DJ sneJ — Up On The Hill

Mixed in fits & starts, April 2006 – December 25 2007

Up On The Hill has been a tough mix to complete. It seems I've always known what music fits on it, even if I can't quite explain why; but the hard part has been finding the right ordering to make the mix flow, and the transitions not seem arbitrary. I really have worked on this off and on, every six months or so, for a year and a half. The first few tracks came quickly (and formed the matrix the rest accreted around), the last few took shape soon after that, but everything in between got ripped up and rearranged more times than I can count. I was re-ordering and replacing tracks up till the last minute on Xmas day when I had to start burning discs. I hope it worked out.

So what is it about? Hard to say. Jazz, both modal and fusion (from the days before that became a dirty word), and some other songs that meant a lot to me as a teenager; and some more recent music that drifts in the direction of spooky late-night jazz. Melancholy, nostalgia, absent friends, pianos...

At least six of these songs still break my heart whenever I hear them.

Download:

Up On The Hill [90MB MP3]
Hi-res cover art [5MB PDF]

Track listing:

(since there is only one file, the start time of each track is shown.)

00:00 Sufjan Stevens — “To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament”
from Illinoise
01:38 Herbie Hancock — “Maiden Voyage”
from Maiden Voyage
09:26 Steely Dan — “Aja”
from Aja
17:11 Thomas Dolby — “Airwaves”
from The Golden Agen Of Wireless
22:04 Brian Eno — “Everything Merges With The Night”
from Another Green World
26:00 Cortney Tidwell — “Society”
from Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up
29:34 Madeline Peyroux — “Between The Bars”
from Careless Love
33:07 Elysian Fields — “Parachute”
from Bleed Your Cedar
38:39 Fleetwood Mac — “Hypnotized”
from Mystery To Me
43:06 Santana — “Aqua Marine”
from Marathon
48:20 Jean-Luc Ponty — “Ethereal Mood”
from Cosmic Messenger
52:15 Led Zeppelin — “That's The Way”
from Led Zeppelin III
57:50 Nick Drake — “Three Hours”
from Five Leaves Left
62:49 Trespassers William — “Eyes Like Bottles”
from Having
64:14 Valium Aggelein — “Hier Kommt Der Schwartze Mond”
from Hier Kommt Der Schwartze Mond
67:57 Rickie Lee Jones — “Coolsville”
from Rickie Lee Jones
71:31 John Coltrane Quartet — “Tunji”
from Giant Steps
78:06 Total