Musings For A Darkened Room

For the last 6 months I have been an avid user of the website Mixwit.  The “mix tape” sharing site allows users to create online mixtapes and share them with friends.  Users can pull songs directly into Mixwit using a built in search from services like Skreemr, Seeqpod, and ccMixter or they can manually add songs from outside websites.

Unfortunately I received a message in my e-mail this evening from Mixwit announcing that the site is shutting down on December 27.  According to Mixwit’s blog the original shutdown date was December 21, but due to hosting issues they will be up for 6 extra days.

No real details were provided as to why the site was shutting down, but Mixwit creators Mike and Radley had this to say,

“We’ve put a year of work into Mixwit so this choice wasn’t taken lightly. I
won’t go into the details of our situation but state simply that we
boldly marched into in a position best described as “between a rock and a
hard place.” We’re very grateful to be have been part of the mixtape
revival of ‘08 and are satisfied to be able to to bow out while things
are still good.”

On December 27 profiles will be turned off and by December 31st the site will be completely dark.  Mixwit’s creators are looking for a way to make the mixtape artwork and playlists available for historical purposes, and will notify users via e-mail where they’ll be able to find their stuff by the end of the year. In addition they are considering donating their source code the OpenTape project.

I have personally put months of time, effort, and even emotion into some of my mixes.  Over the last six months I created nearly sixty mixes, many of which had significant meaning to me.  A close friend of mine and I exchanged mixes on an almost daily basis for months.  The mixes themselves tell a story and act almost as a yearbook for her and I.  I also built my popular Twilight Saga soundtracks on Mixwit.

I hate to see the site go since I was a big fan of the site and saw a lot of potential in it.  I wish the best of luck to Mike and Radley, and any others involved in the project in their future ventures.

Finally after what feels like months of reading I have finally finished the entire Twilight Saga.  I finished reading Breaking Dawn about a week ago and must say I loved it.  And alas much like when I finished the other books in the series I have also completed my interpretation of a soundtrack for it.  Up to this point I have completed my twilight soundtrack, New Moon soundtrack, Eclipse soundtrack, and now finally Breaking Dawn.

As in almost all of my mixes lyrical content play a serious part in the scheme of things, which is why the music featured is somewhat diverse.  However after reading my Twilight soundtrack review, you’ll know that the Twilight film has quite a diverse soundtrack as well.  Another interesting thing to note about my Breaking Dawn soundtrack is that there are a number of return artists on this mix.  I didn’t do this on purpose or because they are preferred artists, it is just that I simply found songs that fit the story perfectly that happened to be by the same artists.  The returning artists on this mix include Nine Inch Nails, Matchbook Romance, Thrice, The Birthday Massacre, Stabbing Westward, and Lullacry.

Finally like in my Eclipse soundtrack I was able to pay homage to Stephenie Meyers’ playlists, as well as the Twilight film soundtrack, by including a track from Muse.  As most Twilighters will know Meyers is a huge fan of Muse and frequently used their songs on her playlists for her books.

Below you will find the playlist in it’s entirety songs that I could not include on the Mixwit version of my Breaking Dawn soundtrack have been linked so that you can listen to them on an Imeem.  Unfortunately my Breaking Dawn soundtrack took a significant hit as far as track availability goes on Mixwit so you will notice there are quite a few songs you will need to listen to outside of the Mixwit version.

1. Thrice - The Lion and the Wolf
2. Lullacry - Heart Shaped Scars
3. Jakalope - Feel It
4. Spill Canvas - This Is For Keeps
5. Lacuna Coil - Within Me
6. Trust Company - Hover
7. Matchbook Romance - If All Else Fails
8. Thrice - Send Me An Angel
9. Graveworm - Ceremonial Requiem
10. Birthday Massacre - Red
11. Nightwish - End of All Hope
12. Stabbing Westward - Angel
13. Fiona Apple - Better Version of Me
14. Muse - Ruled By Secrecy
15. She Wants Revenge - First Love
16. Coheed & Cambria - The Reaping
17. Nine Inch Nails - Another Version of Truth

After what seems like weeks since finishing the third installment in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, I finally got around to completing my soundtrack for Eclipse.  As previously mentioned, part of my reason for reading the Twilight books was to create a soundtrack for each of the books after reading them.  Since the start of the series I have created a Twilight Soundtrack, New Moon Soundtrack, and now Eclipse.

In my previous soundtracks I focused on the lyrical content more than anything and I have yet to stray from that formula.  However, I was able to add two more factors into this mix that I had hoped to be able to incorporate at some point while creating these soundtracks.

First, I have always wanted to use one of the bands that made up the Seattle sound or grunge scene of the early nineties. Since the books take place in and around Seattle I felt it was only fitting.  Fortunately for Eclipse I was able to finally achieve this with Alice In Chains’ Grind.  The song was just dark enough and edgy enough to fit the rest of the sound of the soundtrack and still stay somewhat on theme.  The mood of the song I feel is perfect for the rise of the newborn vampires in Seattle and the news surrounding the multitude of murders taking place in the area.

The second was an ode to Stephenie Meyer’s soundtracks and her explanation that Linkin Park was the band she had in mind when writing chapter 7 of Twilight. Meyer explains on her website that in the scene where Bella is listening to music to drown out her thoughts she is listening to Linkin Park.  I have kept that in mind throughout creating my soundtracks, the problem is that Meyers’s soundtracks have never been lyrically relevant.  My hope was that at some point I could use a Linkin Park song that would fit into the scheme of my lyrically driven mixes.  For Eclipse I was able to use Linkin Park’s Easier To Run obviously related to the disappearance of Jacob at the end of the book.

As I have done with the other soundtracks I have tried to keep all of the songs on the soundtrack as lyrically and thematically relevant as possible.  Fortunately for the first time since I started these soundtracks I was actually able to piece together the entire soundtrack and compile the mix using mixwit, and you can listen to my Eclipse soundtrack in its entirety.  Below is the track listing in the exact order in which it appears on my mix.

1. Alice In Chains - Grind
2. A Perfect Circle - Pet
3. A Static Lullaby - The Art of Sharing Lovers
4. Eve 6 - Think Twice
5. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - Your Guardian Angel
6. The Divine Madness - Closer
7. My Chemical Romance - Vampires Will Never Hurt You
8. Nonpoint - In The Air Tonight
9. Rise Against - Everchanging
10. Haste the Day - Long Way Down
11. Sparta - Taking Back Control
12. Evanescence - October
13. Linkin Park - Easier to Run

Though I finished the book over a week ago, and created the actual mix on 16th I have yet to provide a full track listings for my New Moon soundtrack.  New Moon is the second book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, and continues the adventures of Bella Swan a teenager in Forks Washington who has fallen in love with a vampire.

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the reasons I started reading the series was because I wanted to create soundtracks to the books.  As I finish each book I will create my interpretation of what the soundtrack to the book would be.  I will list a complete track listing here on my blog, and will compile a “mixtape” version of the soundtrack, with as many tracks as I can find, on Mixwit.com.

Regular readers and friends will tell you that many of my mixtapes are lyrically driven.  This applies to these mixes as well.  The majority of the tracks you will find in my Twilight mixes will feature lyrics or themes that somehow tie in to different parts of the book.  I was able to capture all of the New Moon soundtrack on Mixwit, except for Death Lies Bleeding’s cover of The Cure’s A Forest.  However you can find 30 second samples of the track off of the Cure tribute album 100 tears on places like Amazon.com or CD Universe.  I hope you enjoy this mix as much as I enjoyed creating it.

New Moon Soundtrack

1. All Time Low - Running From Lions
2. Blutengel - No Eternity
3. Death Lies Bleeding - A Forest
4. The Birthday Massacre - Black
5. Stabbing Westward - What Do I Have To Do?
6. The Cramps - I Was a Teenage Werewolf
7. Bullet For My Valentine - No Control
8. Secondhand Serenade - Suppose
9. Rise Against - Blood To Bleed
10. Lullacry - Love, Lust, Desire
11. In This Moment - He Said Eternity
12. HIM - Right Here in My Arms

As some of you regular readers and friends will know I have an extensive collection of online mix tapes, nearly 50 created to date.  You’ll probably also know that some close friends of mine have surrounded me with the craze of the Twilight Saga.  I fought the craze for a while, but then when I found out the author had created a playlist for a book I was intrigued.  Then when I discovered that a close friend had created her own soundtrack to the book I became that much more intrigued.  I finally gave in and decided to read the books on the premise that I would also create my own soundtrack for each book as I completed it.  Earlier this week I finished the first book in the series, Twilight.  I had originally hoped to use my favorite mixtape site Mixwit to generate a soundtrack that I could share, but sadly I couldn’t find all of the songs I wanted to use.

Most of the songs I felt capture emotions from the story and parts of the storyline really well lyrically.  A couple of them were used solely based on the feel of the song and pieces of lyrics.  But I tried to pick songs that were lyrically driven since that’s how many of my mixes are created.  I hope to eventually be able to present this in a full audio format, but for now this is the best I can do. I’ve put together a Twilight Mix on Mixwit which includes all of the tracks that I could find, and I have listed a full track list below. Since Beautiful Danger by Kirsty Hawkshaw was not available through Mixwit I have linked to the Last.fm page where you can listen to the whole song.  Sadly I was unable to find an alternate source for You Are Familiar by Secret and Whisper.  Regardless I hope you enjoy!

1. Ludo - The Horror Of Our Love
2. Enigma - Gravity Of Love
3. Kirsty Hawkshaw - Beautiful Danger
4. Secret and Whisper - You Are Familiar
5. Evanescence - Listen To The Rain
6. In This Moment - When The Storm Subsides
7. Flyleaf - All Around Me
8. Plumb - Always
9. The Cure - This Twilight Garden
10. Juliana Hatfield - Close Your Eyes
11. Nine Inch Nails - We’re In This Together
12. Matchbook Romance - You Can Run, But We’ll Find You
13. Thrice - The Red Death
14. I Am Ghost - This Is Home

UPDATE 10/06/08:  I have posted the Twilight Soundtrack here for those of you whoe are looking for the official movie soundtrack.