The Mixed-Up, Mashed-Up Music Files of Mr. Ruben L. Davis

Ours is an age mired in confusion, frustration, and conflict. Soon, an honest-to-gosh wolf-killer may assume higher public office, and the people on the television say that no one’s going to have any money pretty soon. As my father says, “Stranger than fiction...”

But have faith! Fear no evil, be not in want—seek out wonderful, undiscovered music, and goodness and love will surely follow. Be forewarned: the road to finding new tracks, as you may know, is unavoidably long and fraught with disappointment. I’ve traveled that road, and know that there are disappointments. You don’t always find what you’re looking for, to say the least, but sometimes things work out all right. Let’s dig in.

Remixes, Mashups, Mixtapes, Bastard Pop, Radiomixes. The extent to which these musical terms, constructs, and formats have achieved ubiquity has become a truism. I mean, Christ, with the upcoming campus performance by Girl Talk and links to the Ratatat remixes being sent out over house lists, even the Harvard community is up on it. Most attribute this popularity to the inability of the modern public to sit down and listen to a full song and the lack of proper record stores. In fact, I think the truth is that a great many people like good music—it’s just that they’re sometimes not willing to search for it, or aren’t sure where to find it.

Mixtape creators, mashup artists, and DJs, then, can be thought of as musical mediums, the best of whom dabble in necromancy, bringing the spirit of long-forgotten tracks to life. And it is this point which perhaps deserves most attention­­—that the best of these channelers really do bring the spirit of the songs they choose to the attention of the listener. The very nature of the genre dictates that the finest artists will inevitably be those that showcase or amplify the best in every song they use by making them as accessible as possible.

In the end, this kind of DJing is as much an act of trying to please or excite whomever is listening as it is a documentation of where the artist has been and where they’re likely to go. What they produce is a sort of audio-autobiography, from which one can extrapolate the maker’s personality.

The upshot of all of this is that the track listings behind these works can almost certainly be found on the internet. This isn’t news. But it seems to me that not enough people look into the provenance of these compilations, and thus, are missing out on some great stuff.

Take the DFA Radio Mixes as an example. Started in 2005 by DFA Records, the first discs in the series were crafted by label co-founder James Murphy, and, according to the liner notes, were “recorded at home in Brooklyn.” While those same notes later reveal that the discs were also intended to be spun on BBC 1, most of the albums in the seasonally released serial are well worth the download (and they’re free on DFA’s website). While the content of some of these mixes can be a little dance-heavy at times, the imperfections are more than made up for by the tracks’ phrasing and a compositional sensibility that deftly complements the songs being built upon.

Featured on the Winter 2005 album is Chicago’s “I’m a Man.” Perhaps it’s because I habitually confuse the bands Boston and Chicago (and because I think Chicago’s pretty terrible), but I never really listened to the former. Now, thanks to DFA and my error, a few of Boston’s greats have entered my iTunes rotation.

Resources like the DFA Remixes are among the more reliable places to find success in your hunt for new material, but discoveries like this are obviously to be found in many places.

I find the late night BBC Radio 1 show “Essential Mix” to be an even better resource.

Widely considered to be a key part of the rise of contemporary dance music in the UK, I prefer to think of it as representative of the trickle-down theory of music. That is, new or unheard music heard first by chemically dependent night owls is eventually passed down to more sober friends the next morning, who in turn send it to friends, and so on. You don’t have to be a fan of house and techno, however, to get a great deal out of these shows. This is because the track listings for these mixes are available online.

Justice’s Essential Mix is an uninterrupted two-hour set in which the group weaves and patches together over 70 different songs from slightly fewer artists. You don’t have to know who Vamp, Tepr, Chromeo, or Goose are to connect to the mix. Hell, you don’t even need to know who Justice are to have a good time. This is owing to the fact that the best mixes are exceptional because they take already wonderful material as their foundation.

For this reason, the most memorable mixes are not so much timeless as they defy definition after a single listen. A mixtape is simultaneously a record of the maker’s mood at the time, a sum or product of the totality of their experiences up until creation, and a continually moving barometer of the listener’s musical breadth. Finding the totality of what music has to offer, as with any art, is about discovering connections, following them to their end, and then making more.

An Essential Mix from almost a decade ago by David Holmes led me to explore the artists that influenced and provided the tracks for his horn-infused, funk-dance mixes, as well as a little known singer-songwriter named Ellen McIlwaine.

Later, the DFA Remixes led me to a London band called Cage & Apiary, which led me to a blog called Illegal Tender, which led me to new Justice songs and a set of remixes made by Cage & Apiary themselves, ironically. I encourage you then to forge your own connections, and keep making them if you already are.

—Columnist Ruben L. Davis can be reached at rldavis@fas.harvard.edu.