I bought myself a Fostex 4-track recorder back in the early 1990s. This analogue cassette player could record to both sides of a C90 compact cassette at the same time and allowed me to experiment with mixing, dubbing and crossfading in the comfort of my own bedroom. But while the world went to grunge I’d kept it electro: blending dub and dance mixes with TV and videogame samples, I created a series of mixtapes in a youthful (and sometimes misguided) attempt to express myself. My muse for all this was a wounded heart: I’d just split up with my girlfriend of several years and I wasn’t handling it too well. So I turned to the first true love of my life: music. Here is the Spotify playlist version of those mixtapes. I’ve pieced together 12 songs from the two setlists I made in 1991: the first mix was simply called The Pod Mix while the second adds M.pathy.

I went by a number of DJ names back in 1991: Aziraphale when I was feeling optimistic, Balbaroth when I wasn’t. Balbaroth told me to make The Pod Mix. Aziraphale suggested M-pathy. Oh, by the way, that girl I split with ended up sleeping with my best friend. That kinda hurt.  Sorry for the personal nature of this post but I thought I should mention that as it might help explain some of the tracklisting. You’ d maybe expect the mixtapes to be full of angsty teen melodrama, lots of The Cure and bleak goth tunes and maybe some violins too. But that’d be far too obvious and anyway, that kind of stuff doesn’t mix well.

“I know the cure for what ails you. It’s simple really! Always makes me feel good.“

Electronica in the 1990s wasn’t as bad as you might think. Sure it wasn’t as good as the synthpop and electro from the 1980s, but amongst all the guitar bands and Britpop some great bands emerged. One of my favourites was Deee-lite, the New York trio who were the first band I knew to have a DJ as one of the band members. My girlfriend didn’t really like them (she was more into Wet Wet Wet) but I loved their playful tunes and expertly mixed records. Another favourite of mine from the early 90s was Renegade Soundwave. Those guys mixed electronica with cockney dub like some mad successors to The Clash.

“I call them telepods. They’re controlled by this.“

This ex and me, we’d been drifting apart for some years, I suppose ever since I’d moved away to the city to study for a degree. I’d travel back every weekend to see her but that was usually never enough: she wanted exclusive rights to me whenever I had a holiday and resented that I sometimes wanted to see my friends instead. Growing up we had school and local events in common but as young adults we’d discovered different interests. I was into gigging and clubbing and big city life and seeing the world; she was into settling down where she’d been born. Where my best friend lived.

“He’s got a photographic memory. He doesn’t just learn he consumes information. And, he never sleeps.“

The Pod Mix originally started with a track called Phoenix, rising from the ashes of the end of a relationship, repairing my wounded heart as it were. Yeah yeah, corny I know but I was new to all that broken romance stuff back then. M-pathy opened with a Deee-lite sample mixing into Gary Numan’s Are Friends Electric? (the brilliant Renegade Soundwave mix, thankfully now on Spotify). A lot of bands on that mixtape are mostly known as 80s bands (The Associates, Talk Talk, Soft Cell), but all had recently received the 90s remix or version treatment to bring the old songs up to date. Perhaps I was using the music to look back at the past in a new light, assessing something I thought I knew but finding something completely different instead.

“This was planned from the day you were born. We’ll do everything we can to make it as painless as possible for you.“

If I’m honest it was a relief to be free. I’d been looking for a way out for some time but didn’t have the heart (or guts) to do anything about it. The best-friend affair happened when our relationship was reaching its end anyway, but that didn’t stop me from descending into a deep dark indignant hole and feeling sorry for myself for months.

“The option to override automatic detonation expires in T-minus one minute.“

I spent hours and hours making these two mixes. Hours spent finding just the right track, just the right sample and then splicing it all together onto magnetic tape. I went through hundreds of cigarettes and gallons of coffee. I missed a lot of sleep. But once I’d finished I was pleased with how the mixes had turned out: the pain was worthwhile in the end. As for my two exes, well I never saw either of them again. I’ve not returned to that town now for years and probably never will: I’ve moved on.

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Tracklist

Deee-Lite – Frenchapella (Remix Version)
Gary Numan – Are ‘Friends’ Electric? (Renegade Soundwave Remix)
The Associates – Waiting For The Loveboat ( Slight Return)
Renegade Soundwave – Deadly
C & C Music Factory – A Groove Of Love (What’s This Word Called Love?)
Talk Talk – Living In Another World (Extended Remix)^*
Scritti Politti – She’s A Woman (The Apollo 440 Remix)
Soft Cell – Memorabilia (Single Version)^*
The Farm – Very Emotional (Remix)
Happy Mondays – Kinky Afro (Euromix Edit)
The Charlatans – Polar Bear
Deee-Lite – Groove Is In The Heart (Remix Version)

^* = Original mix used not currently on Spotify

Samples Used

I laced the original mixes with a heap of samples from TV shows, movies, and videogames including:

• The Fly, The Fly II, Alien, Aliens, Christine, Hellraiser, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Red Dwarf III, Batman, UHF, Lawnmower Man, GBH, Twin Peaks, and of course Withnail & I.

The playlist sounds naked without them to me, but then I guess that’s something personal. If you’re interested, here’s a short mp3 clip from the original mixtape so that you can get a feel for what I was trying to do.

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Postscript

The following year, after completely embarrassing myself at a friend’s party I got home feeling alone, dejected, and wondering whether I should just run away and join the foreign legion. But as I fumbled for my front door keys my next-door neighbour called me over and asked if I could help her put her net curtains up. I was 24 at the time and she was 39. The May Bee Mix is all about what we got up to, but that’s a different mixtape. 

Related Posts:

Discophonic Workshop (Spotify Playlist)

A Fool For You (A Spotify Playlist)

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