20 from '15 | THE HI54 YEARBOOK MIXES
I’ve 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 1hr-ish 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 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 from the year when I was taking the Danish missus to meet the Canadian family to the year when some of the Canadian family came over to visit in Europe. 2015. It’s also the year when we first attempted to move out to a small Canadian mountain town, only to have a death in the family send us back over to Europe (and postpone the mountain town move until 2016). I’m sure there were the usual crazy world events going on, but, for me, 2015 was a year of a lot of country hopping and saying his & byes…
…and if 2015 me and current me were to get together and put a mix together, I think the 2 of us would still be in agreement about which songs/albums from that year still grab our ears, and this mix is a 1-hour sample of that:
Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say these are “THE 20 BEST” of 2015, but based on my recent headphone revisit + 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 2015 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/tracks I had intentions of trying to fit in & artists 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 (also, there’s a decent chance that we have different subjective tastes).
But if you’d like to dive a bit deeper into 2015 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 20X15=300 TUNES FROM 2015 playlist that you could ‘get more of that vibe, sir’ until the cows come home (assuming the cows come home before the 17+ hours of 2015 tuneage stops playing).
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And if you’d like to extend the ‘soundtrack-by-HI54-mixtape’ vibes all day, go press the play button over on MTR - FRESH TAPES (which’ll play one HI54 mix tape after another, all day — with new HI54 Mixcloud mixes like the above added every Thursday). Or you can also find all the HI54 Yearbook Mixes in this Mixcloud playlist.
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, including all the ‘exclusive’ mixes) — 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.
