Ah, 2002. Who could forget the International Year of Ecotourism, Mountains, and the Outback (in Australia)? If that wasn’t enough, the queen celebrated her golden jubilee, the king came back with a bang to win the World Cup, and Hollywood decided it would release (almost) nothing but sequels. Of course, there was also a lot of great music, and here’s a selection of our favourites.

Tracklisting:

1) Broken Social Scene – Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl
2) Say Hi To Your Mom – Kill the Cat
3) The Decemberists – July, July!
4) Spoon – The Way We Get By
5) The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Part 1
6) The Mountain Goats – The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton
7) The Libertines – Time For Heroes
8) Mclusky – To Hell With Good Intentions
9) Pavement – Baptiss Blacktick
10) Sleater-Kinney – One Beat
11) The Mountain Goats – No Children
12) Okkervil River – Westfall
13) Thee More Shallows – Where Are You Now?
14) Julie Doiron – All Their Broken Hearts
15) Múm – Green Grass of Tunnel
16) Iron & Wine – Faded From Winter
17) Carissa’s Wierd – So You Wanna Be A Superhero
18) Wilco – Radio Cure
19) Songs:Ohia – Didn’t It Rain
20) Sigur Ros – Untitled I

What did we miss from 2002? Let us know via the usual channels! Be sure to check out our posts on 2000 and 2001, and come back next month when we’ll be turning our attention to… 2003.

The post Millennium Mix: 2002 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With that in mind, The Mirror Trap’s ferocious sound might come as a surprise upon first listen. Blending the energy of post-hardcore with deep, ominous drums The Twilight Sad would be proud of, Moore and Co. create weighty, atmospheric anthems inspired by the contemporary world. Financial inequality, technological identity (or the lack thereof), information overload and narcosis… The Mirror Trap are concerned with all of the things which make today’s society such a strange, confusing place. Lead single ‘Piranhas’ feels like the consequence of these pressures, a furious, frustrated scream which could be read as an act of rebellion, a burning of bridges or a desperate cry for help.

We’re up to our eyeballs, in half a million problems

Piranhas come calling and tear the flesh right off us.

I woke up this morning, with three bears in my porridge,

with no good news in paper, no let up in the weather.

I live for the weekend, a bowl to put my keys in,

I hide my desires, so you wont kick me out the gang.

As part of our Quiet, Constant Friends project, we’ve been asking people to make playlists based around a book of their choice, and thought The Mirror Trap might be just the folks to continue the Lit Links series. Lead Gary Moore stepped up the the plate with a collection of tracks inspired by a work by Orwell, which seems pretty suitable considering the themes they’re concerned with. Grab your headphones and have a read below!

George Orwell’s Keep The Aspidistra Flying
by Gary Moore

For some unknown reason I avoided George Orwell for years. I think the romantic in me insisted I only read exotic novels by wayward Frenchmen or stoic Russians. Reading the work of a British man whose real name was Eric seemed unthinkable. But a brief fascination with the Spanish Civil War led me to read Homage to Catalonia and the flood gates opened, I swiftly set about reading every word Orwell had ever written.

Keep The Aspidistra Flying is perhaps my favourite Orwell novel. Set in 1930’s London this is the story of a writer rejecting the constraints of money and the “evils” of consumer capitalism, giving up his humdrum day job in advertising to peruse his artistic passions. This appealed to me as booth a burgeoning creative and as a giant lefty. Gordon Comstock, the central character of the novel, is a man with a commendable plan and outlook but is shown throughout to be flawed and shambolic, he is not a hero or a villain, and he is just unreservedly human. He drinks too much, and smokes too much, he is neurotic and distracted.

Keep The Aspidistra Flying is raw, cynical and often bleak but is ultimately a brilliant book, in both the story it tells and the somewhat prophetic points it makes. I tend to feel a little bit dirty reading it, but in a way I rather enjoy

Tracklisting:

1) Work, Work, Work (Pub, Club Sleep) – The Rakes
2) This Charming Man – The Smith
3) Atmosphere – Joy Division
4) Cigarettes & Alcohol – Oasis
5) Shot By Both Sides – Magazine
6) ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit’sworldwouldfallapart – Manic Street Preachers
7) Is This It – The Strokes
8) Common People – Pulp
9) I Love a Man in Uniform – Gang of Four
10) Lost in the Supermarket – The Clash
11) Bitter Sweet Symphony – The Verve
12) Fake Plastic Trees – Radiohead
13) For Tomorrow – Blur
14) Rat Race – The Specials
15 What a Waster – The Libertines

Simulations will be released on the 8th July via Riverman. The band have a few festival dates lined up before an European tour this autumn with Placebo (marked with *):

Jul 09: T In The Park, Stirling, United Kingdom
Jul 31: Y Not Festival 2016, Derby, United Kingdom
Aug 19: Astro Hall, Tokyo, Japan
Aug 21: Summer Sonic Festival, Tokyo, Japan
Oct 13: Train, Aarhus, Denmark*
Oct 14: Vega Main Hall, Copenhagen, Denmark*
Oct 16: Sentrum Scene, Oslo, Norway*
Oct 18: Cirkus, Stockholm, Sweden*
Oct 20: Hartwall Arena, Helsinki, Finland*
Oct 22: Riga Arena, Riga, Latvia*
Oct 24: St Petersburg Arena, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation*
Oct 26: Moscow Olimpiyskiy, Moscow, Russian Federation*
Oct 29: Torwar, Warsaw, Poland*
Oct 31: Barclaycard Arena, Hamburg, Germany*
Nov 02: Laxness, Cologne, Germany*

P.S. Be sure to tune in next week, where we’ll be presenting a playlist from Gary’s cat based around Exile and the Kingdom by Camus.

P.P.S. Not really.

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