Being in early middle age, I'm, you know, several years behind every curve.

So I probably did sort of just happen to find this stuff about kind of five years after,

after a lot of other people had.

And some of the things that you mentioned have been things that I had been into for a very long time,

just the sort of things that you find, you know, could have, you know, kind of going through the second hand bins in the 2000s. So you could always buy the soundtrack to Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and charity shops. That stuff, the stuff that didn't need kind of rediscovery because it was always around, I kind of knew about. But then there was this, you're just realizing that it was this absolute kind of tip of an

iceberg. The kind of proximate cause was just like spending loads more time watching YouTube,

which obviously happened because of the lockdown. And, you know, sort of a few kind of searches for

things that you were already listening to would lead you to this. And it'd be like, oh, what is this? I've never come across this before. You know, there of a few kind of searches for things that you were already listening to would lead you to this.

And it'd be like, oh, what is this? I've never come across this before. You know, there'd be a kind of, the algorithm was working quite well in that regard. But the other thing is that just, just, loads of that stuff just happened to have just been reissued. that's how I got to it, but the thing of why that was so appealing,

I think a lot of it,

this doesn't apply with something like, you know, the kind of darker YMO records with something

like B2 unit, but it totally applies with the ambient stuff that was being reissued or with

the city pop records that are being rediscovered, is that they sound like people that are pretty

happy with the world. And that's a very, very difficult thing to imagine. And a very, very difficult thing to

kind of recapture. And so in that kind of moment where everything seemed to stop, you know,

this music that was sort of based very much on sort of stillness,

which is very much the case for a lot of the ambient records that have been rediscovered.

But also kind of, you know, this sort of idyllic kind of Pacific soft pop that was all filling YouTube playlists

was very seductive. You know, the last thing I wanted to do at that

moment was put on a fucking Joy Division record. You know, you didn't want to think about the bad

things. And it was a very, you know, it was a very easily available way to think out of it.

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