One of the most addictive pieces of music I’ve heard all year is the Night Bus II mixtape, by CFCF.

CFCF, aka Montreal-based musician Michael Silver, has crafted a blindingly evocative set of music. Absorbing the parade of tunes woven together here was a huge eureka moment: a realization that not only does someone else share my love for a very particular aesthetic, but he managed to daisy chain exquisite highlights like some match-ending Street Fighter combo move.

Opening with a 30 year old Vangelis piece echoed in the synthscapes of modern favorites from Emeralds to Tim Hecker to Destroyer, the mix laid me on my back, set me in a trance, and cast one dazzling spell after another for its 42 minutes. Every moment that would peak on any other mixtape gets toppled by the next transition, then obliterated by a mashup that freshly illuminates both sampled tracks. Witness new internet sensation A$AP Rocky rapping underwater with Oneohtrix Point Never, drawing out the romantic swoon of the latter and tricky phonetics of the former while subverting their individual moods entirely.

The pièce de résistance is, hands down, Underworld‘s gigantic Sappys Curry cresting with a balls-out rap from Meek Mills until the instrumental hits the afterburners with a laser tag synth battle. The real magic is the fact that it hits more viscerally than in its original context; Second Toughest In The Infants is one of my favorite all-time albums and yet CFCF lets the tune blast harder than it ever has. This is the essence of what makes Night Bus II as listenable and fascinating as many of my favorite albums of 2011. Also, it’s free. Thanks to Gorilla vs. Bear you can download it and play the whole thing while you go for a drive tonight.

DOWNLOAD (right click, ‘save as’)

Or you can stream it right now:

Track list:

01 wait for me intro (vangelis)
02 this city never sleeps (eurythmics)
03 stranger (jhene aiko)
04 demons/behind the bank (asap rocky/oneohtrix point never)
05 keep the streets empty (fever ray)
06 aventurescence/addiction (beaumont/cassie)
07 here in heaven/one more chance (elite gymnastics/notorious BIG)
08 tongues (d’eon)
09 sappys curry/body count (underworld/meek mill)
10 lowride/unthinkable (autechre/alicia keys)

For some original blissed out fun from CFCF, look for his The River EP. It’s chill, it’s hypnotizing, it’s his aural interpretation of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. Intrigued?