If you follow my Seasonal Mixtape Series closely, you may recall the song “New Harm” by Tara Jane O’Neil opened side D of my summer 2023 tape–a side which captures of a lot of the uncertainty of that time in which my life was totally indeterminate following the dissolution of my life in Chicago and my subsequent move back to my homeland to write the book on how we modernized rock music. But that was actually not the first time I put that song on a tape–there was a discarded tape made for summer 2022, which “New Harm” also opened–to be replaced by summer 2022//thief of fire. For the Mercury Retrograde Sanity Mixtape Series in which I worked on composing and generating this seasonal mixtape, I decided to look into why this specific song has been haunting me for a year and a half now, since I wrote this Lifetime Achievement article on TJO.
Generally, the song has come up in mixtapes where I’m experiencing some new relationship energy, but I’m not sure why. It has this really tense, tenuous beauty. This sense of space for light to fall through (it comes from an album called In the Sun Lines) which is exactly the feeling of all of TJO’s music to me…but here it’s always dancing with darkness. It sounds like a gorgeous opening of possibility, but with a lot of shadowy potential outcomes present all around. It definitely communicates space in between phases of life really well, which this series is ultimately about…seasons of my life and the songs that guide me in and out and through them. Something about the name “New Harm” suggests the way that embarking on new ventures, attachments, etc. always is loaded with the pain that is the other side of pleasure, the loss that is inescapable in love, etc. The scars that result from the basic premise of being alive and having a body and from change over time. I’ve read it as welcoming all of the potential outcomes when you carve out a new possibility. It’s certainly one of the most beautiful and fascinating songs I’ve ever heard and I’m still not done listening to and considering it, so I’m going to put it in my tapes as long as it remains a powerful returning motif.
This mixtape closes out year three of this project, and contains many other songs which have occurred on previous releases in the Seasonal Mixtape Series. Because when “I’m gonna need to a hammer to knock you out” with my mixtape, I’m always going to press record on “Stereo Hi Fi” by Kicking Giant, and the DJ Spooky edit of “In Harmony Newfound Freedom” by Swirlies will always be one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, a song which connects realms and experiences and glows up dark spaces with the most marvelous aural transcendence I’m aware of. If I’m building a sonic quilt of my life, plenty of the patches come from the same song or album played over and over and over and over.
This tape (<—download here) is about healing and movement. A lot of the songs come from albums where the idea of “movement” is central– Moving by the Raincoats, Keep On Moving by ESG. TJO’s sun lines are always unsteady, in motion, but with the slowness and transience of orbit. In “Off You,” Kim Deal sings about “moving” in the sense of learning to spend time by herself when her friends were off the island at her house in Nantucket. I originally put the sequence of “AGT” by Mountain Man into “Off You” by the Breeders on a retrograde tape for Jen Powers last fall, but the feeling of these songs–harmony with one’s self/being alone or one’s home and purpose in life–was the total opposite of what my life felt like at that time. It felt really good for them to finally make sense with my life on 2023’s fall tape.
This is also a tape which was initially misunderstood to be about partnership with others, when it’s actually about partnership with myself and building faith in myself, building foundation for my own well-being. I rewrote significant chunks of it to reflect that changing understanding over time. The Diane Cluck song “Original Face” was commissioned by Melodie Provenzano for her exhibition Seeing Oneself in Others at the Nancy Margolis Gallery in NYC in 2020. The title is drawn from a Zen Koan included in notes on the show’s theme: “show me your original face before your mother and father were born.” Since the words suggest a me and a you, I interpreted this tune originally in the context of this tape to be about wanting to see someone else outside the cycle of trauma, or moving outside of it together, with another person. But I can be the person asking and desiring to see my own face outside of the cycle of trauma, as well. And I can also be a person wanting to see myself outside cycles of unhealthy codependency in relationships.
“La desmesura” by Lucrecia Dalt is where I flex my muscles playfully about how good I have gotten at processing my life and manifesting the future I desire through mixtape magic, asking you if you understand the complexity of all my interwoven themes and meanings when you listen. The bass transition from Dalt to Donovan here is really lovely, so smooth. “Get Thy Bearings” is a song I am only aware of due to a track list Allen Ravenstine sent me from a mixtape Jim Jones sent to Pere Ubu on tour in 1990. It signifies me getting my bearings back in Cleveland and arriving at a stable enough place where I can focus on the work I came back to do on this music scene at long last. “Ghosts in Doorways” is a commitment to ending unhealthy patterns in relationships. The film sample is from Hal Hartley’s Simple Men–while I still believe very intensely in adventure and romance, the cynicism and drama here resonated a lot with me during this season where I spent a lot of time with Hartley’s smart, surprising, and hilarious films through the Criterion Channel retrospective spotlight he received. Essential Logic cut in to remind us that ultimately we’re all alone and we need to keep our wits about us; ESG point out that everything goes and it goes by a lot better with a very groovy bass line. I find this song so comforting and calming. Go to Kicking Giant for the hammer to knock out any new listeners that may get directed to this by Marc Masters highlighting the series in his new book everyone is raving about. Pow! Pow! Pow! (This song first occurred in Spring 2021//knocking on doors, condensing mysteries.) “Far Reaching Shadow” by Nots communicates how long the hold up of the last Mercury retrograde felt, plus some autumnal evening sounds, which I’ve really been enjoying this late summer/early fall.
“Were, Are and Was or Is” by Unwound basically communicates through gorgeous feedback the pain of growing and healing and changing over time. Even though growing and changing is painful, the transformation is beautiful, and bearing witness to people’s growth–even your own– is so fulfilling. Somehow in the total chaos of all my retrograde tapes, I revisited this Lamin Fofana album that I hadn’t returned to since it came out deep in the pandemic lockdown era, and I noticed that the progression of sounds being played on “In the Ravine” sounded extremely similar to the beginning of the song “Quasi-Pfaff” by Quickspace I had been playing around with on the tapes, too. This is another transition I’m really proud of, both technical and artful. The transition into the Raincoats is great, too–here the central idea of the tape is finally communicated. We return to the first tape I made in the series, with the short clip “Revoir” into the DJ Spooky edit of Swirlies, “Version. In Harmony Retrograde Transposition” from Strictly East Coast Sneaky Flute Music. I’ve spent a lot of time with Lori Scacco’s music this year, and I love the way that “Sketches of Lines in Spiral” evokes both drawing spiral lines on a page and drawing in a spiral notebook. I view it as a sort of sonic sigil, a way I am putting intentions into action through sketches of lines.
Side C is literally just Side A of the Swisher double cassette, It’s Back, that almost no one has heard outside of Cleveland. I’m trying to change that, because Swisher are the opening band of the Cleveland Renaissance that I came back to facilitate. Jim Ellis wants to do a new issue of CLE magazine and I’m going to write about SWISHER. They call it “heavy kosmische.” Hugh McElroy of Black Eyes calls it “Neu! by way of Pat’s in the Flats.” This side specifically communicates the totally chaotic and intense on every level imaginable swishing and swirling of my old daily reality in Chicago to my new life back in the Land between the spring and fall of this year. The sides of these tapes were exactly the same length and it was meant to be. Aoife McEneaney says, “of course it’s the best tape yet, and it does need *that* much Swisher.”
Side D is a closing or a departure, which is always also an opening or an arrival, in true Jeanette Winterson ongoing eternal tribute. An escape wheel, an autumnal landscape, a declaration that Cleveland is where I live now. A new dedication to myself and to building and protecting my own foundation, which also means fighting for and preserving the legacy of my homeland. Living more intentionally and less in a constant state of fight or flight. Developing the discipline and stability to work seriously and in great depth for a long time to come. This is the soundtrack of my life ’til dawn tomorrow. Autumn night sounds get louder and louder through the ghost noise of Brute Heart’s “Prophecy” fading out.
Please tell anyone who doesn’t believe mixtapes can be a magical practice to study my blog. Tell all your friends who keep saying they miss making tapes for people, but have so many excuses as why they aren’t, to just fucking do it. Thank you for listening and to everyone who has followed this series into the end of its third year in 2023, the most simultaneously difficult and astonishingly wonderful year of my life. Thank you to everyone who has requested the retrograde tapes, which have become central to the composition of the seasonal ones. It’s been a wild ride and these projects have been its main engine. My exhaustion is only outweighed by my extreme gratitude.
Editor’s note: I totally forgot to talk about the recipient of this tape, which is a usual hallmark of this project. Maria Barrios is my friend and colleague in music journalism and art creation! She’s moved from DC to New Haven to Philly just in the last few years in which I have known her, so I imagine this tape may resonate with her in that sense. She also works to promote the activities of Mississippi Records. Please check out her bands Slant of Light and Drawn (so new you have to find them live) and read her music writing.
© COME AWAY WITH EMD 2023
COME AWAY WITH EMD 