Monday Long Song

'Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance', a 1982 American experimental film directed by Godfrey Reggio, examines mankind's relationship with technology. The film contains no dialogue, characters or narrative structure, relying instead on stunning time-lapse imagery and the equally stunning music of Philip Glass to set the scenes. 'The Grid' is a real highlight of the piece, visually and musically. The world wakes, gradually picks up speed and ultimately hurtles into overdrive.

Philip Glass Ensemble - The Grid

Version City #25 - Aphex Twin Vs Philip Glass and David Bowie

Anyone who is as old as me (quite old and about to get older) will probably be able to remember an example of the primitive tannoy system. Basically a bunch of cone speakers, connected by draped cables, hung high on posts around a field for a school sports day, fete, or similar parochial event. The combination of audio delay and wind speed were never considered as a factor in those days, so with the slightest breeze, the sound could drift in and out of shape, causing unsettling sonic collisions as different passages of the same piece of music reached the eardrum simultaneously.

I felt a similar sensation when I heard this on Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone recently. It's Philip Glass's 1996 symphonic interpretation of 'Heroes', mashed up with a smattering of David Bowie's original vocal and given a faintly disturbing remix by Aphex Twin. Is it possible to like and be weirded out by something at the same time?