The Waveform #018: Slow Motion

Walked to the office on Wednesday behind a man carrying a double bass on his back, and watched an entire pavement quietly slow to his speed without anybody complaining about it. Tempo is contagious in a way volume never is. You can ignore a loud room, but you cannot overtake a double bass, and after two blocks I had stopped wanting to. He turned off at the station and the whole pavement sped up again within a few steps, slightly embarrassed about it.

Wire Mix 014: Slow Motion for Fast Times

The new mix runs an hour and never gets above that pace: eight tracks, a great deal of space, and no build that arrives when you expect one. I put it together for the last hour of a working day rather than the first, which turns out to be a distinction that matters more than the tracklist does. It is free for everybody this time, so there are no excuses.

Also this week

• How Bedroom Labels Quietly Rebuilt the Music Industry. June Okafor on why the logistics of releasing a record, rather than the music on it, is where the small operations are winning.
• The Interview: DJ Provenance on Digging, Data, and Dying Formats. One spreadsheet, twenty-two years of entries, and a better case for metadata as memory than I expected to hear.

One more thing

One track did not make the mix and it is the best thing I heard all month. 'Long Dark Ferry' by Nine Volt Choir takes up one whole side of a 12-inch, sits at 88 beats per minute, and has no drums at all until minute nine, at which point they arrive so quietly you check your levels. It was cut because it would have eaten a third of the running time on its own, and because a mix has to end somewhere. Play it on its own instead, with nothing after it, and give it the whole third.

Until Friday. Ada