Well, here it is: Like a Sci­en­tist: The Offi­cial WORD Blog Mix. I’ve been think­ing about this thing for a year or more. In my head, it sounded very dif­fer­ent, I think, some­what more focused. But it became a case of “Oh, I can’t leave this out” and “I bet this will go great with this.” So it’s mor­phed into a bit of a “whole sound” type of thing, which leads on quite a bit from 2006’s year in review post. I won’t pre­tend to be an awe­some DJ or blender or mixer, there will cer­tainly be moments to make dis­cern­ing ears cringe, I’m sure. Mostly I tried to put every­thing I love about music into one mix, every­thing that makes this blog what it is, and rep­re­sent it in one fell swoop. I hope I suc­ceeded. Please let me know what you think. There are a few for­mats here to choose below. Full track­list fol­lows. Enjoy!

Like a Sci­en­tist: The Offi­cial WORD Blog Mix (mp3 — full length)
This is the entire 79 minute mix as one 320kbps mp3 file with art­work embed­ded. 182mb.

Like a Sci­en­tist: The Offi­cial WORD Blog Mix (ZIP — 8 mp3 parts)
This is the mix bro­ken into the 8 parts that I orig­i­nally struc­tured it as, each part a 320kbps mp3 file with art­work embed­ded. I’m also includ­ing a higher res ver­sion of the art­work in case you want to print it out. 168mb.

Print­able Art­work (TIFF file — 150dpi)

TRACKLIST

Part 1: New World
01. Wag­ner — Thus, We Begin In The Green­ish Twi­light Of The Rhine
02. Björk — New World
03. DJ Cam — Twi­light Zone
04. Wax­fac­tor — Bet­ter Days
05. Alexan­dre Desplat — Birth: Pro­logue
06. Fog — I Have Been Wronged (Jesu Remix)

Part 2: Mary, Mary
07. CAN — Mary, Mary So Con­trary
08. Ben Frost — The­ory of Machines
09. The North Sea & Rame­ses III — Return Of The Ankou (Xela Remix)
10. Six­too — Next Sound­track Side D1
11. Blur — Trimm Traub

Part 3: Spi­tal­fields
12. Red Snap­per — Spi­tal­fields
13. Xela — Wet Bones
14. Radio­head — A Wolf At The Door
15. Sage Fran­cis — Going Back To Rehab (Instru­men­tal)
16. Cun­nin­lyn­guists feat. Club Dub — The Light (Instrumental)

Part 4: Broth­ers In Arms
17. Dire Straits — Broth­ers In Arms
18. 2tall — At The Gates of Love
19. Saltillo — A Nec­es­sary End
20. Andrea Parker — Clutch­ing At Straws (Instru­men­tal)
21. Manyfin­gers — Our Worn Shadow
22. Slint — Washer
23. Goril­laz — All Alone

Part 5: Funk
24. Solomon Burke — Proud Mary
25. Baby Huey — Hard Times
26. Doris — Beat­maker
27. Hailu Mer­gia and the Walias — Musi­cal Silt
28. Ebony Rhythm Band — Drugs Ain’t Cool (Instru­men­tal)
29. Eldridge Holmes — Pop, Pop­corn Chil­dren
30. Lee Dorsey — Four Cor­ners Pt. 1
31. The Black Exotics — Theme Of The Black­byrds
32. Mitch Mitchell — Can’t Get A Nuff

Part 6: Tsunami
33. Manyfin­gers — Tsunami
34. Lo-Fidelity All­stars — Pony Pres­sure
35. Six­too — Next Sound­track C1
36. DJ Shadow — Mid­night In A Per­fect World (Gab Mix) (Masaru Edit)
37. Gus Gus — Believe

Part 7: Lovesick
38. Olivelawn — Hate
39. El-P — Smithereens (Instru­men­tal)
41. Oasis — Fuckin In The Bushes
42. Pri­mal Scream — MBV Arkestra (If They Move, Kill Em)
43. Scorn — To High Heaven
44. Lisa Ger­mano — Lovesick (Under­dog Remix)

Part 8: Tragedy
45. Betty LaVette — Let Me Down Easy
46. Griz­zly Bear — Col­orado
47. Machine­fab­riek — Zucht 2
48. Lo-Fidelity All­stars — Night­time Story
49. Svarte Greiner — Final Sleep
50. El-P — Reprise (This Must Be Our Time)

This past week I came across a bunch of mixes online in var­i­ous ways and fig­ured a post sum­ming them all up would be a nice semi-periodic fea­ture of WORD. I did one of these awhile back, too, but those were mostly bought CD mixes. These are all free, free, free, on the interwebdevice.

Optimo — Pitch­fork Mix 01 (ZIP)
Pitch­fork Media, that bane and hope of musi­cians every­where, has started up a monthly mix series. For their first offer­ing, they’ve enlisted one half of the Optimo DJ duo. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Appar­ently Optimo has nights full of healthy psyche-rock, and I love me some psyche-rock, but the track­list looked like a lot of 80s techno, too, so I was appre­hen­sive. How­ever, Optimo really pulls it off on this one. Start­ing with Test Department’s bag­pipe manip­u­la­tions, it goes into some disco-funk, some odd pop stuff, wind­ing up with the bril­liant choice of Sabbath’s “The Wiz­ard” some­where in the mind­bend­ing mid­dle before blend­ing into “In Zaire,” a sim­ply great afrobeat tune. From there, the shaky, steady beats coa­lesce into a suite of Detroit-influence techno (with a help­ing of actual Carl Craig) that some­how morphs into Grin­der­man. Yeah, pretty nutso jour­ney!
Inter­view + Tracklist

Digi­tonal vs. Posthu­man — Live Stu­dio Ses­sion July 2007 (mp3)
This isn’t a mix, but it’s mix-lenght, and recently up on the web. These two artists have been get­ting together to do live shows, and they recently sat down (in Digitonal’s din­ing room, it appears) to do a proper record­ing of the set. Com­pletely impro­vised, but with spe­cific goals, it’s a beau­ti­ful mar­riage of Digitonal’s shim­mer­ing strings and elec­tron­ics with Posthuman’s elec­tronic beats. Not much else to say, peep the music and rejoice!
Info + Tracklist

Frank — African Mix #05 Cooked From Scratch (mp3)
I pre­vi­ously wrote about Frank and his amaz­ing African Funk mixes back in March. Since then, he has graced us with another heavy mix, culled from a recent radio set did. Much props to him for shar­ing the knowl­edge with every­one, as always. I read on a Soul Strut thread, he has been con­tacted about doing some compilations/releases for a label. Let’s hope that works out, because he must be the expert on this music by now.
Track­list + Info

Take — Press Enter (mp3)
There is a pro­ducer named Take com­ing out with a new album called Earth­tones & Con­crete. I don’t know much about it, but his label, Inner Cur­rent has this mix from him to pro­mote the record release party. A lit­tle late, maybe, but here is the party info. Any­way, this is some tasty glitch-hop mixol­ogy we are being treated to. Take’s pro­duc­tions seem more Dabrye than Ooah in the glitch-hop field, and it works really well mixed in with some notable instru­men­tals and other pro­duc­ers of the ilk. I’m really look­ing for­ward to the album now. Check out the mix!

In other but related news, my post­ing has been down a lit­tle for a vari­ety rea­sons, some good, some lame, but the one that is most rel­e­vant is the project I’ve been work­ing on for the blog. Like A Sci­en­tist will be the Offi­cial WORD Blog mix, full of all that shit that I love. I don’t claim to be a great DJ, but hope­fully peo­ple will enjoy see­ing what hap­pens when all the dis­parate WORD styles come crash­ing in upon each other for 80 min­utes. I’m hop­ing to go all out with high-quality mp3s, art­work, etc. It’s com­ing along quite nicely, but will prob­a­bly take another month or so for me to be full happy with it. In the mean­time, I’ll try to get some new reviews up soon.