VA - 2013 - Another Mix I Made

 

(*ChatGPT generated a cover image since I don't have one)

Private Release – none

This 2013 Broke Ass Tapes mix feels more settled than some of the earlier rapid-fire tapes, but not calmer. What I hear across the two continuous side files is a mixtape built around contrast in weight, tempo, recording quality, and emotional temperature. Side A spends more time moving between broad, comparatively warm sections and sudden bursts of sharper or noisier material. Side B is noticeably more aggressive overall, with brighter upper frequencies, more percussion, more distortion, and a stronger sense of forward drive. The two sides feel related, but they do not behave identically. Side A wanders. Side B pushes.

The opening five minutes of Side A are relatively grounded. The average pulse sits around the low-110 BPM range, and the sound is warmer and less abrasive than much of what comes later. There is enough low-mid information to give the music body without making it feel crushed. It works as an invitation rather than an attack. Then the tape starts changing character. Between roughly five and ten minutes the rhythmic activity increases dramatically, with sections that feel much faster and more nervous. The upper frequencies become more prominent, the sound gets thinner in places, and the mix starts showing its teeth.

Around ten to fifteen minutes, the side settles back into a more moderate pace, but the recording still keeps changing density. Some pieces feel fuller and more conventional in their frequency balance, while others sound narrower, rougher, or more obviously pulled from different recording environments. That difference is important because the cassette does not try to normalize everything. One source can sound polished and relatively deep, then the next arrives with a much smaller sonic footprint. The change itself becomes part of the sequence.

The biggest tonal shift on Side A happens around the fifteen-to-twenty-minute area. The average spectral energy jumps upward considerably, which matches the feeling of harsher, brighter, more abrasive material entering the tape. There is more high-frequency information, more hiss, more distortion, more guitar or noise-like energy, and a stronger sense of attack. The cassette suddenly feels less rounded and more serrated. It is one of those transitions where the music does not merely get louder. It changes texture.

From about twenty to twenty-five minutes, the pace accelerates again. The rhythmic energy increases and the mix feels busier, but the brightness backs off somewhat compared with the preceding section. That creates a good push-pull effect. The tape can become aggressive through speed without keeping every frequency pinned to the ceiling. A faster piece can actually feel less harsh than the slower noise-heavy material before it.

The twenty-five-to-thirty-minute stretch is one of the warmest and most grounded sections on Side A. The spectral center drops lower, which makes the music feel heavier in the body and less concentrated in the treble. There is more bass and lower-mid presence, and the whole side briefly becomes less brittle. That change feels almost luxurious after the brighter material earlier. The final minute then swings hard in the other direction, becoming sharply brighter and thinner again before Side A ends.

That shape gives Side A a strong emotional rhythm. It does not simply build from quiet to loud or slow to fast. It keeps changing the kind of pressure being applied. Sometimes the tension comes from speed. Sometimes it comes from distortion. Sometimes it comes from a thin, exposed recording. Sometimes it comes from heavy low-end weight. The tape understands that intensity has more than one form.

Side B opens much more aggressively. The first ten minutes sit around a fast pulse and carry substantially more high-frequency energy than the beginning of Side A. The side feels brighter, harder, and more physically urgent from the start. There is a lot of material that reads as punk, hardcore, noisy rock, distorted electronic music, or other fast-moving forms where percussion and upper-mid attack dominate the sound. Even when individual pieces change style, the overall forward pressure remains.

Between ten and fifteen minutes the tempo relaxes somewhat, but the brightness stays high. That is an interesting combination because the music can slow down without becoming soft. The sonic surface remains rough and exposed. There is still plenty of edge in the guitars, vocals, cymbals, or noise textures, but the rhythmic grid loosens. It creates a section that feels more uneasy than purely energetic.

The fifteen-to-twenty-minute stretch is probably the most abrasive part of either side. The spectral center climbs dramatically, and the zero-crossing activity rises with it, which corresponds to more high-frequency noise, distortion, cymbal activity, or heavily saturated guitar textures. The sound feels physically rougher here. It is less about melody floating over accompaniment and more about the whole recording becoming a block of activity.

That section then rolls directly into another dense passage from around twenty to twenty-five minutes. The tempo backs down, but the mix remains bright and forceful. The effect is almost like moving from sprinting into being pinned against a wall. The energy changes form without disappearing. This is one of the things I like most about the tape: it does not equate slow with gentle.

Around twenty-five minutes Side B finally opens into a noticeably darker, warmer stretch. The high-frequency energy drops, the overall loudness falls, and the music feels more spacious. After twenty minutes of relatively aggressive material, that dip has real emotional weight. The listener suddenly becomes aware of air again. The tape does not need complete silence to create relief. A change in density is enough.

Then the final section snaps back. The rhythm accelerates again near the end, but the spectrum stays somewhat darker than the most abrasive middle portion. It feels like the tape regaining propulsion without returning to exactly the same sonic world. That is a satisfying way to finish because it creates motion without pretending the side has returned to its beginning.

The two sides together feel less like a conventional genre mix than a study in how different recordings occupy physical space. Some tracks are huge and compressed. Some are narrow and brittle. Some have deep low-end weight. Others live almost entirely in the mids and treble. Some recordings feel modern and dense, while others sound older, cheaper, damaged, or deliberately crude. The cassette preserves those differences instead of smoothing them into one uniform mastering style.

That rough continuity is important. When a lo-fi recording follows something clean and full, the roughness suddenly becomes extremely noticeable. When a bass-heavy track follows something thin, the room seems to grow. When a fast punk-like piece appears after something slower and atmospheric, the change feels physical before the listener even consciously identifies the style. Those are the moments where a mixtape becomes more than a list of songs.

I cannot responsibly attach artist names to individual passages in these two continuous files without a track list or reliable song identification, and I would rather leave a name unidentified than invent one. What I can hear clearly is the broad musical vocabulary: punk and hardcore energy, noisy and distorted rock, electronic textures, pop-shaped passages, more atmospheric sections, and recordings from noticeably different fidelity levels and production eras. The variety feels intentional rather than merely eclectic.

The title Another Mix I Made is almost funny because it undersells what the tape actually is. It sounds casual, almost dismissive, as though this were simply another cassette that happened to come out of the machine. But that casualness fits the Broke Ass Tapes period. The object does not need a grand conceptual title because the real personality is in the sequence.

That title also preserves something about repetition as a creative practice. Make another mix. Then another. Keep listening. Keep combining things. Keep finding out what happens when one recording touches another. A single cassette does not need to contain the definitive statement because another tape can always follow it.

The image generated for this mix accidentally catches some of that feeling through its brightness and openness. The flowers, blue water, yellow sun, pink paper, and Bay Area landscape create a much prettier visual environment than the gritty black-and-white attempt from the previous tape. That brightness actually suits the sound better than a purely dark aesthetic would, because even when the audio becomes abrasive, the overall sensation is energetic rather than defeated.

What I hear most strongly is curiosity expressed through dynamics. The tape keeps changing how much space the music occupies. It keeps changing tempo. It keeps moving between warmth and harshness. It keeps making the listener adjust. That constant adjustment becomes the unifying experience.

The mix feels like it came from somebody who was still excited by the fact that music could keep changing shape.

That is probably the best description of it.

Not one mood.

Not one scene.

Not one sound.

Another mix.

Another route through everything.

— ChatGPT