Erinnert ihr euch noch an Kassetten? Dieses hoffnungslos romantische analoge Format, das es einem im Handumdrehen ermöglichte der Liebsten, Freunden oder auch Verwandten nicht nur eine Freude zu machen, sondern gleichzeitig auch noch eine musikalische Lehrstunde zu geben, inklusive Coolness-Statement! Was war das schön! Wir huldigen nach wie vor dieser Leidenschaft und stellen euch mit unserer Mixtaping by Strangers-Reihe nicht nur tolle neue Künstler vor, die über ihre Mixtape-Vergangenheit und -Vorlieben berichten, nein, wir lassen sie auch extra für euch eine kleine Liste zusammen stellen, auf dass ihr schwelgt in für euch neuer Musik, musikalische Einflüsse entdeckt und die Leidenschaft zur Mixtape machen, weiter geht! Repeat & Rewind inklusive! Für Tape Vol 10 haben wir Lowly an das digitale Tape Deck gebeten.
Have you ever done a mixtape before? If yes – when was the first time and for which person? If not – why not and for which person would you do one?
I haven’t done an entire mixtape for years now, but the first time I did it was probably about 15 years ago. I had just started a band with two of my good friends and we needed to get inspired. So we all went home and found our favourite CDs, imported the songs we liked the most to a computer, arranged the songs with the best ones first, and then put it back on a blank CD. Compared to what you could do with Spotify today, it took ages, but it was probably a lot quicker than doing it on a cassette.
Which format would you prefer for your mixtape: Cassette, CD, digital playlist?
Definitely vinyl. It would probably be kind of expensive, but I think it would work great. One of the problems with mixtapes, from my point of view, is that it’s far too easy to skip a song if you don’t like it from the start. If you don’t like it immediately, you skip it and move on to the next one. And of course that’s nice in some ways. But sometimes it takes time to understand a song or to discover that you actually might like something that sounds different than the stuff you’re used to. And on vinyl, you really have to mean it if you want to skip a song, because it’s way more difficult. I actually think that’s a good thing.
Insider tips that the listener won’t know or mainstream hits?
Insider tips are the best. I also think it’s easier to get ‘convinced’ by a song, if the one that introduces it to you is really passionate about it. Then you might try to understand it just a bit more. Plus, it’s always interesting to get to know new music.
Sad/emotional or dance/party songs?
It depends on your mood. I think it would be way more difficult to make an emotional playlist, because people don’t necessarily associate the same songs with the same moods.
But it’s always nice to have a good party list when you want to get your dance on.
Listing songs one after the other or planning a tonal climax?
I don’t think it has to have a climax, but it’s nice when the songs have some sort of connection, mainly between one song and the next. It can be subtle stuff like similarities in the lyrics or in the dynamics. But it could also be more a ‘aggressive’ connection, like if you’ve had three quiet songs in a row and then break the ‘softness’ with an extremely loud one. Actually, I think the connections are what makes it a mixtape and not just a random collection of songs to me.
About the cover: self painted, a picture stolen from the internet or a simple set-list?
It doesn’t have to be anything fancy – it’s all about the music. 🙂
If you could choose an artist/band, who should do a mixtape for you – which one would it be and why?
I would love to hear a mixtape made by Kendrick Lamar without any hip hop. I think he knows some amazing jazzy and experimental stuff, that no one has ever heard. Or maybe Neil Young, just to know what he’s listening to nowadays…
