It feels like it’s been forever since I posted up part I of my mom’s cassette tape mix series. But hey, being in school during the fall and spring make it hard for me to find time to do this stuff. For those of you that don’t remember I inherited my mom’s tape collection from her 80′s/90′s days of teaching STEP aerobics, dance, and other speciality classes. This tape isn’t too far off from what we heard from MEGASTEP, it’s got a similar vibe but feels more complete than the relatively short MEGASTEP excerpt. Download/stream the 38-minute mix below.

Mom’s Cassette Tapes, Pt. II: Chakra Khan/The Remix Project

This Bathetic compilation is totally stellar – I ordered a SUMMER BUMMER compilation tape from Bathetic maybe a couple of summers ago and it very well may be the best tape compilation I own. Expressway is the newest compilation from Bathetic, and you can download it in full here. Below are a few of my favorites from this compilation:

Dirty Beaches: Highway 1 (Pretty much melted when I heard this – I can already see myself dancing into to the night to this track.)
Speculator: Picking Flowers
William Cody Watson: Hand On My Knee

One thing that irks me when I go to a party held by my generation of young twenty year olds is the fact that there is NEVER any food! Personally, I like to entertain my guests with heaps of tasty food. You name it – pizza, guacamole, maybe a big chunk of gouda and some triscuits. It’s all fair game at my place. One of my favorite types of food to snack on in general is nachos, so I made this latin jazz mix to play while you eat nachos in order to really feel that latino vibe. I beg of you-next time you throw a party at your house, make some nachos and put this on! For the sake of your guests and their stomachs.

Latin Jazz Mix

I stumbled upon this video for a track titled Midori by Beat Culture on Rimar’s website, I really like how the video was directed and the track itself-it’s from Beat Culture’s upcoming LP Tokyo Dreamer.

ALSO saw this on beat culture’s soundcloud and thought it was pretty dope, as soon as I heard that vocal sample I was all in:

Sometime Soon by Beat Culture

Before You Go is also cherry:

Before You Go by Beat Culture

Not Not Fun is having this holiday sale where for every three LPs you buy you get one of your choosing for free. Pretty rad deal if you ask me. Below are some videos from NNF’s recent releases you might want to check out.

Robedoor: (In the) Cybershade/Universal Migration
For me, Robedoor’s (In the) Cybershade/Universal Migration is pretty spooky and these sounds resemble what it would feel like if one could explore the internet as a physical entity.

KWJAZ
I’m not going to beat around the bush here put simply this is a real cool record for anyone who likes experimental music and jazz. My buddy Steve has got me on a jazz kick as that’s pretty much all he listens to other than rap music. Typically I will play Ariel Pink or something while we are studying and he will go “What the fuck is this this isn’t even music” and “I can’t hear my eyes? That doesn’t even make sense!” while making aggravated hand gestures. It’s gotten to the point where I just don’t even play anything and I just let him play jazz from his new iphone 4S because I’ll fucks with that. Anyway, I love experimental music and jazz so this record is really killing it in reference to my ears right now.

This Sapphire Slows track is cool because it’s a slow jammer. It’s the kind of song you’d play 3/4 the way in during a late night dj set.

Rangers: Zombies

Rangers Pan Am LP is a double LP so you are two LPs into this sale if you decide to pick this one up. Rangers has this hazy lo-fi sound going on that’s perfect for saturday mornings.

Related:

Not a part of this sale, but Amanda Brown’s 100% Silk imprint has that Broken Anthem 12″ available, get it here. Sunsets is off of this 12″:

MALVOEAUX – SUNSETS teaser from 100% Silk on Vimeo.

United States ’11 is a quartet from San Diego that creates music that resembles hazy pop songs with a hazy Californian touch. A very possible influence is Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66 (note the bands name), some of this Bazilian pop music is reflected in their songwriting.

United States 11′: My Friends

Wild Vines and Tenement Shrines is Alice Cohen’s (not to be mistaken with the NY musician) tape release on Sixteen Tambourines. The only bummer I have with Sixteen Tambourines is that between the shipping and the cost of the tape I just can never fathom dropping x amount of money to buy anything they put out. Apparently they are putting out this tape with a t-shirt too which makes the price easier to fathom if you got the bills in your pocket. Limited release of 50 tapes.

Edit: This is the NY-based musician Alice Cohen!

Alice Cohen – Never Come Down by Sixteen Tambourines Recs

Alice Cohen – Dèrive by Sixteen Tambourines Recs

Got to thank my homie Jorge AKA Milky Sway for capturing Ital live at this VIBES party at Tribeca Grand Hotel the other night, supreme for real.

Related:
Ital live at Shea Stadium
Ital – Live @ Shea Stadium by LiveatSheaStadium

Sam Meringue from OLR is making Hip-Hop beats now, I picked out some of my favorites below but you can check out more on his youtube channel here.

S.A.M: Strawberry Lover
S.A.M: Mary Turn Tha Lights Off
S.A.M: i KONTACT
S.A.M: #11
S.A.M: #7
S.A.M: #1

Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator was Chaplin’s first talkie and was made to show Americans that what was happening in Europe at the time is a national problem. His depiction of late 1930′s is strikingly accurate, the concepts of living in 1930s Europe were all there but Chaplin didn’t realize how bad the concentration camps actually were. Chaplin plays a Jewish barber mistaken for Adenoid Hynkel (Hitler), and uses his position of power to give a very inspiring speech at the end – a speech about how Europe’s dictators are heading Europe down a danegrous path with their ideas and positions on how their countries should be shaped, and their lust for power.

This is the speech given by the Jewish barber mistaken as the dictator Adenoid Hynkel.

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible: Jew, Gentile, Black man, White. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world, there’s room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men. Cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die. And the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers, don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think, what to feel, who drill you diet you, treat you as cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men! Machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate. Only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers, don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

(Looks directly at camera.)

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written: The kingdom of God is within man. Not one man nor a group of men, but in all men. You, you the people have the power! The power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure! Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future, and old age a security! By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, and hate, and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Iberia is from Berlin, and below is their track Finale – perhaps a track that would’ve been appropriate for scoring the end of a legendary film such is this one.

A Finale by Iberiamusic