I get asked about the music in my videos constantly and I have never given a proper answer, mostly because the honest one is unfashionable in several directions at once. So here is what is actually playing, arranged roughly by what time of night it belongs to.
Early, while getting ready
This slot is entirely 2000s and I will not be defending it because it does not need defending any more. The nu-metal revival happened, everyone quietly admitted they had liked it the whole time, and a generation that was too young for it the first time round found it and were completely correct to.
What makes it work for getting ready specifically is that it is loud, it is familiar enough to sing along to badly, and it has an energy that is aggressive without being bleak. You cannot get ready to something sad. You can get ready to something with a riff.
The trick with this era is avoiding the obvious singles, which have been played so often they have stopped meaning anything. The album tracks are where it holds up. Every one of those records has two songs everyone knows and four that are genuinely better.
Out, and the industrial thing
Industrial is the one I have to explain most and the one I love most. Mechanical, repetitive, relentless, and much more danceable than people who have not tried it expect. It occupies the same space in a room that hard techno does but with more texture and considerably more menace.
The rooms that play it are always the good rooms — small, low-ceilinged, badly ventilated, nobody filming, everyone there for the music rather than for the photographs. The best nights I have had have all been in rooms like that, and none of them are documented anywhere, which is rather the point.
If you want a way in, start with the more melodic end rather than the harshest thing you can find. The wall-of-noise stuff makes sense once your ear has adjusted; starting there just sounds like a fault.
Late, and the walk home
Drum and bass from about two in the morning, which is not an opinion so much as a law of physics. Something about the tempo matches the specific state of being four hours into a night and not ready for it to end. Liquid if the night has gone gently, something considerably harder if it has not.
And then the walk home, which gets something completely different. Slow, atmospheric, usually something with a lot of reverb on it. The contrast is the entire appeal — coming out of a loud room into a quiet street with the right thing in your headphones is genuinely one of my favourite feelings and I chase it deliberately.
This is also when the playlist gets embarrassing. Nobody's 3am music holds up to daylight scrutiny and mine holds up worse than most.
The one I cannot justify
There is one Deftones song that does not belong anywhere near the rest of this and I put it on constantly. It is not the cool one and it is not the deep cut. It is the obvious one, and I have made peace with that.
Every music taste has one of these — the track that undermines whatever you were trying to project, that you would not put on in front of certain people, and that you have listened to more times than anything you would actually cite. Pretending otherwise is how people end up with a taste that is entirely performance.
So that is mine, declared. I would encourage everyone to declare theirs. It is more interesting than the rest of the list and it is the only part anybody actually remembers.
Loud and 2000s while getting ready, industrial in a small bad room, drum and bass after two, something with reverb for the walk home, and one song that ruins the whole argument. That is the shape of it, and the last one is the honest bit.
Come and see what it soundtracks ✦
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