Dummy Mix 37 // Myles Cooper

MYLES COOPER is from San Francisco. He makes outrageously excellent Pop music: the sort of deceptively simple, feel-good songs that work their way into your everyday and don’t budge. Like Gonna Find Boyfriends Today (watch the video below), which came out earlier this week on Transparent (read our label profile on them here). He made us this mix of chopped up Pop and sexy slow jams (download it on the right). We like it very much. Scroll to the bottom on the page to read what he had to say about the tracks on the mix.

What kind of mix have you made for us?

It’s a wild mix of mostly lesser-known tracks from the San Francisco Bay Area… and from all around the world. I am out of town right now so I had to patch these tracks together like a Gee’s Bend quilt in GarageBand. I tried to keep it childish and jammy. There is a Mariah Carey remix I made at the end where I slowed and chopped her voice down so she sounds like a gay dude. She is pregnant right now. I would be pregnant right now if I were a woman. Relate?

I love ‘Gonna Find Boyfriends Today’. What’s up next?

I have more music videos coming out. All of which are totally different from one another. I have a Focus Creeps video for a song called Hair that should be done as soon as I finish editing the music. We shot it with office scissors in this crazy downtown video studio in Chicago. They got me drunk at the gay bar across the street… they call their style “immersion”. Also, I hired Bay Area computer champions Party Effects to make a video for my current B side Lord Love Music. We shot the video underneath Oakland in the dirtiest scariest cement pipeline. It was a portal to another dimension and we had a total collective religious experience. We burned candles and had an offline on-camera seance. I am also shooting a video in Tanzania for my heal-the-world jam U Gotta Luv Ur Family in three days. I am choosing my safari looks now. OMG!

The video is awesome too. Are you a Sesame Street fan?

My favorite character from Jim Henson has always been Miss Piggy. I begged my mother to buy me a Miss Piggy mask for Halloween in 4th grade. It was behind the counter at this boutique costume store an hour out of town. It was so expensive, but she had no choice but to indulge me. It had the longest acrylic blonde hair attached to it. I wore it to school along with my mother’s black nightgown and work pumps. I was convinced that I WAS Miss Piggy. Unfortunately, my costume did not evoke the tone of laughter I wanted. I had nothing else to change into.

What’s the music scene like in San Francisco?

It is like a big parade. Everyone has their moment walking by the
review stand. It is really fun.

Who is currently getting you excited music-wise?

Anything with bass! There are so many loud car stereo systems. I can feel my butt vibrating right now from some mega bass out in front of this apartment. I think bass is the new trend.

What are you most looking forward to this summer?

I am looking forward to going to Tanzania and shooting this video I keep talking about! I haven’t totally figured out my footwear situation though…. such a tough call. What should I wear? I am also looking forward to spending the month of July in Chicago to record music. I love recording.

What’s your favourite colour?

Vermillion, terracotta, mauve and navy blue.

Here’s what Myles had to say about the songs on his mix:

White Mice Youth Of Today
My friend Chris McVicker sent this track to my email address after seeing me attempt to spin dub at the gay club. He is the only straight guy I have a crush on, other than dads on television sit-coms. If he is not wearing carefully planned head-to-toe Polo from an urban perspective, he is sporting a Bob Marley shirt only as cultural concept – as he doesn’t care for Bob Marley’s music. He agreed to go on a slightly romantic platonic date to see Yoko Ono with me – his comment about her show was that she should stop talking about peace, and start talking about how awesome it is to be rich. If I ever become rich he has promised me via TXT that he will go gay and be my housewife… he cooks well apparently but only tweets about drinking Ensure. He has written the sweetest little songs with the most precious chord changes like Hunx’s Dont Cha Want Me Back.

Bz Broo Broclyn
I am going to Tanzania to visit my sister and hopefully find more music like this. This was on a bongo flava mix CD my father got from a young guy he thought looked cool. My father likes to consume culture via collectable objects like a colonialist anthropologist… although he would argue that he immerses himself where he travels like any leftist with a beard and high-tech Patagonia travel pants from the West Coast would say. The MP3 cd had about 200 bongo flava songs along with huge anthems that were popular at the time like Hips Don’t Lie and Hollaback Girl and a really special
unknown artist version of everyone’s favorite song Happy Birthday. I am not sure if Broclyn is a nod to hip hop’s famous Brooklyn epicenter or if it is naive posturing to something foreign and genuine. There is something in Broclyn that is really special and trendy. I love it. Perhaps this genre has evolved or died. I assume most of it happens offline.

Lil Louis Do U Luv Me
This is a great Chicago house track. You can play it any time of night and it always works.

Party Effects Alone Together (Get High And Fuck)
My night life guru Primo J Pitino showed me an online promotional video entitled Party Effects dot Biz for an unknown San Francisco Bay Area collective of self proclaimed “party boys” and “computer champions” Party Effects a few years ago while I was styling his hair. In their video…dancing shirtless amongst balloons…they possessed an earnestness that made it impossible to be an art student joke…and enough material to go deeper than a hipster’s genre exercise. I felt an instant connection and begged a club promoter friend to book them at the gay club downtown I was doing celebrity impersonations at… just so I had an excuse to meet them in person… to see if they were real and not just avatars. They brought a good attitude, 6 drum machines, 4 fog machines and attracted 2 fans. They had the blinding macho pageantry of a peacock and the classic Bay Area self-serving slowly churning jam tendencies of 60s bands like the Grateful Dead only manifested in completely electronic forms of techno bass, freestyle, acid, turntablism and “true electro.” Their collective now represents the craziest group of freaks who endearingly seem to have nothing in common… recruiting members in biotechnology classes at Berkeley City Community College.

H.U.N.X. I Vant To Suck Your Dick
This is the first mix to debut this crazy meeting of brains: Nick
Weiss of Teengirl Fantasy and Seth “Hunx” Bogart. They met up a few days ago in the Bay Area gay resort town of Guerneville to work on this gay interest vampire Halloween dancefloor novelty song and a few others unlike anything ever made. They met me in San Francisco the day after and Nick and I got fresh $10 fades at the Vietnamese barber while Hunx, a hairdresser himself, looked on with politeness and insight. We all went shopping and tried on different outfits so complex that we were turning garments inside out – mixing safari pants with tuxedo shoes – trying on pants 8 sizes too large or two sizes too small… totally reimagining functionality… closely examining our potential looks from the myriad mirrors surrounding our egos… until the stores all closed their doors to us.

K-Starke Need A Bigger Boat (Jack The Boat)
A DJ friend of mine Jordan suggested I go to K-Starke records the last time I was in Chicago. I was going through the selection at the cute shop and noticed a 12” record with the store name on it. I asked the only person in the store, the shopkeeper, what it was and learned that Kevin Starke, the shopkeeper and owner had made it in-house. He pulled out a TB-303 and a TR-707 literally from under the counter and informed me that he had also used an 808 on the record as if that was access. Need a Bigger Boat is a perfect song for me… as it feels like a song made by a really excited person who uses music to be playful. Can you ask for anything more?

Too $hort Blow The Whistle
This is a huge song in the Bay Area. It changes everyone’s mood and immediately electrifies people. Everyone identifies with its low-key braggy synth groove.

Lil Romeo My Baby (I Don’t Need A Girlfriend)
This song rules.

K Jam Nipe Nafasi
I love the cheesy pads and Timbaland-esque jerkiness of the drums on this ballad. If somebody knows what he is saying, please email me. This song is very important to me and, as far as I know, not on the Internet.

Mariah Carey Touch My Body (slowed and chopped by Myles Cooper)
I love chopped and screwed versions of songs by women because they sound like they are sung by dudes. I was obsessed with this song the day it came out a few years ago and downloaded the leak. I stayed up all night and painstakingly created this slowed and chopped version of
Touch My Body because it spoke to me with particular relevance.