With its new Orient Apple flavor, Absolut combines crisp apple sweetness with ginger spice. It’s a fusion we’re so enamored with that we created a soundtrack for it. Our Perfect Fusion compilation features an equally inspired blend of artists and sounds — and the whole thing is yours for free.
It includes UK folk-pop darling Emmy the Great, Aussie psych upstarts Cloud Control, and our latest tropical crushes, ChuCha Santamaria y Usted, plus mainstays like TV on the Radio, Bon Iver, and UNKLE. Check out the mixtape now and treat yourself to a taste of Orient Apple. Click through for the full track list and your free download.
Flavorpill’s joining the sweat, heat, and taco trucks of South by Southwest this year to throw a party with some of our best friends. Combining forces with The Musebox, I Rock I Roll and The Bell House NY, and sponsored by HP: Everybody On, we’ve pulled together a bunch of our favorite bands to play some music and liven up the Austin afternoon. So, if you’ll be making the yearly arduous pilgrimage to Texas, join us on Wednesday, March 16 from noon until 6 pm at Lipstick 24. We’ll have Flavorpill faves like Oh Land and Class Actress alongside bands destined to become your new favorites, like the genius, guilty dance-glee of Kids of 88. RSVP for the afternoon of awesome here, but do it quickly as we’re nearing event capacity.
To whet your appetite for the acts you’ll see at our showcase (or, if you won’t be in Austin, to enable you to party along with us from the comfort of your own home), we’ve curated a mixtape of songs from the bands who are performing. Check out the slightly twisted event flyer below, and view the mixtape’s track list, which you can download as one file for your listening pleasure.
As yet another thick coating of snow buries the Northeast and January creeps toward February, it’s begun to seem less like time for sledding and ice skating than time for deep, peaceful, wintertime hibernation. If you woke up this morning to the news of a snow day, we assume you’re going looking forward to some extra moments of sleep. And we’ve got the soundtrack to that nap (or, for the unlucky ones, your day at work).
This Hibernation Mixtape pits snow songs (Side A) against ice songs (Side B) in a collection designed to lull you into vivid, dream-filled sleep. The artists on the tape — Atlas Sound, Grouper, Real Estate, Brian Eno, Kate Bush — may often be odd, but there’s always something magical about their compositions. Let Side A ease you slowly into slumber, while Side B gradually swells to wakefulness. Listen after the jump.
If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: The miniature hero of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, Ender Wiggin.
This time of year, when visiting my parents’ house for tree trimming and turkey eating and general holiday festivities, I’m always confronted by insistent reminders of my not-so-distant adolescent self: my mixtapes. Though by the time I got to high school, the tape was being swiftly eclipsed by the mix CD and iPod playlists, my beloved broke-ass 1994 Saturn Coupe wasn’t equipped to handle such technological innovations. Add in the relative difficulty of destroying a tape — as opposed to the fragile and scratchable surface of a CD-R — and, of course, the Wes Anderson-instilled romantic appeal of outdated audio equipment, and you’ll begin to understand why I ended up making a lot of tapes.
Every Christmas, I rediscover them, scattered in the backseat of my younger brother’s car or stacked in neat piles next to my college textbooks. This year I chanced listening to their potentially cringe-inducing contents. Listed below, as best as I could muster, a critical reassessment of four of my high school mixtapes.
The 2010 CMJ Music Marathon is upon us, which means that there’s new music been thrown around left and right here at Flavorpill (You already have our unofficial showcase this Saturday marked on your calendars, right?) This week’s mix features some new tracks from old favorites (Crystal Stilts, The Thermals) and a couple of up-and-comers (Twin Shadow, Dom). Right click + save as to download individual tunes or scroll to the bottom to nab the whole mix.
As fas as summer festivals go, Lollapalooza is one of the biggest and most diverse out there, attracting pop fans and indie snobs alike. So, whether you’re traveling to Chicago for three days of musical revelry or admiring the event from afar, our Lollapalooza megamix — co-presented with RCRB LBL and Jetsetter — is essential listening. Listen to tracks by Hot Chip, Phoenix, Yeasayer, Javelin, and many more after the jump, and head to RCRB LBL to download your favorites.
Robots have been inspiring musicians for years (see: “Sheep” by Pink Floyd), but that doesn’t mean there has been some kind of cultural consensus on where they fall on the good vs. evil axis. After the jump, we’ve rounded up a mixtape of the 20 definitive robot tunes, and divided it up so you’ll be able to pick sides. Side A: Robots are good. Side B: Robots are evil. Enjoy, and drop any glaring omissions in the comments!
I’m going to be a dad soon. My wife is 20 weeks pregnant, lugging around a cute, little baby who weighs ten ounces and is roughly the length of a banana. At this point, the fetus — whose sex will be determined next week — is already flexing its limbs, having dreams, and starting to swallow. Its glands are also starting to secrete a waxy “cheese-like” substance called vernix caseosa. Yum!
Most importantly, though, the baby’s ears have finally developed enough to actually hear sound. Making a mixtape to celebrate this development was obvious, but what kind of mix was I to make?
It never fails: Every Bloomsday, someone reminds us that Kate Bush’s “The Sensual World” is based on James Joyce’s Ulysses. Not that we mind — it’s always nice to have an excuse to listen to the song again. But this year, it inspired a lit-geek challenge: Could we compile an entire mixtape of songs inspired by modernist masters? While who qualifies as a modernist is a question for literary scholars to debate, we’re pretty satisfied with the 12 songs we’ve chosen. Tell us what you’d include in the comments.
