I NEED SUGAR

The challenge: Go to iTunes DJ, delete all the songs, change the source to your entire music library, turn off the setting "Play higher rated music more often", hit Refresh. Grab about an hour worth of music, in sequence, and mix the tracks. You can change the order, but you have to use all the songs.

The fun: up until just a few hours ago I hadn't heard 13 of these tracks. Some of them are great. And then there's the podcast about God.

Here's the full track list:
01 Tom Waits - Medley: Jack & Neal - California, Here I Come 1977
02 Stereo MC's - Gringo (Ragged & Ruthless) 2008
03 Edan - Rapperfection 2002
04 Massive Attack - Teardrop featuring Elizabeth Fraser 1998
05 Sonic Youth - Crème Brûlée 1992
06 Bruno Pronsato/Anonymous - The Make Up The Break Up Part 1 2009 / God The Sequel Podcast
07 The Legendary Pink Dots - Small Anthem 1997
08 Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - Tangerine 1965
09 Mali Music - Le Relax 2002
10 Cesaria Evora - Paraiso Di Atlantico 1999
11 Badmarsh & Shri - Get up 2001
12 Client - In It For The Money (Radio Session) 2006
13 The Spinto Band - Needlepoint 2008
14 The Spongetones - She Goes Out With Everybody 1994
15 Big Sugar - AAA Aardvark Hotel 1993
16 Funk La Planet All-Stars - Summertime (DJ Fudge Dub) 2007
17 Simulator - Progression 2002

And here's the download link. Enjoy!

Here's a run down of two other top 2009 music lists. Pitchfork, who seem to be keenly interested in reviving the Beach Boys, and Resident Advisor, who love it when people mumble "house music" over a muffled beat. I took a listen to both sets to see what was what in the world of internet music lovers and have gathered my rankings below in fancy image format. Of course, the last image in the set is the trusty I Need Sugar list, which I hope is a much more varied collection of stellar tracks.

Pitchfork's Top 50 Tracks of 2009

Resident Advisor's Top 50 Tracks of 2009

I Need Sugar's Top 50 Tracks of 2009

Hear the top 10 I Need Sugar tracks at blip.fm.

This is the first mix I completed using Traktor. June 09, 2009. Made from selections of my 2008 Hallowe'en compilation. Some breaks and minimal collected over the years with tracks from 1995 through 2007.

It's a companion to the almost 2 hour 2008 Hallowe'en mix I put together on June 15 which can be found here. This one's a quick 40 minutes.

In light of the month, it's being resurrected. 2009 Hallowe'en mix coming soon.

Track listing:
01 Photek - The Hidden Camera
02 Luke Vibert - I Hear The Drummer
03 Aphex Twin - Ventolin (Deep Gong Mix)
04 Underworld - Play Pig (Pig & Dan Mix 1)
05 Madonna - Get Together (James Holden Remix)
06 Pan-Pot - Charly featuring Hugh Betcha
07 Radio Slave - Bang Bang featuring Nancy Sinatra

Download here.

A set I was playing with in the summer. Looking for a nice relaxing vibe. Love the Efdemin/Pantha mashup at the beginning. Should have kept on going, but I slowly beat the set to death with the last three tracks.

Tracklist:
01 Pantha du Prince - Saturn Strobe
02 Efdemin - Bergwein
03 Sian - Apple Tree
04 Lukas Greenberg - Fahrenheit ? Idiophonic
06 Justin Martin - Nightowl (Manoo & François A Remix)
07 Evan Marc - Ekoshok
07 Roberto Bardini - Stay Quiet
08 The Timewriter - Night Train
09 MySpaceRocket - Amok
10 Lopazz - Wasted Days

Download here.

Qasim was super generous to invite a white boy to the party this past Friday. I somehow managed to kill 2.5 hours of minimal into a 55 minute set. I was stressing at the 30 minute mark as I realized I was chomping through all the minimal I had that was anywhere close to Indian. Seems to have worked out in the end as I made it through 55 minutes of an hour long set. 

This is the unedited live mix from the evening so there's a little bit of unintentional madness occurring but that's the way it goes. Maybe I'll do a cleaner studio mix in the future but for now this is the goods. Enjoy!

Track list:

01 Rufus Wainwright - Agnus Dei
02 Trentemøller - Prana
03 Emmanuel - Indian Wallpaper
04 Basti Grub - El Gitarro (M.in Remix)
05 Andrea Giuliani and Luca Rossetti - Dirty Chant
06 Andre Crom & Luca Doobie - Harmonics (Ilario Alicante Remix)
07 Debashish Bhattacharya - Amrit Anand
08 Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts - Can't Argue With Silence
19 Kabuto - Drunken Slumber
10 Masomenos - Juhuu
11 Chris Wood & Frank Leicher - Geisha
12 Gabriel Ananda - Sweet Decay
13 Chris Lattner & Coco Malente - Limbo With Coco

Download here.

Photo credit: Looks like a Slumdog Millionaire set photo as opposed to a screen cap. Taken from this blog, which offers no credit.

From recorded music to live performances, t-shirts to household items, online fun to retail boutiques, welcome to Masomenos.

Don't know Masomenos? Here's a video they put together which sums up their happy good time vibe.

Still not sure about Masomenos? Here's a nice collage of some of their music related design work.

Masomenos music!? Sure. Here's the Masomenos live mix for Noise Radio.

Enjoy the fun times, belly dancers!

Since 2007 I've been putting together playlists of freakishly awful music for Hallowe'en. Sometimes little miracles happen and you get a playlist that's too much fun to ignore. There's usually a combination of minimal, metal, trip hop, industrial, drum'n'bass and anything else I've been able to collect that's good and dark dark.

One of the first things I did when I got my new mixer and was prepping for the I Need Sugar Launch Party, was to pull out the 2008 Halloween mix and get a little dirty with the minimal tracks in the playlist. I made a short promo mix of about 40 minutes which wasn't too bad, but now I've got a mix of the rest of those 2008 tracks with such a tremendously large amount of screaming in it, it needs to be shared out straightaway. Enjoy!

Download the 08 Halloween mix.

And here's the tracklisting as near as I can remember:

01 Mathias Schaffhäuser / Michael Giacchino / Radio Slave - Graupause / Hunting Ghosts (Boone Edit) / Screamapella
02 Pantha du Prince - Walden 2
03 [a]pendics.shuffle & Mikael Stavöstrand - Take Me Higher featuring Erika Alexandersson
04 Ellen Allien - Go (Marcel Dettmann Remix)
05 Shackleton - Blood On My Hands (Ricardo Villalobos Apocalypso Now Mix)
06 Jonny Greenwood - Henry Plainview
07 Bot'Ox - Tragedy Symphony
08 The Kittens - Intro
09 Aphex Twin - Icct Hedral (Philip Glass Orchestration)
10 György Ligeti - Lux Aeterna
11 Salvatore Freda & Massimo Stefanelli - Endless Ride
12 Sasha - Who Killed Sparky (Radio Slave's Panorama Garage Mix)
13 Supermayer - Two Of Us (Extended Album Version)
14 UNKLE - Burn My Shadow (UNKLE Surrender Sound Session #5)
15 The Cheapers - Fog
16 M.I.A. - Can't Find You
17 False - Fed On Youth
18 Jonas Kopp - Androgeno
19 Oliver Huntemann - Sao Paulo
20 James Holden / The Kittens - Corduroy / Outro

And, of course, you can hear both Halloween mixes on People Downtown Radio, with more on the way.