Blog1 min read
Music for a power cut
The speakers are out, the phone is on its last bar. Half the time the right answer is no music at all.
A power cut is a strange listening environment because the music isn't a choice in the usual way. The speakers are out; the streaming app is at the bottom of a slowly-emptying phone battery. What's left is whatever you have on the device and what the battery will support.
What this hour wants, more than the music, is patience. Slow ambient pieces are good because they hide the dropped framerate of a stressed phone. Anything with detail is wasted on a small speaker held in your hand. The sleep and wellness rooms are closest to right, at low volume.
There's also a strong argument for no music at all. A power cut quiets a neighbourhood in a way you almost never hear otherwise — the refrigerators stop, the boilers stop, the streetlights are off. The temptation to fill that silence is real and almost always wrong.
Eventually the power comes back. The first track you play afterwards is somehow louder than you remember the speakers being. The room is yours again. It's a small reminder of how much of the listening environment is, in normal life, on by default.