? The song is a great listen and the lyrics are edgy in a nonsensical way that I find really appealing, but also really approachable. It's a song that obviously has roots in trauma but is vague enough to allow anyone to project onto it in any way that they need to. Notably, this song was covered by the original voicebank provider! I love listening to both versions back and forth, though I admit a bias towards the voicebank provider version. I've included both files in the zip.
03. Cheap Perfume - It's Okay to Punch Nazis
Punk girls singing politically incendiary songs always reminds me of you. I heard this song riding home in the back of a pickup truck from a Baltimore Orioles game after their Pride Night. That's a hell of a sentence, and it doesn't properly encapsulate how it felt to be bouncing home over the pothole-ridden Baltimore streets, wind in my hair, surrounded by queers, blasting "IT'S OKAY TO PUNCH NAZIS" through the open windows. It was a good night, and it's a good song.
04. Bella Poarch - Build A Bitch
Yes I put the aggressive songs together. Where else could they go? This song makes me laugh and I love the charming melody juxtaposed with the sharp lyrics and expletives. This song is getting a lot of radio play right now, and hearing them censor this song is so silly. It's like they cut out half the song. I like that the song is basically uncensorable, that you have to either play her full song as she intended or not really play it at all. Many tracks on this mix are too short and this is one of them.
05. nostraightanswer ft. DAINA - voicemail
This is the voicebank provider for the earlier GHOST song! His vocaloid is DEX. What's awesome is that he was active in the vocaloid fandom and made his own voicebank utaloid, and he was noticed by a company who asked to use his voice for an official product. So cool. His voice is beautiful, so I started looking through his own work. This is off of his 2020 album Specters, which are a collection of songs about things he fears. This song features DAINA, which was the female companion voicebank to his DEX. I don't know who the voice provider is for DAINA, though. I really like the sound of this song, his vocaloid tuning, and the lyrics are also pretty unique I think. This is a song about codependency where it's framed as actually bad. Fandom tends to romanticize the notion of codependency, so having it portrayed as a fear is really interesting and worthwhile to me.
06. Annella - Trouble
Electroswing in 2021!! It's back to the homestuck trenches for us. But this song is a bop. My friend sent it to me and it's got great rhythm and her voice is fantastic, so playful and charming. I really like how it cuts in rap influences.
07. Zedd - Epos
The "vanilla ice cream" track. I know you know Zedd, everyone in the world knows Zedd, but I really like the walking chord changes that this song showcases.
08. nulut ft. GUMI - Fragile
I don't know if you know this Gumi song, but it rocks. The lyrics are great (turn on closed captions; warning for rapid flashing/color changes in the beginning of the video, before the lyrics start). I found this one through a rhythm game where Kaito and Len cover it. Kaito's my favorite vocaloid, but the original Gumi version is much better, and Gumi's your girl, so I picked the original version to use in the mix.
09. Kikuo ft. Hatsune Miku - Yoru no Uta (Song of The Night)
I've gotten really into Kikuo this year. He makes beautiful, delicate-sounding songs about horrifying topics, and I really love how he will sometimes mix in death metal sounds with music box chimes to powerfully convey how it feels to be a traumatized child. His most famous track is "Aishite aishite aishite," which I linked you earlier this year when I couldn't stop playing it on repeat. But over time this actually came to be my favorite kikuo song. It's literally just "night song" repeated a bunch of times, but I like how the bridge changes things up, and the swing of the 6/8 time. It's really fun to sing along to. Sometimes even in sad traumatizing times we can just take the time to enjoy something nice.
10. Hamid el Shaeri - Ayonha
I had a young woman as my patient and all day she had the most fascinating songs playing off of her cell phone. This one was so good I finally asked her what it was. She said that as she was recovering from pancreatic cancer, her friends had all made her spotify mixtapes to listen to. Later on, I had a patient from Kuwait who was mostly Arabic-speaking, and I gave this song to him and his family. They were so excited that I had an Arabic song to rec them. "Oh, this is romantic," the wife said. "The title means 'Your Eyes.'" I played this song for another friend of mine who is from Egypt, and she said she liked the song because it just sounded like a bunch of guys jamming out and having a good time together. So I guess on a metatextual level, this song is also about community. This song traveled a long way with me before I am passing it to you, and I hope you enjoy it.
11. Alicia Keys - Underdog
One of those songs that came on when I was in a big box store and I had to stand quietly and listen to it for three minutes. I like how stripped down this song sounds. This album just came out, and like a few of her other albums it's about New York City. I found this song pretty inspiring. I like it.
12. John Craigie - Dissect the Bird
Weirdly enough this one came from an nursing mailing list that is supposed to catch you up on news around the world while you've been busy working. At the end of every e-mail the writer includes a track, and this one really appealed to me. I wanted to end this mix with the hopeful songs. This one feels authentic and it was one of the only things that made me feel like maybe it would really be okay when I was super low earlier this year. Kind of feels like it would be a good Seb song, too.
Bonus Track: Scooter ft. Supertramp - The Logical Song
This song launches me right back to high school. A friend somehow came across this song on napster, and found it so ridiculous and appealing that he shared it with the rest of us. We could not make heads or tails of this song. None of us had heard of supertramp. The random DJ shoutouts were, and imo still are, hilarious. Why is it so high pitched? Man this era of techno was so weird. Anyway enjoy this song from my childhood that mauls a song you really like, love you Rax.
Surprise I worked on this in the hotel room lol. I spent so long without finding new songs for this mix that I was like, is that it?? Can I not make another mix?? And then so many songs piled in over the last month or so that I can't fit them all on this mix, lol. When it rains it pours. Anyway 2021 still sucks, just in new additional ways compared to 2020 but at least there's always new music. I started listening to a lot of spotify playlists, so several of these songs are hot on the radio right now. As a result this mix may be less eclectic than usual (while also having some weird outliers, as is the custom). Several of these songs have stories that I'm excited to share with you. Anyway yes ok I'm coming over now.
Sorry that many of the files are messily named and don't have proper metatags; I couldn't edit them for some reason? I can't figure out why.
I think I worked harder on this cover than any previous raxmix! It is the cover to "Spinal Fluid Explosion Girl," which is a track you've probably heard of. If you haven't, please check it out, it's fantastic and the lyrics are as outrageous as the title. It's also one of my favorite DDR stepcharts.
If you are not Rax but also like music, you're welcome to give this a listen too?
Bonus Track: Scooter ft. Supertramp - The Logical Song
|
( Spotify Playlist )
01. BENEE - Find an Island
This track is so lazy and breezy. This particular singing method of "murmuring really close to the mic" was popularized by Bilie Eilish on a previous raxmix. I like slightly raspy voices, and this song is just so relaxing. This is the nicest way to tell someone to pound sand that I've ever heard.
02. GHOST ft. DEX - Honey I'm Home
This producer is a recent find for me, but since you like english vocaloid fandom you're probably familiar with their work. Digeridoo? In MY raxmix?? The song is a great listen and the lyrics are edgy in a nonsensical way that I find really appealing, but also really approachable. It's a song that obviously has roots in trauma but is vague enough to allow anyone to project onto it in any way that they need to. Notably, this song was covered by the original voicebank provider! I love listening to both versions back and forth, though I admit a bias towards the voicebank provider version. I've included both files in the zip.
03. Cheap Perfume - It's Okay to Punch Nazis
Punk girls singing politically incendiary songs always reminds me of you. I heard this song riding home in the back of a pickup truck from a Baltimore Orioles game after their Pride Night. That's a hell of a sentence, and it doesn't properly encapsulate how it felt to be bouncing home over the pothole-ridden Baltimore streets, wind in my hair, surrounded by queers, blasting "IT'S OKAY TO PUNCH NAZIS" through the open windows. It was a good night, and it's a good song.
04. Bella Poarch - Build A Bitch
Yes I put the aggressive songs together. Where else could they go? This song makes me laugh and I love the charming melody juxtaposed with the sharp lyrics and expletives. This song is getting a lot of radio play right now, and hearing them censor this song is so silly. It's like they cut out half the song. I like that the song is basically uncensorable, that you have to either play her full song as she intended or not really play it at all. Many tracks on this mix are too short and this is one of them.
05. nostraightanswer ft. DAINA - voicemail
This is the voicebank provider for the earlier GHOST song! His vocaloid is DEX. What's awesome is that he was active in the vocaloid fandom and made his own voicebank utaloid, and he was noticed by a company who asked to use his voice for an official product. So cool. His voice is beautiful, so I started looking through his own work. This is off of his 2020 album Specters, which are a collection of songs about things he fears. This song features DAINA, which was the female companion voicebank to his DEX. I don't know who the voice provider is for DAINA, though. I really like the sound of this song, his vocaloid tuning, and the lyrics are also pretty unique I think. This is a song about codependency where it's framed as actually bad. Fandom tends to romanticize the notion of codependency, so having it portrayed as a fear is really interesting and worthwhile to me.
06. Annella - Trouble
Electroswing in 2021!! It's back to the homestuck trenches for us. But this song is a bop. My friend sent it to me and it's got great rhythm and her voice is fantastic, so playful and charming. I really like how it cuts in rap influences.
07. Zedd - Epos
The "vanilla ice cream" track. I know you know Zedd, everyone in the world knows Zedd, but I really like the walking chord changes that this song showcases.
08. nulut ft. GUMI - Fragile
I don't know if you know this Gumi song, but it rocks. The lyrics are great (turn on closed captions; warning for rapid flashing/color changes in the beginning of the video, before the lyrics start). I found this one through a rhythm game where Kaito and Len cover it. Kaito's my favorite vocaloid, but the original Gumi version is much better, and Gumi's your girl, so I picked the original version to use in the mix.
09. Kikuo ft. Hatsune Miku - Yoru no Uta (Song of The Night)
I've gotten really into Kikuo this year. He makes beautiful, delicate-sounding songs about horrifying topics, and I really love how he will sometimes mix in death metal sounds with music box chimes to powerfully convey how it feels to be a traumatized child. His most famous track is "Aishite aishite aishite," which I linked you earlier this year when I couldn't stop playing it on repeat. But over time this actually came to be my favorite kikuo song. It's literally just "night song" repeated a bunch of times, but I like how the bridge changes things up, and the swing of the 6/8 time. It's really fun to sing along to. Sometimes even in sad traumatizing times we can just take the time to enjoy something nice.
10. Hamid el Shaeri - Ayonha
I had a young woman as my patient and all day she had the most fascinating songs playing off of her cell phone. This one was so good I finally asked her what it was. She said that as she was recovering from pancreatic cancer, her friends had all made her spotify mixtapes to listen to. Later on, I had a patient from Kuwait who was mostly Arabic-speaking, and I gave this song to him and his family. They were so excited that I had an Arabic song to rec them. "Oh, this is romantic," the wife said. "The title means 'Your Eyes.'" I played this song for another friend of mine who is from Egypt, and she said she liked the song because it just sounded like a bunch of guys jamming out and having a good time together. So I guess on a metatextual level, this song is also about community. This song traveled a long way with me before I am passing it to you, and I hope you enjoy it.
11. Alicia Keys - Underdog
One of those songs that came on when I was in a big box store and I had to stand quietly and listen to it for three minutes. I like how stripped down this song sounds. This album just came out, and like a few of her other albums it's about New York City. I found this song pretty inspiring. I like it.
12. John Craigie - Dissect the Bird
Weirdly enough this one came from an nursing mailing list that is supposed to catch you up on news around the world while you've been busy working. At the end of every e-mail the writer includes a track, and this one really appealed to me. I wanted to end this mix with the hopeful songs. This one feels authentic and it was one of the only things that made me feel like maybe it would really be okay when I was super low earlier this year. Kind of feels like it would be a good Seb song, too.
Bonus Track: Scooter ft. Supertramp - The Logical Song
This song launches me right back to high school. A friend somehow came across this song on napster, and found it so ridiculous and appealing that he shared it with the rest of us. We could not make heads or tails of this song. None of us had heard of supertramp. The random DJ shoutouts were, and imo still are, hilarious. Why is it so high pitched? Man this era of techno was so weird. Anyway enjoy this song from my childhood that mauls a song you really like, love you Rax.
