The best thing about this time of year — other than good food and plenty of acceptable occasions to be drinking during the middle of the day — is the endless amount of “Best Of” lists we get to read. One of the first to catch our interest this best-of season (probably because it includes a lot of free music) is Fact Magazine’s Top 20 Mixes of 2008.
The list highlights the best and brightest of the year’s DJ mixtapes, including studio mixes, live mixes, radio sets and MC-oriented mixtapes. Featuring names from Squincy Jones to Generation Bass to their top choice Appleblim, you can download almost all 20 mixes in podcast format straight from Fact Magazine.
The mixes that comprise our 20 best of 2008 list each have a unique ingredient or set of circumstances which makes them special, important, unforgettable, of our time. They might represent an important turning-point in an established artist’s career, or herald the arrival of a mercurial new talent, or even a completely new musical genre; they might enrich our present by delving into the past, or they might be aimed unblinkingly at the future; some advance the very form, others are just plain rude. They might capture a border-crashing cultural moment, or simply the mood of an ecstatic dancefloor. Some we listen to in the office, others on our iPods, in the car, on the tube, getting ready to go out, on the couch, in the club, wobbling drunkenly at a party or curled up with a mug of tea in the wretched hours of the morning after the night before.
