Speaking of mix tapes, there's nothing quite like them. Mixed CDs don't have the same homemade flavour - the volume fluctuations, the crackles and distortions. There is art in choosing the songs and in finding their optimal order, or in letting it find you; there is skill in allowing for various song lengths so there's no long gap or cut-off track at the end of a side. 

Each tape is a touchstone in time, past you washing freely over now you, uncontrolled and bittersweet.

The first five tracks on today's rediscovered mix tape:

• Never on Your Life/Natalie Merchant
• Paper Bag/Fiona Apple
• Why Pt. 1/Collective Soul
• Dirty Dream Number Two/Belle and Sebastian
• It All Depends on You/Squirrel Nut Zippers