According to Spotify, I started the playlist “Chillwave +++” in June 2017. Over the next five years, I would build it out into just shy of 54 hours of music. It was untenable; something had to change.

Early in my account, I set up a couple of playlists organized by genre, as I had before in iTunes. On that platform, your library is always limited by the music that you intentionally add, forming a natural filter. Spotify is limitless. Once I had my playlists set up, I started dumping anything I found interesting. 

The playlists grew rapidly. As easy as downloading MP3s off of blogs was, I still had to manage my own files. Curating my collection was an important process. I wasn’t about to just download anything off of a blog. Each song has to speak to me, I had to form a connection before I was going to make space on my hard drive. The frictionlessness of Spotify made each song blend together. I came across music without any context, just the hidden logic of the algorithm, and dumped it into an endless vibe stream.

Chillwave +++ became my go-to, ‘I don’t know what to put this on’ playlist. S referred to it as “Jordan Car Music” because it was the default soundtrack to every drive. As it grew, it became harder to find the right entry point. Shuffle always brought up the wrong songs. If I scrolled to a random point, the sequence wouldn’t be right. If I started from the beginning, I would just hear the same songs again. Everything was lost in a sea of sameness.

I decided I needed a constraint – and that came in the form of the mix-CD. Not literally, I don’t even own anything capable of burning a disc, but the amount of music that could fit on a CD, about 74 minutes*, formed a useful limit from the perspective of sequencing and storytelling. I remember burning my first CDs in the early aughts. I loved grouping the songs, making sure to never put an artist twice, getting the perfect opening and closing.

*as a teen, I always wondered why I CD could hold only 74 minutes of audio but 700mb of MP3s – this is, of course, because CD players have their own file format that uses a different compression system, so when a computer is writing a file to an audio CD, it actually has to convert the format.

Since I started putting together “mix-CDs” in Spotify, I’ve been much more satisfied with how I navigate my music. I don’t find myself listening to the same songs over and over, and the relationships that they form with one another make each one a more complete thing.

Here’s a mixtape I made for you with a kind of 2008 vibe I think:

Thirty Five Fragments

1. Lil Ugly Mane – bird enemy car
2. Prefuse 73 – Pagina Cinco
3. Shlohmo – Post Atmosphere
4. Aesop Rock & The Opus – Take Me to the Basement
5. Portishead – Pedestal
6. Khotin – Fever Loop
7. Sora – Etude:Diagonal
8. Washed Out – A Sign
9. Oddisee – Beach Dr.
10. BADBADNOTGOOD – Ways of Seeing
11. Katie Dey – Loving (Baths Remix)
12. Nosaj Thing – Aquarium
13. Shinetiac – Starfrog (slunty x Opheliaxz x innerfreekling Floptropica remix) 
14. Bibio – haikuesque (when she laughs)
15. Four Tet – Slow Jam
16. Odd Nosdam – Profane Bong Sue
17. Left of Manila & Dear Reader – Seven Sisters