My life is history. The sleeves of the 7” singles that I bought as a kid, that I treasured, that were life blood, escape, dreams, the future; those sleeves are kitsch tat hanging on the walls of the bar that I am DJing in. Like the horse brasses and toby jugs in a country pub they are little more than useless but cool stuff to fill up some empty space.
I am in Portsmouth, a city with a bad reputation, with some people who want to change that. I discover The Barn, a sound proofed room at the back of pub somewhere near Fratton Park, where parties can go on for as long as they can go on, because once you’re inside, nobody outside can hear you. Tonight it’s psy-trance. Luke and I don’t stay long.

At Kraken Wakes (no soundproofing, better music and those 7” sleeves hanging from the ceiling) we make a little party by playing tunes on the Function One.
And I wonder if the format really makes a difference, if you can fall in love with a digital file like you can fall in love with a vinyl single. And I wonder if, now, as long as we can get online, we can access nearly all music nearly all the time, it’s possible for music to have such a massive impact on the way people think ever again. And I wonder if the way I brought myself up, finding answers in the grooves etched into those slabs of vinyl, fining solace in the the words and sounds and ideas, the calls the action, the moments of tenderness, the anger, the love, I wonder if that was a good thing after all.
Then we play, and it’s good, and people dance and smile and I drink another beer and though it all still makes sense , none of it seems to matter.