Music for the dark

What plays when the lights are out — a power cut, a candle, a deliberate evening with nothing on. It's a different brief from sleep, which is music played while falling away. This is music played while sitting in the dark on purpose, awake but with nowhere to look.

Slow, but not as slow as the sleep room. Texture, but not as quiet as the wellness one. The room around the listener is doing more work than usual; the music shouldn't fight that. Anything bright, anything with a clear melody, asks the listener to picture too much. It works against the dark.

What plays well is music with a horizon — something happening at the edges, not in the middle. Drones with internal motion. Long piano notes that take their time decaying. Field recordings where you can hear weather. The kind of track where, if you opened your eyes, the room would still feel dark.

I don't have a playlist for this on the site. Most evenings it would just be the sleep or wellness room at low volume, with the lamp off. But there's a brief there, and one day there may be a sixth room.