Cassette Store Day has come and gone for 2019,
but really, shouldn’t CSD be every day for enthusiasts of the medium? I mean,
for me, barely a day goes by that don’t pop a tape into the old deck and chill
out for a while. For me, CSD truly is, indeed, every day.
So that’s why it’s so cool that you can listen
to List of Mystery Films on more than
one day per year, even though it was Mid-Air!’s 2019 CSD release. And it’s a
good one too – chock full of samples of old mystery films (duh), List of Mystery Films is a plunderphonic
delight, a woozy beat tape filled with languid melodies and enchanting rhythms.
But of course the samples are the draw, lending an air of unease, of
disorientation, of downright spookiness at times. Especially when gunshots ring
out! Gunshots are scary, you gotta duck your head when you hear them.
The general vibe is 1950s noir, jazzy, murky,
opaque, an impenetrable wall of fog rolling through a black-and-white evening,
populated by Bogie-esque tragic heroes and Bacall-esque femmes fatale. You
wander through the street with your hat down in order not to meet anyone else’s
gaze; you chase suspects along sidewalks and alleys; you recover from a fight
with a slab of beef to the head and a whiskey. This is the world, this is the night. This
is where Mid-Air! is taking us this time around. Let’s get lost in the
underbelly.
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