At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is a placeholder to appear on the podcast feed. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. You can also support me by buying one of the audio services I offer – https://centuriesofsound.com/services/

Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.

Do you remember them times?

My first memory of the year 2000 is walking back from Lennons’ nightclub in Southampton, and sitting by myself in a freezing cold room, while in the room above my friend had sex with a girl he’d met in the club. As the sun rose, still unable to sleep, I watched the celebrations on a black & white TV, the world outside feeling more like a funeral than a celebration. I was halfway through a degree I didn’t want to do, living a lifestyle which was often fun but not really sustainable. Who I actually was and what I wanted from life was still a complete mystery. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In 1999 I had been immersed in new music, in 2001 I would pick it up again, but this was the year we all just listened to Canterbury Scene and Krautrock. If you think this paragraph is a mess then you don’t know the half of it.

Among the things I missed out on; in the USA Timbaland was leading a revolution in perfectly produced R&B, and harder-edged alternative rockers were making jagged, angry music. In Europe, house, techno and electroclash producers were putting out work which still feels like an unsurpassed peak a quarter of a century later. And in the UK we were at the peak of UK garage, a genre whose imperial phase had been kicked off at the same club I went to – The Artful Dodger’s garage night was on Tuesdays, the indie night was on Thursdays. None of this really sunk in at the time.

The one salient point here is this: I did not really experience this year myself, I have had to piece it together from available evidence. The news events of this year are either a mystery to me or things I heard about only later. The new music here was all discovered later, with the exception of Emiliana Torrini’s “Unemployed In Summertime” – which I heard while being unemployed in the summertime, aged 21, and found memorable for this reason, and V/VM, who were memorable for other reasons. For the first time I have included some clips of home videos in the mix, but the narrative has once again made itself, if there even is a narrative. It is, it turns out, a pretty good year.

Tracklist

(New Year Montage – various clips)