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 to a year when Obama announced that they shot Osama (and then they threw his body into the sea, as you did back in twenty-eleven). But I personally remember 2011 as the year we decided to pack up Canada life and jump back over the pond to Nottingham to help run a backpackers hostel. This was also the year that me and some Myspace friends went on a small European tour (capped off with a one-audience member show in Rotterdam being our best paid gig of the tour). To be honest, I can’t quite remember if I was running a music blog at the time or still the ‘not a record label, not not a record label’ that was HI54LOFI RECORDS, but it was probably a bit of hybrid situation — EITHER WAY — I bet 2011 Jeremy would be pretty bummed to find out that 11 years later Bandcamp would be sold to a giant video game company (who is owned by an even bigger company, a company who owns a part of Spotify).

But, I guess the 2011 versions of ourselves would be pretty bummed to find out about a lot of things going on a decade+ later…

…but perhaps the one thing our 2011 versions and our current versions could agree to not be bummed out about is that the music that sounded good back then still sounds good today:

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say these are “THE 20 BEST” of 2011, 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 2011 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 last night. 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.

But if you’d like to dive a bit deeper into 2011 than the 20-track digital mix tape provided (for example, you may reach the end and think “I’d like more of that vibe, sir”), well, I had a similar thought back in my 2010s music blahg’n career, so I have actually already created a 20X11=220 TUNES FROM 2011 playlist that you could ‘get more of that vibe, sir’ until the cows come home (assuming the cows come home before the 13+ hours of 2011 tuneage stops playing).

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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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