Lauren LaverneI found my way to your ‘memory tapes’ purely by chance from somewhere else in cyber space – and after a couple of random clicks to see what great things other listeners had written about the wonder that is the mix tape, I happened across one sent in earlier this summer from none other than my first love – who I have not seen or heard from in years – ah, the memories – I could almost feel the weight of the eye liner descending onto my lids and I swear I caught a waft of Body Shop White Musk on the wind.couldn’t let this happy discovery go unmarked and several hours of digging through boxes of history later, I found the first ever mix tape he made me in those first heady days of goth fuelled teenage love when we thought a certain Robert Smith may well have been the big fella himself, and we were pretty sure we were the bees (very black) knees – oh for the undoubting confidence of youth!my musical horizons have broadened somewhat during the intervening years, and I can now boast off-black and even grey amoungst my wardrobe, but I still get goose bumps and feel slightly homesick when I listen to this tape! Enjoy!The tracklisting can be seen below:It’s a collaboration between Flying Lotus, Captain Murphy and Earl Sweatshirt of the Odd Future collective who we’re hearing alot about this days thanks to Frank Ocean.It’s just a straight-forward, no strings attached collaboration, and won’t be appearing on the new Flying Lotus album which is due in October. Until The Quiet Comes will be released through Warp Records and features Erykah Badu, Thom Yorke and many more. He has a couple of UK dates planned for November in London and Manchester.Flying Lotus – “Between Friends” (Feat. Earl Sweatshirt Captain Murphy)”So, this tape remains to be the best mixtape I’ve ever been given. My friend Sarah made it when I got my first car in 2003 and I needed things to go in the tape deck.”I no longer have a cassette player, so can’t listen to it which is sad.”The track listing is a bit early 2000′s era, but it’s so good . I was more into punk at the time and oddly, this music resonates with me even more now than it did at the time.”I occasionally run a club night in Bristol now and still play some of these songs.”Simple but genius: Word Lens gets you to point your smartphone at printed materials (signs, menus etc) and instantly translates them into English for you. It works with French, Spanish and Italian, and has just come out on Android following an iPhone version last year. The most useful tourism app yet, as well as being the most useful example of augmented reality.London – A City Through Time (iPad – £9.99)This is marvellous – a beautiful interactive encyclopedia of London through the last 2,000 tears, with text, images, maps, spinny objects, audio tours and anecdotes from famous Londoners . A real treat.”A couple years ago, four of my very close friends – sisters Alyssa and Ashley, their brother James, and his best friend Robert – moved away at the same time. They moved 2300 miles away, so this wasn’t a “catch up with you in a few months?” kind of thing. As a music geek, the most personal thing I know to give is music, so I made mixes for each of them based on what they liked.”The trouble was that they all liked very different things. Alyssa liked electronica ; that I could work with. Robert (the best friend) liked just about anything; that I also could work with. Hoo boy. Additionally, in honor of James’ and Robert’s friendship, I took it upon myself to create parallel mixes for them, where they each had roughly the same artists in the same order but with stuff each of them liked separately. Aaaand everyone also got a strange cover tune. Why these extra hoops? Because academic challenges rarely get to play the personal touch.”I also made one of how I wanted them to remember me, all those miles away; this was easier to assemble. I don’t know how much they listened to them , but when you’re driving 2300 miles across America, you take each and every mix tape you can get, and hopefully it meant something to them.”The MPFree today sees the return of Chapel Club, and it’s a different sounding Chapel Club to what you may expect. The band are giving one new song away, and are streaming three other songs from their website.About the new sound they say: “These four songs (like the album entire) are pretty different from our old stuff, and we realise that may disappoint some of our fans. Read more.This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience . Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.
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