Sparkly Vampires

Well I'm in a typing mood today I think... Sedric's blog post motivated me to throw together another quick hour-long mix.  This one: Twilight, songs with the word Twilight in the title.  By this time I can put together a playlist of most things and still have it turn out half-decent somehow, which is nice.  Here's what we got:

Stuff Smith - Twilight in Turkey: A Raymond Scott tune, of course - this version is by legendary jazz violin "viper" Stuff Smith and it's some quality stuff.

Gentle Giant - Edge of Twilight: Honestly, Acquiring the Taste is one of my favorite Gentle Giant albums.  They never did hardly any of it live, except for "Plain Truth" which I don't much like; it's very much a studio record, and it does some interesting things.  OK, we don't get much of a consistent mood off this song but all of the things it does are good - the atmosphere of the main bit of the song is appropriately crepuscular.  Is the tympani break strictly necessary?  Well, no, but bringing in Mrs. Jacobsen's Eleventh Grade Percussion Ensemble doesn't bother me either.

Ursula K. LeGuin & Todd Barton - Twilight Song: From their 1985 cassette "Music and Poetry of the Kesh" - basically invented ethnography in a vaguely "new age" context.  Le Guin is better as a writer of course but the tape is a very nice one.

Cornelius - Tone Twilight Zone: Aha!  A ringer!  This is a very good track from the middle of "Point", which is a fantastic Cornelius album.  I had the great fortune to see him perform it live last year and it definitely depeened my appreciation of the record.

Robyn Hitchcock - Raining Twilight Coast: I am fond of his acoustic ballads collection "Eye", very much so, and I do consider this to be one of the more memorable tracks on that record.

Cuushe - Butterfly Case: A completely new one!  Literally just added this one to my library three days ago.  Ambient dream pop record from Japan.  Got a 7.0 on Pitchfork and I guess never took off, I never heard of it until I happened across it at random a few days ago.  Very much up my alley.

High Contrast - Twilight's Last Gleaming: Acclaimed drum 'n bass record from Wales, 2004.  The title is of course a reference to the American national anthem, but if it's a political song I can't understand how.  In any case: Excellent.

Manabu Namiki - Purple Twilight (Stage 2: Zenovia Airport): From the cult favorite soundtrack to the '98 arcade game Armed Police Batrider.  I think there was also a Playstation port of some variety but the arcade version is the one that gets the love, justly so I would say.

Elysia Crampton Chuquimia - Rainbow Twilight Theme demo (2017): From a comp of her selected demos/DJ edits.  It's clearly unfinished, but also pretty interesting and short and fits where it's at.

Ustad Saami - Twilight: His record "God Is Not A Terrorist" from last year got a certain amount of acclaim, was a powerful and resonant message.  It's also some very good Qawwali.  Qawwali isn't necessarily an art form suited to the album format, but then again it's not necessarily suited to the mix CD format either, and if this mere ten and a half minutes lacks the full impact of a longer performance it can go places a longer performance can't.

Shin Jung Hyun & The Men - Twilight: The artist and song title is transliterated various ways.  On the "Beautiful Rivers and Mountains" comp, for instance, this track is rendered "Sunset".  The version on the earlier various-artists comp "Forge Your Own Chains", however, renders the title "Twilight".  Either way, we're dealing with a superlative song once more.

Genesis - Twilight Alehouse: This really is one of my favorite Genesis songs; I've put it on all kinds of mixes.  This very early tune of theirs, a sad ballad about drinking to forget a lost love that turns into a flute solo that I surprisingly like a lot, even though I'm not overall particularly fond of flute solos, seldom fails to click with me emotionally.

Denki Groove ~ Schadaraparr - Twilight: Oh, it's an excuse to put Cornelius on a mix twice!  I will take it.  This remix uses a lot of the sounds from his song "Music".  The original track probably sounds very little like this remix, but the hook is... (chef's kiss).  Combined with the backing to Music, it's... probably average for Cornelius, which means it's superb.

I can think of worse ways to kill an hour.