It's all out on the streets today

Things I saw on my way to work this morning...

A man crouched beside a green junction box, trying to match the diagram on his clipboard to the wires inside. He was wearing a bright yellow plastic headset, clamped over his black turban.

A man striding quickly up the road, a pink lunch bag in one hand and a huge carrier containing a Playmobil box in the other. A little girl in a pink anorak and a cream party dress ran to keep up with him.

A blonde girl on the train, asleep with her arm curled round her partner and a huge smile on her face.

An immensely cheerful man with gingery hair, fighting with the ticket barriers before declaring "Ah! It's the green arrow that it gives it away."


As I cycled up Whiteknights Road, the rain brought an unexpected waft of wild garlic with it. A police car with blacked-out windows passed me, ferocious barking coming from within.

And the pounding in the street was your heart in 4/4 time

It's Friday! It's about three o'clock! It's time to Boogie At Your Desk!

( You what? )

If you like the track, go out and buy the album it belongs to - I'll try and recommend a suitable CD to purchase for any BAYD track.

The link to the mp3 will expire at some point in the future.

Today you are invited to Boogie At Your Desk to:

Portasound - Messerschmitt [link to mp3 download expired, YouTube link may still be active]

One of the CDs I picked up in Banquet Records last weekend was Portasound's debut EP The Second Renaissance (you can listen to the whole thing online via that link - I recommend it).

I'd never heard of Portasound, but something about the note Banquet had stuck to it drew me in. Disappointingly, they returned the be-stickered copy to the shelves and sold me a crisp new one, and I can't now remember what the note said.

Anyway, what I seem to have bought is a four-track EP of instrumental, electronic music which is at once quite ambient and poundingly rhythmic. At under 4 minutes, Messerschmitt is the most bite-sized track on the EP, and probably the most consistent.

A review online describes them as being perfect for the soundtrack of a hypothetical movie of the animated Ulysses 31. I can't honestly say that's a concept which sprang readily to my mind, but now someone's mentioned it they're dead right.