On the go

There’s a shop on Brixton Hill that sells old furniture. Cupboards with peeling paint, nested tables, office chairs, the odd washing machine. Every day two men carry everything out on the street, line it up, lay it out. Every night they take it back in, stack it high, and roll down the shutters. We all do things like this. Maybe not exactly like this. But repeated actions. Day in and day out. The same, again. The things we do to make a life. There’s joy to be found in repetition. In refining, in perfecting, in pattern, in the rhythm. Of course, the flip is livelier, disruption burns brighter, out-of-the-ordinary more seductive than the everyday. In music the two come together: the sounds, the melody, the beat, the voice. One the foil for the other, harmonies so much sweeter the less sweet they are. Fractured textures framing translucent melodies packing sucker punches.

What I’m listening to on the bus at the moment:

LoneLady ‘Marble’
Pantha Du Prince ‘Lay In A Shimmer’
Tanlines ‘Saw’
Primary 1 ‘Sometime Wannabe’
Peggy Sue ‘Yo Mama’
Yuck ‘Get Away’
Perfume Genius ‘Mr Petersen’
Lonely Galaxy ‘So Low (Instrumental)’
Remember Remember ‘The Dancing’
Masks ‘Forever Dancing’
Pictureplane ‘Goth Star’
Egyptian Hip Hop ‘Round Pot’
Kyle Hall ‘Fuse N Me’
Kingdom ‘You’