Mixtapes for Fun!

Music is one of the most important element in many people's life and I have to 100% agree with that. I don’t think I can survive this complicated world if my life is musicless hahaha.. In most activity I do, music is a great companion, while I'm working, studying, making some art stuffs, on the way to some places, reading books and even while taking bath. One of the favorable music streaming medium is mixtape. Simply explained, Mixtape is a song playlist consists of various musicians. Find more about Mixtape here and probably here too . I guess, now everyone can make a mixtape, a playlist in Spotify can also be considered as Mixtape. I'm not going to talk further about Spotify because it's something most people already familiar with.

Listening to Mixtapes is really fun because we can discover good songs and musicians we’ve never heard before. It's also already combined into a certain theme or music style of each mixtape creator. A common platform for creating and listening mixtapes is Mixcloud.

Even though Mixcloud is one of the specific platform for mixtape, the first time I discovered this kind of song playlist was from the website of Berlin based media Freunde von Freunden / Friends of Friends , a website about people whose works has a connection to the creative world like artists, musician, photographer, author, fashion designer, etc. They used MIxcloud for their mixtape collections, so that's how I know MIxcloud. I’m a fan of Freunde von Freunden! It provides various information for art and creative world enthusiasts. I will write about how much I love this website later in another post, hahaha..

Because Freunde von Freunden* is the first portal I've used for listening to mixtapes, so first, I'm going to share about it here. To be honest, I am always not familiar with every single musician or artist listed in these mixtape playlists and in rare occasion I only know 1 or 2 from the list. I started with enjoying the articles about creative worker's apartments and the interview contents in this website before I discovered the "Mixtapes" category. So basically I'm close to know nothing about certain "environment" in music and mixtape itself, especially during that time (around 2013-2014) Spotify is still not quite accesible in my country. I actually randomly choose certain playlist number by it's photo on how certain photo gives the vibes for me (I don't know, I can't explain how it happened tbh, hahaha..). No offense, I know it doesn't make sense at some point, but since I'm that clueless I'd rather do that than spending too much time googling everything before listening. I mean, there are a so many artists and musicians in the list, it's better to do it like a mystery box surprise. It leads me to a new perspective and sound regardless the genre and era. This is a good opportunity to learn. When I found what I really like, I could further search it later. Also what fun about mixtape is you don't have to prepare a lot of effort to "hunt" or collect good songs into one certain list (especially with my limited knowledge, hahaha) and it's a good way when we want to discover a lot of something new "instantly", everything is already pre-made. So here are some of my favorite playlist from this website:

(*pardon me for only using the German name, it's been a habit and also I studied German when I was in college so I'm more used to it)

So here are some of my favorite playlists in Freunde von Freunden Mixtapes category (randomly ordered):

1. Mixtape #82

2. Mixtape #79

3. Mixtape #84

4. Mixtape #97

5. Mixtape #103

6. Mixtape #77

From the international side, Freunden von Freunden introduced me to mixtape, but what about something local from Indonesian? Of course there's something from Indonesia, I first discovered it in the Whiteboard Journal's website. Basically Whiteboard Journal has the similar concept to Freunden von Freunden because it also provides information about art and the creative world with also covering various issue in the world. I was excited when I found it, because I love Freunden von Freunden, so to find something similar from my country is very refreshing. This time I can also recognize some of the artists and musician better because there are local artists and musician involved. The mixtapes on Whiteboard Journal's website are under the category W-Music with sub categories Bamboo Twist, Fat Cat Ffonz, Heartattack, Loka Suara, Selected and Stereo Strange. Their Mixtape can be played in various music streaming platform depends on each of the playlist. For example by Stereo Strange the playlist are mostly available in Mixcloud, while some of them are also still available to stream directly from the Whiteboard Journal's website. On the other hand by Selected the playlist are available by Spotify, we can only get a sneak peak for a minute or so on the website. Whatever platform the playlists are connected, Whiteboard Journal has a wide range of songs. Go find your own preference here and have some fun.

The Categories of Whiteboard Journal's Mixtapes

Bamboo Twist

Fat Cat Ffonz

Heart Attack

Loka Suara

Selected

Stereo Strange

And again I choose the playlist randomly without being familiar with every musician involved, just based on the description or just like in Freunde von Freunden's website, based on the "invitation" from the vibes given by the picture/photo. These are some of my personal favorite mixtapes here (randomly ordered):

Stereo Strange: Landslide