Aaron Landry

3:AM, originally uploaded by Aaron Landry.

In the late 1990s, my coworker and now friend Troy became a master at the art of the mix CD: he’d develop elaborate cover art to go along with his eclectic and rare mixes ranging from hot summer songs to Christmas mixes, from truckin’ songs to classics made famous in Vegas, from obscure celebrity covers to road trip music. He’d make tons of copies and design the whole package from scratch. Almost ten years later he still creates mix albums and I literally have a shelf dedicated to them. (Troy also now rocks out at Check The Cool Wax, The Total Recall and a number of other sites)

Anyway, in the 1998 and 1999, trying to follow in his footsteps perhaps, I ended up making three mix CDs. While playing with putting songs up against each other I started getting some of my first real experience with Photoshop and Illustrator. I distributed about ten copies of each. It was a fun little project back then.

My friend Melissa messaged me yesterday asking if I still had a copy of “3:AM,” my third one, as she lent her copy to someone and never got it back. Sure enough, I did, but for whatever reason, the aged CD-R I had didn’t work anymore. I decided I’d revive the mix in MP3 form. For “3:AM,” I wanted to make one of those “last mixes of the night” chill-out albums. In February 1999, this is what I thought that would be:

3:AM

1. Transglobal Underground - Sky Giant
2. Tricky - Hell Is Around The Corner
3. Portishead - It Could Be Sweet
4. Faithless - The Garden
5. The Cardigans - Paralyzed
6. Massive Attack - Risingson
7. Everything But The Girl - Single
8. Hooverphonic - Dictionary
9. Mono - The Outsider
10. The Starseeds - Parallel Life
11. Björk - Come To Me
12. Black Tape For A Blue Girl - Given
13. Alpha - Firefly (Receiver Mix)
14. Spiritualized - Broken Heart
15. Air (with Françoise Hardy) - Jeanne

 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

P.S. Yes, I would have used Muxtape if it supported more than 12 tracks at a time.