I think it’s time to dust off the old cassette player, advance the tape to the magnetic strip using a Bic™ pen, pop in a few compact discs and get ready to pound out another Bergtrax 4000 mixtape.

It’s been 8 months since volume 5 was released, and for that I apologize. The benefit? I’ve got a ridiculous amount of new music to introduce everyone to. Also, where possible I’m going to start linking everyone to the artist’s CBC Radio 3 page (obviously just for the Canadian artists) or to a Bandcamp profile. I’m beginning to hate Myspace.

I know I usually rant for a few paragraphs before I let you actually start listening to the mixtape but I think you’ve all waited long enough.

If you’re reading this on Facebook, look for the “View original post” link near the bottom of the page to be directed to my website so you can listen to the actual mixtape.

Tracklisting:

1. Minus The Bear – My Time (Seattle, WA) #
2. Frightened Rabbit – Swim Until You Can’t See Land (Glasgow, Scotland) #
3. Jason Collett – Love Is A Dirty Word (Toronto, ON) CBCR3
4. Hollerado – Juliette (Manotick, ON) CBCR3
5. Zeus – How Does It Feel? (Toronto, ON) CBCR3
6. Said The Whale – Camillo (The Magician) (Vancouver, BC) CBCR3
7. Michael Bublé – Haven’t Met You Yet (Vancouver, BC) #
8. Matthew Barber – I Think You’re Gonna Feel My Love (Toronto, ON) CBCR3
9. Broken Social Scene – Forced to Love (Toronto, ON) CBCR3
10. Treelines – Young Man (Kelowna, BC) CBCR3
11. Stars – Fixed (Montreal, QC CBCR3

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This edition of Bergtrax 4000 was a lot easier to put together than the last. Again, this is thanks to eMusic and all of the wonderful indie music with which I’m now filling my iTunes library. 8 of the 9 songs featured here were purchased (as part of full abums) from eMusic.

As much as I’m in love with CBC Radio 3, last month I started to feel that my musical mind might be becoming a bit too closed. That’s not to say that I am going to completely forget or even stop listening to Canadian music for any period of time. No no, I just felt like I needed to expand a little bit and maybe find a few international artists (American or otherwise) to broaden my musical horizons.

I decided to post a request for musical suggestions on Twitter:

To which I got exactly zero replies. Go Twitter! Luckily I found a few on my own, but in an unlikely place. A movie blog who’s RSS feed I subscribe to in Google Reader.

Although I think I’d heard of them prior to this, I was watching the trailer for New York, I Love You and fell in love with the song in the trailer. I tried using Shazam on my Android but it couldn’t recognize it with all the talking over top of the music. Luckily the site I watched the trailer at, FirstShowing.net, has great commenters who had already mentioned what the track was. I immediately added it to my Save For Later list on eMusic and downloaded it once I was at home.

This is also how I discovered Zooey Deschanel‘s band She & Him. FirstShowing.net put up a music video that Zooey and Joseph Gordon-Levitt made for the song I’m featuring in the playlist. The two actors are currently starring in the indie film (500) Days of Summer. I’ve been meaning to go see this while it’s in Edmonton but it doesn’t look like I’ll make it. Guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD.

If you’ve got any bands you think I’d be down with please leave me some links in the comments. I’m fairly open to suggestions.

Ok, here’s the playlist:

1. Phoenix – 1901 (Versailles, France) #
2. She & Him – Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? (Portland, OR) #
3. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Don’t Haunt This Place (Toronto, ON) #
4. Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová – When Your Mind’s Made Up (Dublin, IR & Valašské Meziříčí, CZ) #
5. Reverie Sound Revue – An Anniversary Away (Calgary, AB) #
6. Paper Moon – Say It’s All Over (Winnipeg, MB) #
7. The Most Serene Republic – Heavens To Purgatory (Milton, ON) #
8. Tegan and Sara – Call It Off (Vancouver, BC/Montreal, QC) #
9. Metric – Gimme Sympathy (Toronto, ON) #

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In the three months since the last Bergtrax 4000 I’ve been racking my brain to come up with a great mixtape. I wrestled with a few but wasn’t ever completely satisfied with any of them. But I recently signed up for eMusic and as such have been downloading albums (I tend to shy away from buying singles as albums truly showcase a band’s talent) which has given me more motivation to put this mixtape together; that, and the fact that mixtape.me switched from SeeqPod to Skreemr to fetch their mp3s (meaning more mp3s are available).

I don’t know exactly what it was that convinced me I should start buying music again. I’ve always been a large proponent of downloading music from torrents or from message boards (ie. theboreds.com), but now that I’m listening to more Canadian independent music, I feel I owe it to my countrymen to pay for the music they worked so hard to create. This, however, does not mean I’m above downloading music, just that I’m more conscious of my decision to leech music as opposed to legally purchase it.

As far as the music goes in this volume, here are the stats:

• 10 songs
• 8 Canadian artists
• 2 bands from Massachusetts
• 2 artists have been shortlisted for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize -link-
• 2 bands were shortlisted (but lost) for the 2008 Polaris Music Prize
• In the last 3 months these artists attribute for 703 scrobbles (my guess is that the play count is actually higher)
• The oldest band formed in 1984
• Number of these artists I listened to on a regular basis at this time last year: 0

And now the tracklisting (clicking on the # will take you to their myspace page):

1. Treelines – Burned Up Hands (Kelowna, BC) #
2. Dinosaur Jr. – I Want You To Know (Amherst, Mass.) #
3. Passion Pit – Sleepyhead (Cambridge, Mass.) #
4. Hey Rosetta! – I’ve Been Asleep For A Long, Long Time (St. John’s, NFLD) #
5. Ohbijou – Black Ice (Toronto, ON) #
6. Dan Mangan – Robots (Vancouver, BC) #
7. Plants and Animals – Bye Bye Bye (Montreal, QC) #
8. Winter Gloves – Factories (Montreal, QC) #
9. Two Hours Traffic – Stuck For The Summer (Charlottetown, PEI) #
10. Joel Plaskett – Through & Through & Through (Dartmouth, NS) #

There will be an iMix available tonight. I have double checked that all of the songs work, so if you notice it skip a song, try double clicking it again.
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Let’s face it: I was a teenager once and I was huge into punk rock (perhaps the topic of a future mixtape?). Everything from the local punk rock acts to those featured on Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph Records (to name a few). I covered my electric guitar in punk rock stickers, bought a t-shirt at every show from practically every band.

Times, however, they have changed. My love of punk rock came to include “emo” and “screamo” bands, screamo led to a few hardcore acts (tame by most standards but hardcore for me). Somehow this led to a short stint of obsession with “ambient” music, bands like Sigur Ròs, God Is An Astronaut, Port-Royal, Yndi Halda, and a few others, and while I still quite enjoy listening to that from time to time, I find myself moving back towards the “rock”.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, perhaps it happened when I picked up Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It In People but I started listening to a lot of “indie” rock. Stuff that wasn’t “punk”, it wasn’t “mainstream”, but simply great music. It introduced me to a whole slew of new bands, and a lot of them, surprisingly, are Canadian. I can tell you exactly why most of them are Canadian: CBC Radio 3 podcasts. Most notably the R3-30, a weekly countdown of the top 30 Canadian Indie songs, and to a lesser extent the CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence. I haven’t listened to it in quite some time, mostly just because I never seem to find the time and I prefer the R3-30.

Through the R3-30 I’ve been introduced to Arkells, Jason Collett, Kathleen Edwards, Land of Talk, Woodhands, Plants and Animals, Said The Whale, Sunparlour Players, Will Currie & The Country French, Hawksley Workman, and many others, and the hosts, Craig Norris and Pedro Mendes, are an absolute riot to listen to.

But there are certainly more indie artists I listen to than just Canadian ones, and in this volume of Bergtrax 4000 I’m going to mix it up and create a playlist of bands from all over. I know I already introduced you to 5 Canadian indie artists in Bergtrax 4000 Vol. 01: Canadiana, so this mixtape will introduce you to different Canadian artists and their brethren from the States and beyond. Here’s the playlist:

1. Frightened Rabbit – The Modern Leper (Glasgow, Scotland)
2. Land of Talk – Some Are Lakes (Montreal, QC)
3. Arkells – Pullin’ Punches (Hamilton, ON)
4. Jason Collett – Out of Time (Toronto, ON)
5. Stars – Undertow (Montreal, QC)
6. Ra Ra Riot – Can You Tell (Syracuse, NY)
7. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal (Seattle, WA)
8. Jane Vain & The Dark Matter – C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang (Calgary, AB)
9. The Stills – Being Here (Montreal, QC)
10. Woodhands – Dancer (Toronto, ON)

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For Bergtrax 4000: Vol. 02 I’m bringing you 8 tracks from artists who have, at least for now, called it quits. There might be other, more notable artists not featured here, but these are the ones that hurt me the most. At least one of them, The Progress, had broken up before I even started listening to them.

Yet regardless of the fact that these bands aren’t together anymore, I still listen to their albums on a regular basis. You probably haven’t heard of most of these artists, and therein lies the tragedy in their break-ups. There’s still a good chance you wouldn’t have heard of them even if they released more albums but I’d like to think all of them would have had their chance to make it big (some, of course, did). Here’s the tracklisting:

1. Further Seems Forever – Light Up Ahead (Hide Nothing)
2. The June Spirit – Prologue (Testing Superstition)
3. Belvedere – Slaves to the Pavement (Fast Forward Eats the Tape)
4. Small Brown Bike – Blank Landscapes (Nail Yourself to the Ground)
5. The Progress – Similar Haircuts (Merit)
6. Park – Gasoline Kisses for Everyone (It Won’t Snow Where You’re Going)
7. Choke – Tired ([Foreword])
8. The Receiving End of Sirens – The War of All Against All (Between the Heart and the Synapse)

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The other day I was browsing the internet and I came across Mixtape Songs, which no longer appears to be updating, and I was inspired to put together my own “mixtape” and put it up here for your listening pleasure.

Back in the late 90′s and early 00′s I used to make lots of mixtapes from CD’s I either owned or borrowed. My sister had a stereo with 2 CD disc trays that I would queue up perfectly so as not to have the “clips” between tracks from starting and stopping the tape. I would go so far as to calculate the exact amount of time each track takes so as to not have a song get cut off at the end of each side. And of course, using a Bic pen to advance the clear portion of the tape.

I would often make mixtapes for Heather with songs that I was very much into at the time and would hope she would like as well. I like to think this is the reason she fell in love with me, but it was probably my charm and good looks.

So here’s the first mixtape, called Canadiana featuring five Canadian bands that you should all be listening to. Since this is the first volume, here’s a quick FAQ on how to use the flash player:

1. Press the big play button to start the playlist.
2. The tape will display a navigation bar that will autohide when your cursor isn’t on the player. As soon as you mouse back over the player it will reappear.
3. The INFO button on the navigation will bring up the tracklisting.

If you have any other questions, please ask.

Interested in downloading this mixtape from iTunes? Check out the iMix I’ve created for easy reference.

Mixtape flash player created by mixwidget.com