C90 Golden Series 001: Best of Sunday Vol. 1

All these mixtapes are my way of coping with that compulsive ‘hunter-gatherer’ side of my brain.  And my way of enjoying the collection.

Normal and well-adjusted people encounter my music collection and retreat with a sense of overwhelm. “I have no idea where to start. How do I even to begin to pick something to listen to?”

I’m sympathetic to that position but they usually don’t stick around long enough for me to explain the role of mixtapes to this process.  All these postings in the C90 Lounge are first and foremost my way of slicing off bite size chunks from the full roasting boar. They may gather together old favourites but more often than not the mixtapes are made up of artists and songs that I’m less familiar with. Or even a complete stranger to.  Newly discovered albums or long-ago-acquired albums which I’ve never listened to.  The Lounge is really my listening laboratory. 

My modus ausculti is to select a bunch of stuff and listen to the albums all the way through. Or, more frequently, hit shuffle.  Whatever tickles the ear drums gets sent to one of dozens of broad categories based on theme, style, feel or artist.  At some later stage, most of those long-listed selections get another listen or two and put into a mixtape and posted on to the Lounge.  At that point I’m probably quite familiar with 30-50% of the tracks; the remainder are completely fresh.

Because I’m so caught up in collecting and making long-lists, the ultimate purpose of having so much music—to revel in the glory of it all; to simply get off on listening—gets pushed on to the back burner. 

In the last few weeks I’ve dedicated most of my time to listening to a bunch of these postings but with my ear fully open rather than simply cocked for a catchy riff, a fine melody or a good title.  The early result of this process is a new series called the C90 Golden Edition which is my distillation to a further degree of syrup, the hundreds of mixtapes I’ve made or posted. 

To kick off I share with you the first in the Series. The Best of Sunday Sounds Vol.1.

I used to write a weekly column which focused on music with a South Asian connection or flavour, for the Indian online paper Scroll.in.  The editor chose the title Sunday Sounds and allowed me to complete freedom to choose several videos every week to share, as long as they had some connection with India, Pakistan or the subcontinent.

That free ranging spirit is what inspires the Sunday Sounds series. Sounds of any genre, feel or geography that I think deserve to be appreciated by a wider audience.

So, after 18 volumes, here is my first cut of the ‘best of Sunday Sounds’.

gs1