the late night city aesthetic

i once lived for a year in an apartment complex, a brutalist social housing thing built in the 1960s. for all its desolation it was cheap and i was treated to a spectacular view of airplanes leaving the airport in the distance, very large windows that bled into the city. i was engulfed by the night for the first time.

being incredibly lonely for the first time in the city i decided to 'make a friend of horror', in the sense of abandoning myself to cheap 80s fare, the things that could be heard on the radio at 3 am. i wanted to embrace the city. my mental guide was a tune i had heard once on the radio but could not for the life of me remember who it was by. all i knew was that there were several voices over a sensual, drifting nocturnal thing, that it was probably a late 80s production, that was it.

so i played phil collins' in the air tonight, sade's i never thought i'd see the day, maxi priest's close to you. i discovered rude movements by sun palace, added some suicide to the mix. all of this was to me the music of the late shift.

i eventually left this place but i couldn't get that mystery track out of my head. i was beginning to think i had imagined it, abstracted it from different sources, but a few years later i found it. yes it's glossy, it's bloated, but it drifts magnificently. when i hear it i'm one with the thousands of people who toil away through the night, people who want to abandon themselves to sleep but can't, who lapse into sensual reverie. to me this is the sound of the city at night.

polystyle desu said:

the music on his cab radio , a frentic foreign musik i could not place , is burned into brain forever.

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i had a similar experience on a ride through the desert. up north you can go for hours on end in a straight line with virtually no distractions around you, and at night it's even more hypnotic (as attested by the wrecks that dot the landscape). so i had to talk to the driver and at the same time listen to his cassette of the most frenetic, halucinatory version of salsa i have ever heard, either very badly recorded or played on the cheapest equipment ever. the closest i have come to re-hearing it is sound music, which was an argentinian offshoot of salsa, but nothing as surreal as what i heard.

vache said:

I think there's something about the early 80s DX7 + house music keys +70s soul remainder that hits this mood perfectly. I always think that Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" captures the more paranoid side.

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it's true, and you don't see that engagement with 'the night' in current fm pop, at least nothing comes to mind. the last time i listened to late shift radio 1990 seemed to be the limit.

that rockwell thing sounds amazing.

moody synths. suspended tinkling sounds, like on in the air tonight. klaus nomi's keys of life. voices with a bit of reverb. deep r&b voices. the jones sisters' nights over egypt.

around the time of this 'night exploration' thing i bumped into the name of kingo hanada. as far as i could make out he had a hit called midnight cruisin'. i loved that title. but that was it, i could find no more information about him, or it was in japanese and the translation turned up pure gibberish. in my head i associated him with salarymen drinking with their bosses in tokyo bars, that sort of thing, am i completely wrong? has anyone heard him? polystyle?

thanks. the mystery has evaporated. midnight cruisin' has a nice cover, though, i wouldn't mind having that lying around. this is all garbage anyway. barry white.. i need to get some sleep.

i visited woebot, downloaded the dr lloyd mix he recommended, which is ace, and there is a track at the end of the first bit/beginning of the second that fits the mood of this thread perfectly, can anyone make out who it's by? snippet

i don't know if it's the air i'm breathing but all this music has me feeling incredibly awake.