The art (if there is one) of the mixtape is to bring a series of existing compositions together into a new sequence that acquires–that generates, due to the uncanny skill of the mixologist, new meanings not present in the source material. For example, one might concatenate songs from different genres, that might never have been heard consecutively before, and that, for some reason, sound great that way. But genre-straddling is only the most obvious of the mixologist’s techniques. The best are much more subtle and arcane and like totally super secret.

It may be tempting to assign credit for the astonishing discovery that the last chord of Lindsey Buckingham’s “Cast Away Dreams” and the first chord of Talk Talk’s “Chameleon Day” are the same chord to some sort of traditional default pseudo-agent, such as Divine Providence. That would be a mistake. The skill of the mixologist may surpass the understanding; it is, nonetheless, real.

Download the mix (MP3 file, 52 MB)

Download the booklet (PDF file, 3.4 MB)

The following table is crudely formatted but I can’t figure out how to make WordPress let me fix it.

1 0:02 Seal Bring It On
2 3:59 Ron Sexsmith While You Were Waiting
3 7:27 Lindsey Buckingham Cast Away Dreams
4 11:55 Talk Talk Chameleon Day
5 15:15 Jimmy Eat World Table for Glasses
6 19:36 Tears for Fears Break It Down Again
7 24:09 Khonnor An Ape Is Loose
8 27:56 Apparat Useless Information
9 32:01 Joy Division Isolation
10 34:56 Sébastian Tellier Elle
11 39:34 Étienne Daho Cet Air Étrange
12 43:36 Ron Sexsmith It Never Fails