The Year Deserves a Proper Funeral

It had been long enough since the last mixtape that putting one together felt almost like archaeology—dusting off something that used to be a regular part of how this place worked, before other things pushed it aside. Year-end compilations are a ritual I take seriously even when I pretend not to. There’s something honest about sitting down in late December and asking which tracks actually carried weight over the previous twelve months, which ones you kept returning to when you needed sound rather than just noise.

This one’s called "The End Of Everything Is Near," which felt appropriately theatrical for closing out 2010—a year that earned its own burial. The tracks came together from digging through what the cooler people around me in Berlin had been playing, assembled over Christmas after everyone who lives in the city’s central neighborhoods temporarily scattered back to wherever they came from. Good for working through something difficult. Good for studying when you can’t concentrate. Good for the hours between 11pm and whenever you finally give up on sleep entirely.