Ominous airships circling in the sky, the little town below shivers in fright, the rain whips the empty streets, dark shadows dancing over the walls. Tall men in hats and trenchcoats rushing home to their families. Neon signs flicker, dogs howling in the distance. There's a lonely girl in grey sitting at a table in the restaurant at the town hotel, sipping a glass of whiskey, smoking a cigarette. She looks out the window, into the vast rainy night, smiling. Her name is Death.

Five Corners Quintet - Othello

A purple jewel at the centre of a dying star. Your enigmatic smile and the universe. My eyes are op art patterns.

Don Harper feat. Norma Winstone - Cold Worlds

Glacial beauty. Summer birds frozen in flight.

Renaissance - The Winter Tree

Derelict industrial complexes glowing with subversive activities at night. Don’t let yourselves be fooled by the clanging of metal. A much greater delicacy is in operation here.

Eyeless In Gaza - Warm Breath, Soft And Slow

Third Advent slowly. Humble weather: Clear sky. -5°C, feels like -12,7°C. North / 7.2 m/s. Sunrise: 8:27 / Sunset: 15:36. Resting. Present and distracted. Resting. Dwelling.

Shabazz the Disciple - Death Be the Penalty (Instrumental) (Produced by 4th Disciple)

Frosty trees on green hills. Landscapes through train window.

Teebs - Moments

Words were more precious then.

João Gilberto - Undiu

 

A very long time ago, a night of tumbling around in the sleeping city like a flock of crows, playing football with a tin of fish. We were wearing our best suits and dresses, everyone was singing, and in a drunken stupor, everyone was walking the cobbled streets in their different ways and drinking the raindrops from roses torn from private gardens. The night light and the stars were dancing backwards, ushering in the mirror darkness; we were speaking our own language of chestnuts and gold. We were raining down on moss-covered tiles, we were lapping in the canals and the rising sun was piercing our ear lobes, painting them pink.

Lars Werner och hans vänner - Cirklar & Trioler

It was the only inexplicable event, so far, this year. When I moved to a new flat, the rest of those last weeks of summer were spent in a horrible way, incomprehensible to anyone else. A trip to Berlin - my one chance to leave all my boxes as they were, the white walls left perfect, and white, and reflecting all the houses around - came to nothing, and I was cast into a kind of limbo of washing teacups and folding sweaters. Staying up till five, listening to old music I found, not getting out in the day and to the sea, despite immaculate skies, and closing my windows to keep the August wasps out.

After three weeks of this (of nearly this) I woke up to the fact that it was a Friday evening. The windows on the wasp-free side were giving away signs of people preparing for things they might want to do. The past week had been a surprise of rain, autumn winds, music I heard that I'd neglected looking up before, completely new things. This Friday, things were back as they had been. Stuffy, domestic, calm, and rather empty. When you're so alone with yourself you're aware that nothing that happens to you will be noticed by anyone. In this state, at six o'clock, my clock radio, the ugly piece of white plastic showing the time where I couldn't see it (under the bed), went off into radio mode, where it never is, where it wasn't set, where it couldn't have been, very loudly too, and was suddenly playing me Arabic girl chanting with a presenter voice hurrying different tracks along as if he couldn't play enough of them - and they sounded brilliant. It was just voices, and excitement, and clips of different ideas. Pop tunes cut before they got boring; an absurd world that you'd like to stay in. On my stereo at the same time was my newest record of all (one I'd forgotten to follow the links to), Position Normal, Goodly Time, and the track was "Bubba Dum": unearthly melody-radio singers competing to be on the beat, now snatched somewhere they hadn't belonged to but where you wanted them to be.

I'd like to dedicate chat écoutant la musique to all the listening to music that we do.

The Muffins - Why Pursue It is the first song. It's another one of those sounds with a multitude of ideas tucked into a form that one wants more of, and can be completely happy not to be in control over. They were an American band that seem to me to have wished that they lived somewhere in Kent, slightly earlier on in the seventies.