Guest Music Mix {Matt} Architecture Month Memphis

For the last week of Architecture Month Memphis, I’m excited to introduce our guest dj Matt Seltzer of archimania who is the first guest dj who has actually been a radio dj, back in his college days for Rice’s KTRU. I challenged him with selecting not only great songs but great songs that fit an architectural theme. It turns out it wasn’t much of a challenge for him. Seriously, if I were to switch brains with any great Memphis architecture mind, it would be Matt’s wildly multifaceted but realistic intellect hands down.

Enjoy Matt’s brilliant music mix listed below with the band name next to each day along with his song commentary. To find out what song he's selected, visit the sidebar music player each day. Thanks Matt!

See the Architecture Month Memphis events held by AIA Memphis here.

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These songs were chosen around a loose theme of contemporary urban fabrics: exurban development, utopia and its discontents, and the dialogue between new and old.

M / Neil Young / Get your work week started with some everyday running around. A Monday morning gut check: are you doing what you should be doing? Are you with the people you need to be with? Are you where you need to be?

T / (Twofer Tuesday)  Talking Heads / So we’re not quite sure what happened, but the urban is now the wilderness, and we are missing some of what was here before.  / Joni Mitchell / They paved paradise and put up a parking lot: It’s not a Counting Crows song. Sure the song was reportedly written about Hawaii (and relationships) but we could apply the sentiment to many a paradise.

W/ Arcade Fire / How can such a beautiful landscape of sound be created about the generic landscape of nothingness? There are lots of architectural examples of the banal being sublime, but this song is a lot more portable.

TH / Superchunk / Just because suburbia seems bland and banal, doesn’t mean young people in and out of love can’t create drama within its khaki confines. Real people in unreal places.

F / LCD Soundsystem / Somewhere between 4th and 5th period, you hear some kid you really don’t admire telling some kids he doesn’t know about the party of the millennium, coming this Saturday. You don’t believe what he’s saying, but around 11:30 on Saturday you find yourself pulling into a cul-de-sac loaded with cars, walking down the sidewalk toward the only house on the block with lights on. What happens next?