The Valentine's Day Special

What Valentine's Day would be complete without a Valentine's Day mixtape? I've been focusing my efforts this past week in compiling 10 songs into a mix just for today. It is my ode to you, O faithful readers, that you might notice a change in the pace of your beating heart, a slipping of consciousness in the neon lights, a sharp moment of happines and joy in the overpowering contact with another person.




splatteredpaint_valomix '08

1. Goldfrapp - Fly Me Away (Ladytron remix):
In Ludovico Ariosto's classic Orlando Furioso Orlando falls in love and, rejected by his lover, loses his mind and travels to the moon to find it. Those who have ever experienced unrequited love would perhaps never wish such a fate to fall on his brother or sister, and yet looking back the feeling of insanity was somehow enjoyable. So yes, Goldfrapp, fly me away so that I might find my wits.

2. Alb - Sweet Sensation (Breakbot remix):
I can't hide it any longer, I am in love with Breakbot. Or maybe I love him, but I'm not in love with him. His remixes are so great and this one in particular I've been playing non stop whenever I drive my car. I play it with the windows down because lately it's been warm out and I hope that someone will hear it and share the same sweet sensation that I feel.

3. Brigitte Bardot - Contact (Booka Shade edit):
This edit from Booka Shade's most recent DJ Kicks contribution is stellar and apropos for this time of year. The lovely Bardot sings of some female alien, traveling space who has her heart pierced by a meteorite. While we on earth have doctors for such wounds, she says, she needs a mercurial transfusion. At all costs she must be healed so she can rejoin her love in the galaxy.

4. The Gossip - Yr Mangled Heart (Tiga remix):
Beth Ditto should be the championed as one of today's greatest lead vocalists. Among all the divas of today, no one comes close to the kind of wailing she produces. Yr Mangled Heart is a study on the irrationality of the heart: "I've been here before, I should be used to this" and yet every year the same holidays return to haunt us.

5. ZZT - Lower States of Consciousness (Delete remix):
If the heart was a computer and you saw a girl of your dreams for the first time while you were at a bar and you made eye contact with her only just as she was leaving the bar never to be seen again, I imagine the sounds such a machine would make in processing this encounter wouldn't sound unsimilar to this song.

6. Kylie Minogue - 2 Hearts (The Twelves remix):
The most recent single from Kylie's new album, X, is a letter to her lover. "I'm deep in the dark of you," she coos, "It feels like I never saw the sun."

7. Architecture in Helsinki - Debbie (U-Tern remix):
I love all songs that are tributes to a woman named Debbie (there's two). The Australian musical collective are anything but orthodox. This funky song may not be a love song, but, lyrics aside, it feels like one.

8. Róisín Murphy - Overpowered (Kris Menace remix):
Murphy's distinct voice got became recognizable as part of the electronic duo Moloko. Murphy and her counterpart Mark Brydon met at a party in 1994 using the line, "Do you like my tight sweater? See how it fits my body." The two fell in love and released the album as an ode to their relationship. In 2003 the two split up, apparently on good terms. Murphy's second solo-career album, Overpowered, features the single of the same name, one of the best songs of 2007. "When I think that I'm over you," she sings, "I'm overpowered." Perhaps she still misses that tight sweater.

9. Chromeo - Bonafide Lovin' (YUKSEK remix):
Chromeo apparently saw my boyfriend on the street the other day and he was a mess. Chromeo assures me that, contrary to my current boyfriend, Chromeo could give me some honest-to-god loving. Ok, Chromeo, I'd dump my boyfriend for you any day!

10. Talking Heads - Sugar On My Tongue:
See you on the moon!