July 10th Mixtape – 2012 Challenge

Around this time last year Marc listed his top 25 tracks of the year so far and challenged me to do the same. This year we’ve only bloody well done it again, and below are the tracks that have very much floated my boat during the first half of 2012, a smattering of them the same as his list produced. You’ll probably guess from the running order that they’re in no particular order, given Sharon Van Etten follows on from Azealia Banks being one good example of my inability to pick a favourite.

Beach House @ Village Underground

At the end of the year I compiled my top 50 tracks and will look to do the same this year if I’m still whittling on and boring you via this blog. One thing I am utterly certain of (and I seem to be uncertain of so much these days) is Beach House will still be there come December, this album captured every single cell in my body.

You can play this mixtape on Spotify or YouTube. Enjoy! ♥

1. Savages – Husbands
2. Beach House – New Year
3. Kindness – House
4. Santigold – Disparate Youth
5. Grimes – Oblivion
6. The Maccabees – Feel To Follow
7. Hot Chip – Motion Sickness
8. Sleigh Bells – Comeback Kid
9. Crybaby – We’re Supposed To Be In Love
10. Kwes – Bashful
11. Twin Shadow – Five Seconds
12. Azealia Banks – 212
13. Sharon Van Etten – Leonard
14. Mary Epworth – Black Doe
15. Friends – Mind Control
16. Polica – Dark Star
17. Lucy Rose – Red Face
18. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – Garden
19. Two Wounded Birds – To Be Young
20. Chromatics – Kill For Love
21. Zulu Winter – Silver Tongue
22. Julia Holter – In The Same Room
23. Alabama Shakes – I Found You
24. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zero’s – Man On Fire
25. Lianne La Havas – Lost & Found

Sunday Swoon. June 17th

I raced around Torbay on a trawler listening to Azealia Banks on Saturday. What did you do?

1. Thanks to National Theatre Live I got to watch Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein at the beautifully old Gate Picturehouse after missing out on tickets when it was performed last year. I was slightly apprehensive about watching a theatre production as a piece of cinema but concerns were immediately quashed. We attended with Benedict Cumberbatch as the monster, and Danny Boyle’s production gives back the monster his voice, it is told from his perspective. I sobbed, quite a bit, it was utterly moving, challenging and bleak.

2. This  book deserves, and shall have, a blog post of its own but I have to include it in this weeks round-up as it inspired me to the point of scribbling in the margins, underlining passages and bursting into tears on the tube. I shall save my words for when I write that post but for the time being I urge any woman with a creative bone in her body to read A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.

3. Hot Chip released In Our Heads on Monday and from the opening track (Motion Sickness) I was in love all over again. Hot Chip make music anyone could dance to. White middle class boys slapping out rhythms that Prince would bow down to. People making whatever music they like, irrespective of whether it fits with outward appearances, and damn the consequences. Play it, buy it, improve your life ten fold. At least.

4. Despite growing up in Brixham I have always shied away from the annual Trawler Race as it tends to be fairly rowdy and as a teen I was too painfully introvert to join in. This year the town tradition saw its 50th race. My cousin is a skipper of a boat (star of Sky TV’s Trawler Race don’t you know) so this year I finally clambered clumsily and without grace over three boats to get to his boat with dear friend Lizzie on Saturday. We didn’t puke, the weather was so dire that it was called off halfway round the  race across Torbay, we didn’t fall overboard. A success.

 Also, Brixham appears to really, really, really like Azealia Banks 212. ♥

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