Some things last a long time. Some things don’t last as long as you thought they would. Some things that you would like to imagine as everlasting slowly fade out, like a candle coming to the end of its wick. It wasn’t always this way, but this mix makes me think this way.
Rook Milo is one of the artistic monikers of Brock Mackay, a Vancouver-based musician. Previously known as Mosey, and later taking up the name Gene Pool, Mackay was known as Rook Milo when this mix dropped in 2015. If memory serves me correct, the artist is the friend of a brother of a friend of a good friend of mine. It was this good friend who first played the mix for me in the basement of his parents house in 2015. We were both in our second year of university, and this was one of countless times we spent studying in that basement while jamming some downtempo beat tape or deep house set. This was one two Milo mixes that would make it into heavy rotation. While the mix put together for the Truants series would be a little hit-or-miss for my tastes, this mix for the 4 Horsemen Shop Sounds series has become a personal favourite, and is perhaps my favourite release ever in a mix format.
Looking back, it is wild to me how influential this mix would be on shaping my music tastes and putting me on the path towards what I would write about on this blog. For example, this is where I would first hear “Nobody Here,” one of the eccojams released under Daniel Lopatin’s Chuck Person alias. In 2020, when a collection of demos and three “echos supermixes” were going to be released publicly, but had already been leaked by Youtube user Sigmund Generous, I wrote about it because I was really excited to hear new eccojams. This set was my introduction to chopped and screwed music, thanks to the inclusion of a slowed and throwed version DJ DMD’s “25 Lighters”. DJ Screw’s fingerprints are all over this mix: not only with this track and his influence on Lopatin, but also in the beautifully slowed and chopped version of Outkast’s “Prototype” that closes this mix. After getting acquainted with the Screwtape catalogue, I gave a presentation on Screw’s incredible rework of UGK’s “One Day” for a course in my masters program, which I would turn into text and share to the blog in 2023. The left-of-centre hip-hop influenced electronic music that I’d get into also features prominently via Milo’s own compositions and those of WEDIDIT-associated artists such as Shlohmo and PURPLE. One of Clams Casino crowning achievements in cloud rap beat-work makes an appearance, and this is also where I first heard a song sampled and flipped in countless spacey, drugged out beats: Art of Noise’s “Moments in Love”. It still sounds as fresh as ever, and I can’t believe this song turns 40 YEARS OLD this year! For me, this mix was an eye opening first glance to such of the woozy wonky beat-oriented music I’d grow to love.
In the beginning, this set came to me in an era of opening doors and expanding futures: new discoveries in music, new experiences as a young adult discovering life on my own, the possibilities afforded by gaining an education and making new friends in a new city. Now, listening to it is an exercise in nostalgic reflection punctuated by feelings of impermanence. A sense of fleetingness is brought up as I listen to “Moments in Love” and reflect on past moments in time. The mix feels like a time capsule, a remnant of the post-LA wonky beat scene’s ripples across the internet and through Soundcloud in particular. For me, it is one of the most vividly clear windows into a past era in my life.
After changing his moniker to Gene Pool, Mackay’s musical output decreased, and new songs appear on his Soundcloud just as often as old ones are taken down. The Soundcloud upload for the 4 Horsemen set remains, but the link for the accompanying interview to the mix has gone dead. I ripped an MP3 for offline listening, and ultimately out of fear and archival purposes in case it was wiped from the platform. People have written about the blog era and elsewhere about Soundcloud in noting the impermanence of music on the internet. There was also the time when MySpace deleted over a decade’s worth of music from the platform. Unless music makes it into the broader collective canon and it is catalogued, documented, copied, and made available for listening on emergent listening modalities, it can easily become lost to time.
I don’t know how many people think this mix is particularly worth holding onto, but for me it is. I guess I am grateful that I can listen to this set and reminisce on a fond and exciting time in my life and a good friendship that led to me to it. Things change, and we can’t hold onto everything. Thankfully, we often have some degree of control in deciding what we do hold onto.
