Audio time travel with mixes for every year of recorded sound, starting in the 1850s and working our way through to the present. "Radio podcasts" are bonus commentary with occasional guests. Find out more at centuriesofsound.com
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Audio time travel with mixes for every year of recorded sound, starting in the 1850s and working our way through to the present. "Radio podcasts" are bonus commentary with occasional guests. Find out more at centuriesofsound.com
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is a placeholder to appear on the podcast feed. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. You can also support me by buying one of the audio services I offer – https://centuriesofsound.com/services/
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
Do you remember them times?
Do you remember these days?
Where you could bubble in a rave
Find me in a club like
Downing pure silk like
Yeah, this is when garage was alright!
There weren’t no fighting and ting there weren’t no gun tings
It was a gyal ting, a raving ting! Bubbling ting
Ok, let’s go back
– Durrty Goodz, Switching Songs Pt 2
My first memory of the year 2000 is walking back from Lennons’ nightclub in Southampton, and sitting by myself in a freezing cold room, while in the room above my friend had sex with a girl he’d met in the club. As the sun rose, still unable to sleep, I watched the celebrations on a black & white TV, the world outside feeling more like a funeral than a celebration. I was halfway through a degree I didn’t want to do, living a lifestyle which was often fun but not really sustainable. Who I actually was and what I wanted from life was still a complete mystery. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In 1999 I had been immersed in new music, in 2001 I would pick it up again, but this was the year we all just listened to Canterbury Scene and Krautrock. If you think this paragraph is a mess then you don’t know the half of it.
Among the things I missed out on; in the USA Timbaland was leading a revolution in perfectly produced R&B, and harder-edged alternative rockers were making jagged, angry music. In Europe, house, techno and electroclash producers were putting out work which still feels like an unsurpassed peak a quarter of a century later. And in the UK we were at the peak of UK garage, a genre whose imperial phase had been kicked off at the same club I went to – The Artful Dodger’s garage night was on Tuesdays, the indie night was on Thursdays. None of this really sunk in at the time.
The one salient point here is this: I did not really experience this year myself, I have had to piece it together from available evidence. The news events of this year are either a mystery to me or things I heard about only later. The new music here was all discovered later, with the exception of Emiliana Torrini’s “Unemployed In Summertime” – which I heard while being unemployed in the summertime, aged 21, and found memorable for this reason, and V/VM, who were memorable for other reasons. For the first time I have included some clips of home videos in the mix, but the narrative has once again made itself, if there even is a narrative. It is, it turns out, a pretty good year.
Tracklist
(New Year Montage – various clips)
0:01:15 Azzido Da Bass – Dooms Night (Timo Maas Remix)
(Clip from In The Year 2000)
(Clip from The Simpsons)
(Clip from Amores Perros)
(Clip from home videos – Ed)
0:04:47 Sunship – Cheque One-Two (Original Mix)
(Clip from Sexy Beast)
0:08:46 Primal Scream – Swastika Eyes (Jagz Kooner mix)
0:11:13 Life Without Buildings – Let’s Get Out
0:15:01 Emiliana Torrini – Unemployed In Summertime (LP mix)
(Clip from Memento)
0:17:58 Ghostface Killah feat. The RZA – Nutmeg
0:19:59 Chris Morris & Michael Alexander St John – Club News
0:22:46 Jonas Mekas – As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
0:22:54 Boards Of Canada – Kid For Today
0:25:56 Roni Size & Reprazent – System Check
(Clip from Big Brother UK)
0:28:33 The Hives – Die, All Right!
0:31:10 Destiny’s Child – Jum
Centuries of Sound
Audio time travel with mixes for every year of recorded sound, starting in the 1850s and working our way through to the present. "Radio podcasts" are bonus commentary with occasional guests. Find out more at centuriesofsound.com