There’s simply no good way to summarize a year in or through music. And in a year when algorithmically-designed cloud-based playlists continued to mock the notion of the D.J., we weren’t feeling as certain of our old fashioned human song-picking abilities. (Convenient metaphor: the demise of the Technics SL-1200 turntable. At least Flash isn’t dead – yet.)Wouldn’t it have been easier to type “Fantastic, vaguely electronic jams of 2010” into some recommendation engine, and call it a year?In the end we compromised with the machine. It turns out email is still a great way to gather tips from a staff of laptop-huddling music aficionados. It’s also a great way to get an assist from our friends, the inimitable Remix Artist Collective, a prolific group that not only proves that the DJ is still alive, but can live in a Zen-like peace with the Internet, turntables be pwned. (RAC even appears in real life: see them at Brooklyn Bowl in January.)Tracks were sent, buttons were pushed, layers of tape warble and some reverb were carefully strung on top like tinsel. What we have now is an end-of-the-naughts time capsule that hits us somewhere between our rose-colored 2011 glasses and our nostalgic t-shirts, between the booty and the brain. Like the year that was, it’s a full-on double rainbow. Which is to say, we’re not sure what that means. But we think you’ll like it.Motherboard.tv 2010 Mixtape (Mixed by RAC) by MotherboardDownload the mixtape as an mp3 here.Above: notRAC, but69-year-old DJ Ruth Flowers.
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