On the very last day of 2019 I posted a big 100 song Youtube playlist of all the non-rap music and non-music from the 2010s that I enjoyed the most in the 2010s and called it "A Decade of Decay." I like this mix and I liked that decade. Or at least I liked the music of that decade - I have fond memories of insomniac-binging black midi piano roll freakouts, crying to Fiona Apple or Farrah Abraham and begging people to buy the most bugged out footwork 12"s in the known galaxy.

Of course two and a half years is a lifetime on Youtube (most Youtube users aren't even two and a half years old) and as such the playlist had begun to make like its name and turn into a dusty old pile of dead links. So I decided to get a jump start on the impending 2010s nostalgia wave and rebuild it to the best of my ability*. It's back and fully functional now.

But but but but wait it gets worse. I'm also making available a previously-unpublished companion playlist that I put together around the same time. This one, "A Decade of Distance" is comprised of 100 not-rap songs from before 2010 that I listened to the most during the 2010s - CDBaby detritus, dollar bin r&b, thousand dollar free jazz reissues played on repeat during my anxious days as a record store magnate, IDM 12"s that I loved in the 90s and forgot about in the '00s, DDM 12"s that i only discovered much later because i'm the true dummy, the same damn Prince and Coil songs that I had been listening to continuously for 20+ years prior, etc., etc. I forget why I didn't share this in the first place, I might've just been too fried, but I've listened to it a lot in the years since and think you guys might like it too.

With both playlists I tried my best to avoid NTS bro deeper-than-thou taste posturing or last minute ocd Discogs dives and just honestly put up the songs and sounds that stayed in rotation and/or left me awestruck over a long ten year period. Memories were jogged from old emails, blogs, tweets, tumblr posts, ebay feedback, physical media objects around my apartment still caked in crusty $5.99 Rasputin's tags and real life experiences of driving in the car, hearing something on the radio and being like "oh shit, oh yeah, that's the one."

* Two songs that I uploaded when I first made the playlist - Alvin Curran's "Shofar Puro Alap" and Yuka Honda's "Waters On Mars" - have been completely removed due to copyright claims from Tzadik Records and remain there only as ghost slugs. They are not legally available anywhere online and I will not be reupping them out of respect for Tzadik label head John Zorn's righteously stubborn dedication to the greatest music format of all time, the motherfucking compact disc. You can purchase both albums from Waysidemusic.com, which is where I order too many Tzadik CDs.