Louis' Mixtapes

Mixtape 5: Looking Through the Khalidoscope by Louisgaudet on Mixcloud

This is a mixtape for my good buddy Khalid. I only kind of told him I was doing one, but I don't think he'd expect it.

This one is predominantly made up of poetry, some pretty brutal punk/hardcore/metal music, and a little bit of a hip-hop. Most of it is tied together by the theme of poetry though, although some songs just thematically fit the structure of the record and what I wanted to do with it.

I was initially hoping to just predominantly do brutal death metal stuff, as Khalid once told me he'd like to explore some extreme music as he's never really listened to it. My first suggestion at the time was the latest Behemoth Record, "The Satanist", as it was sonically digestible (at least, considerably well produced for a death metal record), thematically engaging, and an album one could emotionally relate to even with no ties to Satanism. Being that the last song on the album, “O Father O Satan O Sun!”, has a very poetic closing, I closed the mixtape with this song.

Some songs touch on poetry without being particularly prominent, such as Napalm Death’s “In Deference”, Amenra’s “A Promise To Make” and Cave In’s “Controlled Mayhem Then Erupts”. There was some mashing up of songs, using the spoken word poetry track “Shadow” as an intro to “Fear and Sickness” by Neurosis. A cool one was tagging the end of Bad Brain’s “Supertouch” with Saul William’s “Telegram”, of which uses a sample of the aforementioned track.

All in all, this isn’t nearly as fun a mixtape as the previous ones, and I’m not even sure if Khalid will like it all that much. None the less, it’s thematic, and I’ll think he’ll appreciate it. It’s very dark, but it’s cool. I’d listen to it, and in the end, isn’t that all that really matters?

-louisgaudet

Mixtape 4: The Nurse To Be Missed by Louisgaudet on Mixcloud

So I went on another date with my favourite nurse last night, and thus had to make Nurse Sally another mixtape. She kind of expected it, so she prepared one for me too! Sadly the disc doesn’t work... so I can’t really hear it yet. Will have to get her to burn it again.

For this mixtape, being that Sal’s such a sweet and endearing girl, I went further with the smoother songs. This time though rather than predominantly being made up of soul and hip-hop songs, I went mainly with lighter rock songs. Somehow, despite being more “rock”, this actually seems more mellow than the previous one.

It opens with Dillinger Escape Plan’s cover Justin Timberlake’s ‘Like I Love You’. For this I added a false intro of a radio signal going through channels and having what was the ending of the previous mixtape play in lo-fi and distorted (A Perfect Circle’s cover of ‘The Nurse Who Loved Me’), and then that builds into the song. The reason I chose to use DEP’s cover of the song is because it has more of a live feel to it and a guitar solo rather than rap, the drums have extra fills and ultimately due to it being a more rock-influenced mixtape it just fit better, and I figured was a good bridging track between the last mixtape and this one.

The only song on this that I wanted to use because it’s super smooth but was just too much to work with was Erykah Badu’s ‘Telephone’. A great song, but just was too long for this mixtape which is made up of rather concise songs. Not that the original song drags on, because I love the lengthy jam to it, but for this I cut down from 7+ minutes to only about 4, but I’m pretty proud of my efforts because it’s totally seemless. If there were to ever be a “radio edit”, this would be it.

I had to cut in a lo-fi live version of Outkast’s ‘Hey Ya!’ at the very end of it so it had a proper ending rather than fade-out, and though the quality drop is noticeable, it kind of works still. It just sounds like an effect ending or something.

And finally it ends with a bit more of a bang. Most of the songs, though rock-tinged, are fairly mellow, but after the more upbeat ‘Hey Ya!’, it goes into the White Stripes’ ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’, then Nirvana’s ‘About A Girl’, finally to close off with the original ‘The Nurse Who Loved Me’ by Failure, as to make the duo-mixtape suite complete. I love this song, and I got to play it live for Sal at my last gig with my band Louie Lewis and the Deadbeats the other weekend. Was super rad.

More impressive than the mixtape though is the art for it. I knew I had to up my game, plus wanted to experiment with some different techniques. I took a lot of inspiration from artist John Baizley for this, and did a watercolour painting with ink lining and dotted shading. The end result I’m very happy with, and I got to give the painting to her last night at the end of our date as a framed picture. She seemed quite pleased.

She’s off to Europe in about 10 days, so this was my parting gift. Thanks Sal for being like a little sister to me, and a great friend. Will miss you muchly while you’re gone over the next few months.

Mixtape 3: Cruisin' for a Boozin' (The Brewski Mixtape) by Louisgaudet on Mixcloud

Apparently I forgot to put this one up, as I did it a little while back now.

This is the first mixtape I’ve done that was actually requested of me, and it’s for my friend Bree (also known as Brewski).

I came up with a superhero idea for Bree that she was the superhero Brewski, with the power of getting really trashed, and she’d say to her enemies “You’re cruisin’ for a boozin’!” Thus the title of this one.

Being that Breanne is much more of a sexy rock chick, I made this tape to be more serving to that style. She’s in particular a bit of Queens of the Stone Age fan, so I put a few Josh Homme related things on there. I was going to avoid QOTSA itself because she’d know it, but Smooth Sailing fit so well as the second track.

The Grinderman song I initially was going to just do as the original version, but the ending was too sudden for my liking to fade into the next track, and being that Josh Homme did a remix of it I decided to splice the two songs together. It’s nice and seemless and super fun. Booyah achieved.

Predominantly I wanted to touch on things that Bree was less likely to know. There’s a little bit of heavy in there, which although she’s not a big fan of heavy music, I don’t think I pushed too far with it. These Arms Are Snakes have an aggressive attack, but ultimately ‘Lucifer’ is pretty groovy in all. I lightened things up around the middle with Lou Reed’s rendition of ‘This Magic Moment’ and Boris’ ‘Rainbow’, and then added a grunge remix of Glory Box.

For the art work I just went ahead and made Bree one sexy babe, which she is, so it totally worked. Given that I’ve since gone further into detail with my art I would’ve probably liked more time on this and making her more detailed and with shading and such, but the art works with a classic rock LP sleeve kind of vibe.

Booyah achieved!

Mixtape 2: The Nurse Who Loved Me (for Nurse Sally) by Louisgaudet on Mixcloud

This was just done the other week, and it was this mixtape that inspired me to do this blog.

Another co-worker, Nurse Sally, has become something like a little sister to me. She’s one of the most lovely and genuine people I know, and I’ve thoroughly appreciated her friendship.

One week we were talking about dating amongst a few of us at work and Sal mentioned she’d like to go on a date, so I decided to take her out on a buddy-date. I picked her up and we went out for burgers and beer and caught up and had a good time. It was a really rad night.

To top off the date I quickly whipped this mixtape together for her within an hour before leaving. Sal’s a huge fan of “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye, so I put that plus two other versions by Hot 8 Brass Band and Ben Harper on there.

I knew second to that I wanted to include the song “The Nurse Who Loved Me” by Failure due to Sally’s being studying to be a nurse, on top of it being a rad track and my listening to a lot of Failure recently. In the end I used A Perfect Circle’s version, not that I like it better because I love the Failure version and think APC’s is more of a nice tribute, but simply because it fit better with the mellow vibe of the mixtape.

I liked playing around with genres a bit more on this. Opening with “Sexual Healing”, I was able to blend that into “Golden Lady” by Stevie Wonder nicely (and Sal having golden locks, I have previously told her that I think that song is my song for her). But it was cool going from these two classic soul songs and then using the soul-sampled “Vanilla Rainbows” by Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire that lead into a few hip-hop numbers.

I really dig the way that this flows, and the variety on this, especially considering I whipped it up in an hour. (Ruagan’s comparatively took a few hours)

The artwork I just put together the last few days. I sketched the picture of her, uploaded it onto my computer and digitally coloured it in. I’m very happy with it, and Sal seems to have liked it quite a lot herself.

So here’s to you Nurse Sally! Thanks for inspiring this, as it’s kicked off this tumblr and hopefully further mixtapes for me to have fun with!

Mixtape 1: Brutal Mixtape For Brutal Ruagan by Louisgaudet on Mixcloud

This is the first mixtape that I did, a birthday present for my co-worker Ruagan. Ruagan, though one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met, is a major metal fan. I decided for her birthday, being a thrash head, to put together a mixtape of thrash-inspired modern hardcore for her to check out.

This was a super fun experiment. Though production-wise this was relatively simple (most of the bands are produced by Kurt Ballou, so it all complimented each other well enough), it was a difficult task mixing the songs together to be seemless. These songs often bleed out, had different guitar tones, and tempos and what not. But it was a fun challenge, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing this.

I also did the artwork, a tribute to Slayer’s classic logo but with “Baron Babe” written on it. This is the collective title for all of us who work together, the Baron Babes, at Red Baron Cafe. This logo was actually done as a secret santa present for Ruagan, so I used it for the cover art here. Probably should read the actual title, but whatever. It’s a cool logo.

-louisgaudet