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03/28/2005: "room cleaning."
When I go running, I prefer straight-up 4/4 techno and gliding, minimal house--stuff that hovers at around 130 bpm--because it offers a forward-moving propulsion, just the right tempo, and the feeling of sustained euphoria you need to keep you going in a straight line. When I clean my room and rearrange furniture, like I did yesterday, it's more like cross-training. Lots of side-to-side and diagonal motions, and multiple strong but short blasts of energy instead of a more measured, sustained release. 128-bpm techno doesn't work for this; you need something slightly faster but not too frenzied (if you listened to like, gabba or something, you wouldn't get any cleaning done at all; you'd just be unproductively hopping up and down). And you need some syncopation to encourage the irregular bursts of movement, something with breakbeats in it. You also need something that has lots of hooks to sweeten something as blah-blah-boring as cleaning, but it can't be something that takes time to develop. It has to be more like nitrous, something instant and cheaply euphoric -- which means oodles of piano riffs. Anyway I was rearranging my record collection and I found this awesome old-skool mix that my friend Gareth gave me some time ago, which was just the ticket:
"Every Posse and Crew"
compiled by Gareth
1. Jonny L - Ooh I Like It (Original Sin Edit)
2. Sonz of a Loop da Loop Era - Peace and Loveism
3. Blame - Music Takes You
4. Psychotropic - Hypnosis (SL2 Remix)
5. Urban Shakedown - Some Justice
6. Liquid - Sweet Harmony
7. DJ Red Alert and Mike Slammer - In Effect
8. Hyper Go Go - High
9. Krome & Time - Sound is for the Underground
10. Elevation - Can You Feel It?
11. Jonny L - Hurt You So
12. The House Crew - Euphoria (Nino's Dream)
13. Awesome 3 - Don't Go
14. DJ Red Alert and Mike Slammer - Ruff
15. Nookie - Give a Little Love
I cleaned my room in a record 74 minutes! And I rearranged all my furniture, moving it all from one side of the room to the other side for no particular reason, because I had this sudden idea that I had to "rearrange my head."
