Mixtape Sessions Episode 19: Alexei Shishkin

When I sat down to make this playlist, I approached it much like I approached the recording of Good Times: no real plan, just sort of following wherever my ears went. Whatever influence might have been pulled from these tracks wasn’t direct, but was rather a deeper, subconscious pull.

As a matter of fact, a lot of the stuff on this playlist I didn’t even know of until this year (well after the album was finished). For example, Microdisney; this project from Cathal Coughlan, Sean O’Hagan, and company had already called it a day a couple years before I was even born.

I hadn’t discovered them until earlier this year, and they quickly rose up the ranks to one of my favorite bands. That’s one of the beautiful things about recorded music: its shelf life is limitless.

There’s also stuff from Discus, No Frills, and Fievel Is Glauque which wasn’t even out when we wrapped on Good Times. Discus’s To Relate To and No Frills’s Sad Clown are two of my favorite albums of 2025, and Fievel Is Glauque’s Rong Weicknes was just the latest in their line of absolute hits (spoiler alert: everything they make is incredible).

Then you have stuff like Stereolab, Nicholas Krgovich, and Silver Jews who have been favorites of mine over the years. The late David Berman is a songwriter who I really admire, and Like like the the the Death is probably the Silver Jews song I come back to the most — either that one or Dallas. Nicholas Krgovich’s album In an Open Field is one my most highly regarded albums of the last ten years.

Krgovich is an endless well of music, and I’m always impressed at how consistent he is. And then of course, Stereolab. One of the greatest bands of all time to me, and they’re still kickin’. Honestly, my music sounds nothing like theirs (and probably never will), but that’s another beautiful thing about recorded music: there’s endless ways to put the sounds together.

We’ve also got Terri Lyne Carrington and Emma Rawicz as the jazz representatives on the playlist. Carrington is an insane drummer who I’ve gotta try to see play live someday, and Rawicz is a saxophonist who worked with pianist Gwilym Simcock on one of my favorite releases of 2025, Big Visit.

Finally, rounding out the playlist, we have a tune from the Disco Elysium soundtrack by Sea Power (FKA British Sea Power). The song is Whirling-In-Rags, 8 AM which is the song that plays when your character is in the Whirling-In-Rags hotel during the morning.

It’s the first tune that really stuck with me from that game, so I figured I’d throw it in as an homage… which of course is followed by my own homage, Disco Elysium.

Thanks for listening, and hopefully some of these songs turn you on to some artists who are new to you!