Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Mittwoch Mixes - November 2025

A pair of mixes for November before I descend deep into Xmas music season...

The first is hwæt! Still Life in an Apocalypse - Which serves as the second volume of my Brick Wall Mix series. Composed of a set mix of songs that make me feel like I could run through a Goddamn Brick Wall. High energy and featuring a healthy dollop of righteous anger.

# Artist Track
1 Herzschlager Kill Your Heroes
2 Transgressive A Unified War Cry
3 healthyliving To the Gallows
4 King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Planet B
5 Acumen Nation Gun Lover
6 Sister Machine Gun Voices / Machine
7 The Damage Manual Stateless (Delusional Mix)
8 Cocksure Cold Dick
9 Error Nothing’s Working
10 Boris & Uniform No
11 Allfather Citadels (Live)
12 Glacial Tomb Fuck Nazi Sympathy
13 Ashenspire Cable Street Again

The second mix is hwæt! I PAID TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FOR A LIBERAL ARTS DEGREE AT A PRIVATE COLLEGE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS MIX… 

I graduated from college back in the halcyon days of 2005, over twenty years ago now, and when I was putting together the Not A Place of Honor mix, I was reminded of how my musical taste was shaped by my student years as Die Warzau and Big Black were both groups I discovered while spelunking among the light-less shelves of my college radio station. 

Even in the early 2000's, even at a tiny college that was smaller than my high school, no one really wanted to let me inflict my musical taste upon the public at large, so when I submitted my applications with the lists of artists and songs I wanted to play I was invariably assigned slots that began at midnight at the earliest. One semester I memorably got the 'coveted' 2am to 4am Saturday morning slot...

Still, I didn't care because it meant I had access to the thousands and thousands of CDs in the collection letting me fall down rabbit holes and discover obscure bands that my suburban corporate music stores would never bring to me or to enjoy the deep well of music from the 80s and 90s that I had missed. My only regret is that during my initial orientation the record player was broken so I never learned how to use it.

College was also my first access to high speed internet connections (such as they were back then) which also meant my musical tastes and access expanded in ways that anyone around my age knows very well... Meaning that I could get my hands on say, Schwein, the Japan based Pig side project.

This mix also serves as a follow-up to my I was an Angry Teenage Weirdo Mix, charting how as I transformed from nerdy teen to pretentiously academic English major to eccentric middle-aged hipster. Just like that mix, it's not necessarily my favorite music from that period, but a slightly thematic selection of bands that I either discovered or really got into during my college time. 

# Artist Track
1 The Sisters of Mercy Lucretia My Reflection
2 Test Dept. Sweet Sedation
3 Killing Joke Millennium
4 Big Black The Ugly American
5 Cabaret Voltaire Big Funk
6 Pop Will Eat Itself Ich Bin Ein Auslander
7 haloblack it’s bizarre
8 Peace Love & Pitbulls White White White (Finished Already Mix)
9 Schwein World’s Junk
10 Chemlab Binary Nation
11 Acumen Nation Chameleon Skin
12 Die Warzau King of Rock and Roll
13 The Legendary Pink Dots Abracadabra zzzz

The source image for the cover art for hwæt! I PAID TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FOR A LIBERAL ARTS DEGREE AT A PRIVATE COLLEGE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS MIX… is https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beloit_College_Middle_College.jpg originally by Robin Zebrowski and was edited and modified under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Mittwoch Mixes - hwæt! Halloween 2025 Mixes

Another year, another set of Halloween mixes. Plus, I created a landing page for all of my Halloween Mixes - hwæt! Halloween Sounds to mirror my Yule Tunes page.

This year I compiled five mixes of Halloween sounds ranging for trick or treater friendly to eerie and terrifying.

First another Candy Bowl Mix, a mix of slightly eerie, slightly silly songs that should be suitable to have on in the background while you're passing out treats to costumed children.

# Artist Track
1 Bradley Thomas Turner Spooky Season (in the Foyer)
2 8-Bit Arcade Ghostbusters
3 Bobby (Boris) Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers Graveyard Shift
4 The Swingin’ Phillies Frankenstein’s Party
5 Putney Dandridge Skeleton In The Closet
6 Uncle Fido They Find a Haunted House
7 Mr. Basemen & The Symbols Do The Zombie
8 Hazy Sour Cherry Zombilly Rave (till someone call police!)
9 Mark Malibu & the Wasagas Ghost Hunter
10 New Mayfair Dance Orchestra The Haunted House
11 Baron Daemon & The Vampires Ghost Guitars
12 Earl Patterson With The Dars Nightmare Hop
13 The Fabulous Five Janie Made A Monster

Then, another the Creepy Crawly Dance Party mix, a selection of vaguely sinister and monstrous to outright Halloween themed songs suitable for an adult costume party.

# Artist Track
1 Black Market Dub & Wise Owl No More Room In Hell
2 RATPAJAMA Danse Macabre
3 Dark Chisme Fangs
4 Peter Aldrich featuring Jon Harman & David Williams Dawn of the Dead
5 Pitch Black Manor The Halloween Scene
6 Magic Sword “Candyman” Theme
7 Fini Tribe Make It Internal (Integrity Mix) (2025 Remaster)
8 Hazy Sour Cherry Monster’s Party
9 Witchboard Supernaturals Fill The Floor w Grace Sings Sludge
10 Frayle Bela Lugosi’s Dead
11 Suzi Sabotage Love at First Bite
12 The Legendary Pink Dots The Light In My Little Girl’s Eyes
13 Unwoman Everyday Is Halloween

Followed by another Folky mix of murder ballads and other macabre songs in a more folk or traditional style. Probably just a little too intense at points to hand out candy while listening to. 

# Artist Track
1 Shirley Collins Cruel Lincoln
2 Lankum What Put the Blood
3 Unwoman The Eldritch One, Jolene
4 Forest Mountain Hymnal Pretty Polly
5 Myrkur Den lille piges død (Live)
6 Jeremiah Sand No You Are Mine
7 Ian Lynch The Hunt
8 The Post-Timey String Band Wherewolf
9 Marissa Nadler and Milky Burgess The Bloody Gardener
10 Emel Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
11 ØXN Love Henry
12 The Rowan Amber Mill The Ballad of the Witchfinder General
13 Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin & Ultan O'Brien All Our Lonely Ghosts


And a mix of Halloween Adjacent Metal tracks, for those who want some seasonal head bangers. Definitely more on the adult end of things.

# Artist Track
1 Wolfmen of Mars The Silent Panic
2 Froglord Cryptids
3 Frayle Boo
4 Castle Rat Nightblood
5 GREEN LUNG Templar Dawn
6 Christian Mistress Haunted, Hunted
7 YRRE Dustsceawung
8 Witchcryer Witchfinder General
9 Molassess Death Is
10 Possessor Bloodsuckers
11 Faetooth Death of Day
12 BORIS + ENDON Painkiller (Judas Priest)
13 ÚZKOST The Witch & the Tyrant (Featuring Whitney Moore)

Finally, a mix of haunting and unnerving songs for a more atmospheric and decidedly child unfriendly evening of horror.

# Artist Track
1 Dorit Chrysler Murder Ballad
2 Sheet Ghosts Nothing but the Night
3 Seven Blood-Stained Orchids The Devil in Amber
4 FM Einheit Hymne (Witch burn)
5 The Night Terrors Kuceli Woke Up In The Graveyard
6 Young Fathers Alpha
7 The Wades Sídhe
8 Gazelle Twin Fear Keeps Us Alive
9 Giants of Discovery Terror In The South Tower
10 Rún Such is the Kingdom
11 Grey Frequency Elegy for Vinegar Tom
12 Lustmord & Zola Jesus Prime
13 Bretwalda A Dread Soaking (Oh Lord)

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Mittwoch Mix - Not A Place of Honor

After listening back to ANOHNI's 2016 album, Hopeless, I was inspired to make this mix. Current events seem calculated to induce rage and hopefully this mix will be a cathartic indulgence for others as well.

It joins some similar mixes I've put together in the past, including I WANNA SCREAM OUT LOUDArmageddon is by our side and The Mountain's Ash, the River is Steam...

Thinking of the damage being done day by day and what will be required to repair it, I decided to draw on the long-term nuclear waste warning messages for inspiration...

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.


# Artist Track
1 Cocksure Teezer Hell
2 Gazelle Twin The Suburbs
3 Big Black Kerosene
4 ANOHNI 4 Degrees
5 Sow My House
6 Test Dept. Debris
7 The Legendary Pink Dots An Arm And A Leg
8 Ashenspire Béton Brut
9 PIG Riot, Religion & Righteousness
10 Die Warzau Crusaders
11 Hate Dept. Seedling
12 Nomadic War Machine A Gaze as Blank and Pitiless as the Sun
13 The Damage Manual No Act of Grace

Monday, July 21, 2025

Alien Pop Monday 00.15 - erkannt das Sehnen die Knoten hält

Another Alien Pop Monday...

This mix builds off the Fifteenth track from Rampen (apm: alien pop music), "Gesundbrunnen."  Here it is, after 15 mixes, the end—complete with 195 tracks and 131 artists featured, a corpus of what feels, to me at least, to be Alien Pop Music.

There is a passage in KOLLAPS by Melle Jan Kromhout & Jan Nieuwenhuis that speaks to the concept of Alien Pop Music that I re-read just before finalizing this mix, as I made the decision to have "Sehnsucht" (desire) off of Kollaps, their fisrt EN album, serve as the final song that I think serves as a nice conclusion to this series...

Desire is the breath that fuels life and connects the inside of the living body to the world outside. Air spreads around in the depths of the lungs, where it branches out. Oxygen flows through blood and brains until it is used up and residual gas is exhaled to make room. Just like this Einstürzende Neubauten feeds itself with sound. The band is an organism that mutates with each consecutive song. It inhales sound. It lives on sound. Just as every breath is an extension of life, sound is Einstürzende Neubauten's sustenance.

This way, the band absorbs other kinds of music and makes certain elements their own [...] With each song, Einstürzende Neubauten wanders further into unknown territory and encounters different sounds and music to reorganize themselves. 

Kromhout, Melle Jan, and Jan Nieuwenhuis. Einstürzende Neubauten’s Kollaps, pp. 83–84.  

# Artist Track
1 Einstürzende Neubauten Gesundbrunnen
2 Cinder Well The Doorway
3 The Damage Manual Limited Edition
4 Laura Cannell & Nik Colk Void Closer to Heaven (Nik Colk Void remix)
5 Cold Specks Void
6 Nihiloxica Black Kaveera
7 One Leg One Eye I’d Rather Be Tending My Sheep
8 Nine Inch Nails God Break Down the Door
9 Ulver The Hour of the Wolf
10 Jochen Arbeit Darkness
11 Chemlab Pink
12 Ryuichi Sakamoto fullmoon
13 Einstürzende Neubauten Sehnsucht

Wo vorher keine Tür war / Da machen ich dir jetzt auf

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Mittwoch Mix - hwæt! Wait until you know the time is right on time / The end is near

 The (probably not) long awaited return of my annual Birthday Mix tradition...

Back in 2021, I was turning 38 and compiled the Better In My Day Mix, a selection of songs that is equal parts tongue in cheek memento mori, peculiar birthday allusions & references with a few aspirational touches to complete the mix.

Then in 2022, with my 39th birthday, I compiled a baker's dozen of songs all released the year of my birth, 1983, vertrocknet im Sonnenlicht.

For my 40 birthday in 2023, I went all out, first I gathered songs that I love and that were recorded before I was born. The very slightest theme of Memento Mori threads through many, but not all, of them, gathered together as hwæt! Before My Time.

Then I compiled the hwæt! Top Forty... a mix of 41 songs one a year for each year I’d been around, plus one for that 41st year. As with all of my birthday mixes, there is a tiny bit of Memento Mori, but mostly these are just songs I like.

Last summer, this blog was on a hiatus, but now, with my 42nd birthday approaching, I've assembled a mix to revive this tradition, hwæt! Wait until you know the time is right on time / The end is near. Mostly but not all, released since my last birthday. A little less of a memento mori mix, but those melancholy motifs remain.

# Artist Track
1 Blixa Bargeld & Nikko Weidemann Lazarus
2 Allie Goertz The Great Destroyer
3 Gloria Artemis
4 Zombie Zombie Double Z
5 Sumac & Moor Mother Camera
6 Young Fathers Lowly
7 Xordox Unreality
8 The Young Gods Systemized
9 Dark Chisme Lucretia My Reflection
10 The Cure Drone:Nodrone
11 The Legendary Pink Dots Blood Money : Transitional
12 PIG The Ratchet Effect
13 Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld Durch Mich

Not gonna lie, since I saw 28 Years Later, I've been pondering how I can make sure that on that distant day my skull is added to the bone temple...

Monday, July 7, 2025

Alien Pop Monday 00.14 - Fossiliien, die wir beide sind

Another Alien Pop Monday...

This mix builds off the Fourteenth track from Rampen (apm: alien pop music), "Trilobiten." After seven months of this project, we've reached the penultimate mix. 

Off the top of my head, "Trilobiten" is one of the most 'folk' songs Neubauten has ever released, up there with "Ein Stuhl in der Hölle" and this mix definitely leans a little in that direction.

# Artist Track
1 Einstürzende Neubauten Trilobiten
2 Kikagaku Moyo Trilobites
3 Angeline Morrison Ophelia
4 Chris Connelly Ophelia Moment
5 The Body and BIG|BRAVE Once I had a Sweetheart
6 Panopticon The Devil Walked the Woods
7 Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Kim Myhr, Jenny Hval Me, you, me, you
8 Rudolph Moser CAUSE YOU
9 Your Ancestors Knew Death A Fossil Record
10 How To Destroy Angels Ice Age
11 Gloria Styx
12 Hacia Dos Veranos I’ll Be Your Mirror
13 Einstürzende Neubauten Youme & Meyou (Live)

Was ist noch uebrig?

Monday, June 23, 2025

Alien Pop Monday 00.13 - Allet hat sich uffjelöst

Another Alien Pop Monday...

This mix builds off the Thirteenth track from Rampen (apm: alien pop music), "Ick wees nich (Noch nich)."

I'm particularly pleased with this mix, I think it is strangely cohesive in both musical language and lyrics. Perhaps I will be the only one who feels that way, but these thirteen songs really do seem to me to be of a set.

# Artist Track
1 Einstürzende Neubauten Ick wees nich (Noch nich)
2 Wire Time Lock Fog
3 Chrome Nova Feedback
4 Zola Jesus Wiseblood
5 The Love Interest Blue Velvet Mix
6 Gazelle Twin Obelisk
7 The Soft Pink Truth You Don’t Know (The Full Rose of Dawn)
8 The Bug Void
9 Fragile Self Need for Sanctuary
10 The Answer Lies in the Black Void Become Undone
11 Strange Attractor Undone
12 The The Lonely Planet
13 Einstürzende Neubauten Die Befindlichkeit Des Landes (Klaviermusik Version)

Alles nur künftige Ruinen