I had the idea of making Mixcloud mixes based on a ‘19 from Year / 20 from Year’ format for awhile (as there’s a good ring to that + it makes for a perfect mix cd length), but it wasn’t until participating in one of those “post 4 albums that came out when you were 14” social media things…

…and then it occurred to me that maybe it’d be a fun HI54 project to go back through EVERY YEAR that I’ve been alive and make a mix out of the music that came out during that calendar timeframe. And not only would it be a nice mix of nostalgia & discovery/rediscovery for my ears, but it would also give me a new recurring blog post / Mixcloud topic that I could run with for a good stretch of blahg time (because I’m an old).

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So, let’s jump back to the year when I was living in England while also now being old enough to drink in America. 2004. The year the Boston Red Sox broke their 86-year curse and won the World Series, perhaps unlocking a new curse in a Harvard dorm room called ‘Facebook’ (this was the same year that the Ashton Kutcher film The Butterfly Effect came out after all). George ‘dubba you’ Bush was somehow re-elected for a second term in ‘04 and we officially found out that the Iraq War was started under false pretences — BUT — it ended up being Martha Stewart that got sent to prison. And all the while I was busy hanging out between hostel dumpsters in Nottingham with the Dane I’m still hanging out with all these years later…

…and if I could pass a mix tape back thru time to the dude rocking that questionable ‘hat toque’ (which had an even more questionable patch sewn on the back that I won’t even describe out loud) — well, that mix would sound like this:

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say these are “THE 20 BEST ALBUMS/TRACKS OF 2004”, but based on my recent deep dive + past listening experiences, I would say that these are definitely some of the best ones. Also, just like every other year since forever, there was a lot of nice music that came out in 2004 and it’d be impossible to perfectly capture it all in 20 tracks anyways. So the artists featured in this mix are a good combo of music I personally have nostalgic feelings for + tunes that I was feeling while putting things together. But, as always, the main focus is on creating a mix that flows nicely from one track to another, which means albums I had intentions of trying to fit in & albums which you might think “how could you not include?!” just never fit in before the 20-track limit was hit and the mix was done.

SO, if you’d like to dive a bit deeper into 2004 than the 20-track digital mix tape provided (for example, you may reach the end of the above mixtape and think “I’d like more of that vibe, sir”), well, I’ve also had the realization that it’d be a good time for the both of us if we extended the 2004 musical exploring into something more than just the tracks/artists that made the mixtape cut. And since I have stopped taking on the work of dealing with music submissions and now have a bit more time/energy for taking on more #blahgstuff, I figured this would be a good time to go back & follow through on the idea of putting together a 54-track digital mix cd playlist for even further 2004 vibing.

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And if you’d ever like to extend the ‘soundtrack-by-HI54-mixtape’ vibes all day, go press the play button over on MOUN.TOWN/RADIO (which’ll play one HI54 mix tape after another, all day — with new/old HI54 Mixcloud mixes like the mix tape above added to the top of ‘MTR - SIDE A’ and ‘MTR - SIDE B’ every Wednesday). Or you can also listen to all the HI54 Yearbook Mixes one-after-the-other with this Mixcloud playlist or check out the individual episodes below:

ALSO also: HI54LOFI is in the Mixcloud Select program, which means you can now support the making of these mix tapes & the artists included on them with a monthly subscription (while also unlocking offline listening of hundreds of HI54 mix tapes for yourself) — y’know, if you’d be interested in something like that (or nobody would be mad at you if you wanted to make a one-time “thanks for the stuff” donation of your choice to HI54LOFI over here, or even if you just told someone else that they might like what they’d find over on the ol’ HI54.BLOG… that stuff helps too!).

And, final finally… if you hear something you like in this latest episode (or just in general out on the internets today), make sure to check out the people making the stuff you like and show them a little bit of love / support / appreciation (in whatever ways you can) — because everybody wins if we all start sharing some more metaphorical coffees/beers/cheers with the people making the things that make things a little bit better (and maybe we can also start giving way less to the people out there always trying to keep things shitty?).

Put good things in, good things come out.

Put good things out, good things come in.

Put good things on loop.

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JEREMY / @HI54LOFI

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