curated by Alex Zhang Hungtai & William Cody Watson

2012 is right around the corner, and now looking back on this crazy year in music a lot has happened, with the majority in a extremely positive ordeal in my opinion. Every band, and artist featured here on this compilation are linked to each other in a symbiotic way or another: For starters, Shawn Reed from Night People Records has been a catalyst over the past few years cultivating, and encouraging weirdos, outsiders, bedroom recording artists, bums, people with burnt dreams, to take a leap of faith into the unknown and help them unheard voices broadcast over the underground tape movement on car stereos/tape decks, for those curious adventurous listeners out there in the mist that we know not exist. But after a few years the cultivation and hard work resulted in tours, adventures, links, meet ups, letters, hardship, friendship, relationship, kinship, and so forth. Time cumulated that shit for us.

Whether its years spent on the road, relocating to another town, working to pay the rent, playing numerous gigs underpaid or with zero pay, writing until eyes crossed, recording until ears decay, dying in a Tibetan sense, or simply living, this compilation is a collective meditation of our personal travels. One of love, of hate, of wander, and of mileage.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that we are truly grateful and thank you all for your support this past year. Let this compilation be a signifier of more fucking bad ass music thats to come in 2012 from our crew and family. We hope you enjoy this FREE compilation as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Work hard, play hard, get paid, fund new project, write, record, repeat until you succeed. Cumulate and cumulate and cumulate.

Happy New Year everybody.

Alex Zhang Hungtai
Dec 23, 2011

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2011 has been a great year for music. and especially, it's been a great year for us at Bathetic. We couldn't be happier to help release such a wonderful collection of songs for this mixtape gift. Like Alex mentioned, you start out with people like Shawn and Night-People, people working diligently in their zone, spending long hours working to push a product for a select clique of people. Why? Because we love it.

Bathetic loves to continue to push the boundaries of exploratory music, regardless of the genre and sub-genre boundaries of 2000s blog market. We just love good music. That's our main reason for backing this project. We wanted to reach out to artists we've worked with, artists we've connected with socially, artists we've never even spoken with; yet the connection is always there. That's a beautiful thing.

Some of these artists we've done releases for, some of them are new friends, but it goes to show there's still a community in all this.

So here we present to you... This cruise... We're all fucking friends, here. So let's take a ride.

This is the expressway.

No reason not to live fast.

William Cody Watson
Dec 23, 2011

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Thank you to Jon, Omar, & Bathetic Records. Thank you to all the artists involved.





DIRTY BEACHES
"HIGHWAY 1"
"God it feels great to shave your legs. I'm the type that gets kinda sweet when it comes to bed time. But right now this highway's all I got. Cuz I ain't got you."



GRAND TRINE
"HERE COMES THE NIGHT"
"I've been warned before about what's in store. It was never enough. I always wanted more. But something's certain, the world keeps turning."



COUGH COOL
"TEAL IMPALA"
"It's all about being in the wrong place at the wrong time."



HOT & COLD
"DISTANT LIGHTS"
"If you're on Beijing's second ring road and pass through Dongzhimen at the right time, you'll find it. A massive highway-facing LCD screen taking up the entire facade of an office tower. It plays an endless loop of undersea absurdities; monstrous crabs attacking swarming schools of fish."



LEE NOBLE
"RETREAT, ABANDON"
"The complete shutdown of all function, all thought, except of escape. That is the only feeling. To give up, absolutely."



FEMMINIELLI
"HOTEL SUITE"
"After Atlantida, Hotel Suite is simply a night-invitation for inner revelations... An Hedonic, unchaste, debauched, mystical and sexual ending..."



XANDER HARRIS
"WHEN THE DARK HAS FED"
"The night is a ghost, eating it's way through the soul, begging you to drive off the cliff into oblivion. Do you keep going or do you turn around?"



LANTERN
"WHERE ARE WE NOW?"
"There are forces beyond our control - evolution, technology, the final frontier - hurling and spiraling us down a vortex of which we are sure there is no end, only something different.

Driving. Driving faster than you can keep up and going slower than a stone. There are over 7 billion people, breathing, moving, and thinking, every instance of time - doesn't that blow your mind?

It's a lone night drive, maybe I have a passenger. I'm going fast, fast, faster than I can. I see it in a split second and then BAM! I'm already hitting the next thing.

I can't see ahead, I can't see behind..I'll leave that to memory and do this. Hit the gas!"



ELA ORLEANS
"NIGHT WARS"
"A night like a beast nestled in fear, clouds of flight, sails of ecstasy, trees' companions upon the firmament."



WET HAIR
"ON EDGE"
"The vicious traffic squad cars are after our lone driver, the last American hero, the electric centaur, the demi-god, the super driver of the golden west."



TONSTARTSSBANDHT
"DAD BEATING UP DUDES DOWNTOWN" (Orlando, 1992)
"Dad beating up dudes, downtown Orlando, 1992."



HOBO CUBES
"MEDITATION AFTER MURDER" (Midnite Drive To The Ocean)
"I need to clear my head... the waves crash across the shore. I just barely got outta there... the sirens and the noise is making my mind spin. The city was too hectic... traffic everywhere. I was set up... they were planning to get me. I had to do what I did back there... no other choice. But now I'm leaving west... don't know what is next. Anything, anywhere... just to clear my head."



WILLIAM CODY WATSON
"HAND ON MY KNEE"
"We made it out alive, but I had left of trail of blood. The night was cool, but we let the top down anyway... She threw her hands up, excited for the future. She looked and me with the kind of smile I didn't know could even exist. I gripped the wheel a little harder as she slid her hand onto my knee."

"Godspeed," I whispered, staring hard into the blackness ahead.

Some nights you barely escape. Some nights you never want to escape.



SPECULATOR
"PICKING FLOWERS"
"Alone / Like empty bottles
Why am I / Always picking flowers?
Why do I / Pick the flower that dies?
Tonite / Let me be yr garden"