Mix: 6. Eastern Jungle

It took two guiding lights to shepherd me through this mix I created for Mexico City’s brilliant Mitamine cultural curation blog. First, I knew the beginning had to start with Lins & Ford’s “Fast Roads” and it’s end had to be with Kyoko Koizumi’s “Eastern Jungle”. They felt like thematic book ends to something bigger. What was it though? I kept thinking (and tinkering): how exactly do I tie those two songs together? That’s when an aha moment struck me. There is (or was) a beautiful call to action at the beginning, in “Fast Roads”. It was one so specific. This line: “Taking in, what flashes by me”, for some reason, struck me as something special. It was something beautifully loaded with symbolism, in a way anyone could understand.

Then I asked myself: How do we exactly do this? Catch that blur. Well, writ large, I thought: that’s life’s journey, right? Now, that was something that could storyboard this mix. I thought, if one could get from “fast roads” to an “eastern jungle”, one had to have music that truly felt like that life’s journey. In this mix, each song had to affirm its place. Songs had to blur past you, segueing through each other with equal part sentiment, purpose, and surprise. You’d catch glimpses of some intriguing song, genre, style, or language, only to be overtaken by another, distinct, but inviting, beautiful musical idea. With time, as the music kept blurring past you, after awhile, you’d be able to forget about what’s in that current blur and simply just catch those beautiful bits as they came streaming in.

Now, how we get from sea to sand, and everywhere in between, well that’s where art truly exists. It takes curation, culture, and, hopefully, something you’ll hear in this mix. This had to be a mix of summer going into fall, with everything in between…

Tracklist:

1. Lins & Ford – Fast Roads
2. Takashi Toyoda – Sea
3. Hiroki Okano – Sand
4. Krisma – Silly Europeans
5. Czesław Niemen – Status Mojego Ja
6. Dollar – Dangerous Blondes
7. The Rolling Stones – Too Much Blood
8. Romie Singh – Dancing To Forget (Reprise)
9. Exotics – Be Cool
10. Jorge Ben – Curumin Chama Cunhata
11. Yukako Hayase – Island
12. 1. Futurologischer Congress – Köperwärme
13. Katsutoshi Morizono – Imagery
14. Joachim Witt – So Tight
15. Asami Kobayashi – Sugar Shuffle
16. Seri Ishikawa – Panorama Heaven
17. China Crisis – Red Sails
18. Kyoko Koizumi – Eastern Jungle

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