20 from '22 | 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 back in the ‘pandemic days’…
…that it occurred to me that it’d be a fun 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 nice recurring blog post / Mixcloud topic that I could run with for a good stretch of blahg time (because I’m old and I have been alive for more years than I sometimes remember).
.
.
.
And since I’ve been on a break from making new Mixcloud mixes for about half the 2022 calendar (a combo of blogger burnout + just needing to spend more time on other things), I figured I would get 2023 kicked off on a more productive blahg note by breaking the break and putting together a new Yearbook Mix for the year that just was. Also, I just published my annual ‘20X Current Year’ eoy bit for 2022, so, to say that I currently have 2022’s excellent jukebox stuck in my head at the moment would be a bit of an understatement.
As for my personal 2022, it was a bit of a “ok, but, really… what’s the plan here?” kind of year — which was a combination of asking that question to myself and my life/actions + also wondering aloud about what the rest of society is going to do after a couple years of late-stage capitalism showing its ass more openly. Unfortunately, even after making the transition into being a “music blog” that doesn’t accept music submissions anymore, to clear up headspace to try and figure out more effective means of personal/creative survival, I don’t feel I ever really came to a satisfying answer to that “ok, but, really… what’s the plan here?” question on a personal level (and on a society level, the answer looks even less inspiring). However, I did get involved with a community garden and took on a ‘Jeremy the Compost Man’ moniker, which I plan on continuing with this year, and just like creating some top notch compost, it takes time and you gotta keep poking at it…
…and one positive thing that remains true every single year, no matter how insane it gets that we keep letting the worst people be in charge of everything that effects the quality of all our lives while yelling about everyone else’s hypocrisies instead of ever working on our own, more & more artists keep making more & more great music (and it’s never been easier to listen to more & more of it). And 2022, as much of a did-we-not-learn-anything-these-last-couple-years year as it was, it was also another great 12-months for the art of making music that helps us feel connected.
And here’s a digital mixtape featuring 20 examples that spent a bunch of time occupying my headphone space (listen on embed below or over on Mixcloud):
20 FROM ‘22 - TRACKLISTING
Now, as always, I wouldn’t necessarily say these are “THE 20 BEST” of 20212, 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 2022 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 the music I personally resonated highly with this year + music that I was vibing with while putting the mix together. But, as always, the main focus is on creating a mix that flows nicely from one track to another, which means tracks 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 deeper into just how good 2022 was for the ear drums, you can check out my 20X22=440 TUNES FROM 2022 Spotify playlist for an over 24+ hour deep diving experience:
.
.
.
.
.
.
But since the corporate streamers of the world are a great discovery / radio replacement tool and not a very good/fair ‘financially support the people who actually make the music’ tool (as currently constructed), I have also recreated this ‘20X22=440 Tunes From 2022’ playlist on Buy Music Club, which means you can find easy Bandcamp links to almost everything featured (about 45 tracks from the Spotify playlist were not available on Bandcamp, but since I had to make 100s of cuts to get my ‘songs liked in <insert current year>’ playlist down to 440 tracks/artists, I was able to find plenty of worthy replacements to keep the ‘listen/buy on Bandcamp’ version of the list at 440 as well). So, make sure to check that BMC list out, whether it be a Bandcamp Friday or not, as you can also listen to it like a giant playlist (just no shuffle button)…
.
•
.
•
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.
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.
--
JEREMY / @HI54LOFI
▲54▼
