Sentimental mixtape-ology - and I mean tape - is a perennial music head fixation. I love it, but aside from one good mate in Alice Springs, I don’t know anyone with a tape player. So, to me, mixtapes are a pointless anachronism - technology’s moved on! It’s tempting to say playlist/burn mixes are the future. But the biggest problem with this kind of mix is its popularity and ubiquity - you like the songs, but you’re not going to listen more than a few times. And there’s no shortage of ripped compilations.

But if someone went to the effort of making an actual mixtape, would you listen over and over the way you did at 13? There’s too much music to soak up at any one time - that’s an equally interesting question in itself, which Eli took up a while ago (interestingly he’s only posted once to his blog since) - I reckon the media’s not the issue, it’s the effort/thought that goes into the compiling and sequencing.

I used to listen to favourite mix tapes over and over and over, until the tape distorted, tore, and got sticky tape surgery. When I hear songs from those tapes now I expect the next song. It’s a weird, hollow feeling when the song fails to materialise.

Scientific American’s new mix (click the picture) has that feeling at its core. And I’ve been listening since Riddim Method first put me onto it. SA took favourite mixes, turned the spotlight on those perfect segues, and created what they call the massdstrction mix.

umm, yeah, okay i guess it needs explaining. mass.dstrction is a mix series. like a cd a dj makes of songs that all blend together, or a tape you made for a girl in 10th grade because you thought she was cute and would think you had good taste in music. so make yourself a mixtape, then a few months later take your favorite parts and mix in some new songs, take parts out, whatever. keep changing things and rearranging, maybe only use the snare sound from one song, with the bass part from another, you get the picture. that’s what’s going on here - except that if you’re in 10th grade and give this to a girl, she’ll probably think you’re sorta crazy. love it!