Muxtape: Yeah, I’m late comin’ to this one

I’ve recently come across muxtape, an addictive online mixed tape Web site that’s already made news on the Internet since its inception in March of this year.

Muxtape presents a pretty simple and, well, pretty interface on its home page (or, in the words of its creator, Justin Ouellette, ‘elegant’) – its multi-hued little boxes, kind of like looking at a bunch of stacked boxes in a store – with usernames in small font, which adds a certain intrigue and demands that you click on one of them. This takes you to the next page where resides ‘online mix tapes’ – an ordered collection of illegally uploaded songs created by the person behind the username (with Amazon links to purchase the albums or MP3s.)

Random clicks on the usernames take me to all kinds of mixtape: right now, I’m listening to one featuring Sonata Arctica (a Dio-infused prog rock band), Radiohead, and Pink Floyd. Another mix featured Joanna Newsom, X, and Claude Debussy. Another has Hercules & Love Affair, the Kills, the Modern Lovers and Big Boi. Another: Pee Wee and the Jelly Donuts, the Beach Boys, Steaming Wolf Penis and the Zombies. Many of the mixes it seems stick to pretty traditional indie rock stuff – mixes of all the hot new bands like Vampire Weekend, No Age, etc, but it’s the obscure picks outside of the more popular acts that truly gives muxtape its vitality. Not to mention that it’s SO user-likeable. Did I say that already?

Also, the home page seems to reset itself each time it is visited. New mixtapes are constantly being rotated through the homepage out of what must be thousands already created, thus magnyfying the novelty of the site and increasing the wish-to-return factor.

Right now, I’m hooked on Yeuxdelune’s mixtape that heavily favors European prog and hair metal – right now is Dragonforce’s unmatched IronMaiden (minus the testosterone)-meets-Yes ‘Soldiers of the Wasteland’, which was preceded by Hammerfalls’ dramatic take on a Whitesnake-esque oevre with ‘Always Will Be.’ Herein is the magic of muxtape; music I never would have encountered otherwise, even Euro prog metal.