Over the past few months, we've been getting in touch with bands, celebrities and more to ask them to create eight-song-long mixtapes for YOU. So crack out your Walkman and enjoy...
Weezer - Across The Sea
Picking one Weezer song is maybe the hardest thing ever but this one I always come back to. Pick through all the layers of fuzz and distortion and there's a song you can imagine The Beach Boys recording in their prime. The chords are so confusing yet awesome. I love when bands mix really noisy guitars and hard drums with sweet song writing. Bands like Weezer & Teenage Fanclub nailed that sound.
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Slayer - Disciple
I've always wanted to record a vocal that makes me feel like I do when I hear this track. It's such an empowering vocal. Never fails to get me pumped up."I hate everyone equally, you can't tear that out of me, no segregation, no separation, just me and my world of enemies, I never wanted to be God's disciple." This album came out on 9/11 so it always reminds me of that day when my friends and I were watching events unfold and convinced ourselves it was the end of the world. We were all 14, so we can be excused for being melodramatic!
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Elvis Costello - Man Out Of Time
Costello is one of my heroes lyrically. This song is sort of like everything he does in one song. It's almost like a 2 hour film crammed into a 4 minute song; all this story, plot and emotion rolled into one. The chords really bring out the drama in the lyrics. It's almost like a timeless story: it was written in '82, I think, and 30 years later it's still so relevant. The dude is a true artist.
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Reuben - Return Of The Jedi
See, Reuben really should have been the biggest band in Britain. A lot of industry bullshit stopped that from happening. They were the first band I heard who actually wrote songs about being in a band and having day jobs. This song is so sad in retrospect because it totally describes the way bands get destroyed by the music industry. Musically, it's obvious that they are a huge influence on both my bands.
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The Blue Nile - Let's Go Out Tonight
The album Hats is such a masterpiece of minimal electronic music. I love records that can cast imagery of a place so vividly in your mind. This album for me is all about walking about Glasgow in the rain at night, looking moody. It's very film noir or like an Edward Hopper painting. I think they used to hand this album out to men in Glasgow in '89 along with a grey trench coat and tiny moustache. It's very stark musically with Paul Buchanan's massively beautiful voice straight down the middle.
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dEUS - Hotellounge (Be The Death Of Me)
Any song that starts with the lyric "This elevator only takes me down" isn't going to be the biggest barrel of laughs but it's one of my favourites. Again, like Costello, I love the way the music and the story are sort of built together. It's a really woozy surreal song that reminds me of touring, watching strange people in strange cities. That's what I expect from bands from Belgium, I guess.
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The Dillinger Escape Plan - Good Neighbor
There is no band on earth that can make me smash stuff up like The Dillinger Escape Plan can. When I first got into them, I actually had to go and totally rethink what can be done with guitars. Everything is so aggressive and forward thinking, it's like free jazz played by hardcore kids. I like to think of them as intelligent mosh; you need to count when you're throwing down.
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Jane's Addiction - Three Days
This song makes perfect sense if you're walking home at 5am after a party when your brain is about to collapse and you see the sun coming up. Next time you find yourself in that situation, get this cranked and feel the utter vibe.
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Carnivores can be liked on Facebook and listened to on Bandcamp.
[LISTEN]
Carnivores can be liked on Facebook and listened to on Bandcamp.
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