When I am with you

Sometimes a song isn’t enough. Nor an album. Not to change a mood, budge the blues, shift your mindset. A good mixtape on the other hand can do all of those things. The one I keep returning to over and over is Darkstar’s end-of-year one for xxjfg (scroll down and listen to it here). I can be tired, fed up, frustrated, stressed, whatever, but it always, without fail, cuts through all the crap. The anticipation is blissful; the familiar fall strangely comforting. Every single track plays its perfect part. The slo-mo drop into Instra:Mental ‘Watching You’, Charles Dodge’s childlike computerised interludes, Mux Mool’s screwed edits of dancefloor classics and the teasing build to the sheer, sheer joy of ‘Aidy’s Girl Is A Computer’. Everything falls away. They could have left it there but I love it that they didn’t. Lee Fields howls out his heartbreak, a French child sings a peculiar lullaby, and then silence. Calm. The days are ahead.