kaestralblades' Disc

dawn to (three) am (summer mix 2025), kaestralblades' entry into the Summer Anthems 2025 MiniDisc swap.

This mix is split into three sections, taking place sequentially over the period of a “fully lived summer day” (dawn through to 3:00 AM the next day). They are based on three different concepts I personally associate with summer:

1. a roadtrip playlist - Comprised of mostly pleasant, positive uptempo songs, this section to me represents sunshine, a nice breeze - all qualities I've always associated with a nice drive or riding in the passenger seat of a car. This also represents the beginning of a day - waking up early and tired, but putting everything you packed the night before into the car before you set off.
   
   It includes a lot of songs that represent excitement and anticipation - a sort of giddiness mixed with nervous energy.
   
   This ends somewhere near midafternoon, where the next section begins.
   
   
2. a night out - Comprised of mostly more aggressive, club-oriented tracks, cut in the middle with more melodic, “euphoric” sounds. This represents to me another part of summer - the sensory experience of going out with friends to party or to a concert or DJ event.
   
   For me, this has mostly been DJ sets - the experience of making it, specifically, to Echostage in DC. Then, the concert itself, and whatever comes afterwards - usually the late-night walk with the rest of the mob exiting the venue, flooding into either the nearby 7-11 or Checkers and frightening the poor employees on the night shift.
   
   It includes a middle section with two very euphoric tracks that to me sound like the night air feels, and exist typically in the time between bars when bar hopping, or doing a booze run when spending a night in with friends.
   
   Purity Filter comes in after this section and acts as the “second wind” of the night - when the energy picks back up, and feels wrong and jarring at first, maybe because you're starting to sober up a bit and everything feels just a little too much and you're out of it, but as the energy picks back up you feel good and possibly even better than before.
   
   This section ends near the end of the twilight hours, leading into the next section.
   
   
3. …and losing people - Summer has historically been a period where I have had to reckon some of the largest losses of my life - my grandma one year, then my mom's best friend and my boyfriend another, as well as generally the transition between modes of my life (the end of high school, of course, but also when I finally left to live on my own for the first time).
   
   This section is made up of songs that are tied to my grief (either partially or literally being songs I listened to during grief), but also a feeling of rumination or night-time clarity - when you are starting to sober up during a warm night breeze, when it feels like you might be drifting away from your friends, when you are left to think on your own finally after how full the day was.
   
   It ends with riding back to wherever you've been staying, with a final song that acts as a promise to keep doing it all again.

• Yellow Daiso MD74 (Undocumented on the wiki?? Wish I'd known this, sorry!)
• No slipcase or official card (Sorry!! I procrastinated labeling)
• Recorded in SP mode from FLAC where available, and highest available quality MP3 320kbps or OPUS otherwise, using Web MiniDisc Pro.

Total Runtime: 72:53

* Note: This is literally just 23 seconds of silence, which I added for emotional reasons - just so much to go from section 2 to 3 otherwise.