Side A
Artist	Song
the electric soft parade	a beating heart
nada surf	see these bones
tocotronic	free hospital
modest mouse	i came as a rat
figurines	wrong way all the way
the wunder years	laughing at a wound
grandaddy	underneath the weeping willow
this providence	card house dreamer
gisli	straight to hell
tony sly	international you day
the youngbloods	get together
alkaline trio	i found away
rilo kiley	love and war (11/11/46)
the hold steady	stuck between stations
olli schulz & der hund marie	jetzt gerade bist du gut
joshua radin	one of those days
Side B
Artist	Song	Buy
the secret handshake	everyone knows everyone
future of the left	manchasm
the weakerthans	virtue the cat explains her departure
the veils	night thoughts of a tired surgeon
copeland	the day i lost my voice (the suitcase song)
jens lekman	rocky dennis' farewell song
aloha	i don't know what else to do
die aeronauten	mein bester feind
the jealous sound	got friends
ted leo & the pharmacists	little dawn
silversun pickups	growing old is growing old
morrissey	suedehead
minus the bear	absinthe party at the fly honey warehouse
james	getting away with it (all messed up)
the lawrence arms	minute
sun kil moon	exit does not exist

Comment:

IN THE WORDS OF NATALYE

the mix itself is 120 minutes, divided into two sides. the plan is that we'll eventually make tapes and trade them with one another, each designing our own cover art and such for the other person. side a was kicked off by johannes, with him choosing odds and me choosing evens. we switched it up for side b, with me picking the first track and continuing with odds while he chose evens. luckily for us (but mostly for the sake of symmetry) it ended up with 16 songs on each side.

the title came from song lyrics. i decided on the first half, which is from johannes' pick of "little dawn" by ted leo. he decided on the second half, which is from my pick of "see these bones" by nada surf.

the actual background work on this mix first begin in december 2007, when johannes (who lives in germany) suggested the idea of doing an alt dj project with me (and i live in california). seeing as we have made so many mixes for one another, it only made sense to make one together!

in his words:

"...i thought that we, great mixers that we are, could, or maybe rather should do a mixtape together, and since we're unable to do it the old fashioned 'drop by for a fun evening of drunk mixmaking' way it's going to be the digital version with many zeros and ones transatlanticly sent on a weekly basis with songs that have or have not a connection to what came before in our [lives] and on the mixtape..."

and so this tape was born, although sometimes it was more than a week that passed between songs.

in fact, it took more than a year and a half from start to finish, which makes this tape a bit more meaningful than others i've made, just due to the pure amount of thought and emotion and time that went into it. i particularly love that i can point to any song chosen by either one of us and it tells me where we were in our respective lives. that said, this tape is not just an alternating mix between two people; rather it's a chronology of their lives over a given period of time.

the thing about our relationship is that it is and has been organic from the start. we met by chance on art of the mix, and our friendship blossomed and flourished from there on out. we've grown closer through the years and johannes is one of the only people i would do any and every thing for - he is that important and instrumental in my life. perhaps it was coincidence or perhaps it was fortuitous, but to be honest, i strongly suspect that the intersection at which our lives merged was serendipitous.

and while the task of writing liner notes was bestowed upon me, johannes did have this to say - a line from the first track of the mix.

"what starts as make believe / becomes a plan of action ...
and in the center of it all / a beating heart"

...which could mean different things on different levels, but as it applies to the two of us and this mix, i think it's just about perfect.

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