Ditie

An album concerned with the Shanghai metro system.

As long as I have been alive, I have used forms of public transportation – public buses in the small town I come from, and metro systems in any larger cities I’ve stayed in. Somehow, the route of a public transport re-maps the consciousness of space, and ascribes to the terrain a network of places, staggering what might have been a fluid existence into a network of ideas.

Indeed, these routes could be considered to be almost primeval imaginings of what the city is – a recent experiment showed that slime molds, when giving a terrain that modeled that of Tokyo, re-created the subway map quite closely. City planners might think that their decisions are based in structure and study, but clearly the way we move through space follows some more ancient, almost cosmic pattern, the origins of which we cannot know.

I find when considering music production it becomes important to have a set idea about the environment in which the music will be listened to; at a party, for example, or sitting in a comfortable chair in a dark room (two styles I enjoy greatly,) and I long pondered these tunes before coming to the obvious conclusion. Thus, I recommend highly you listen to this music while riding on the Shanghai Metro, ideally line 3, the elevated train. If you are unable to do so, any elevated train in a metropolis should work fine. Underground and land based trains are also fine, as are elevated highways. Buses and cars on normal highways also suffice, and I will make a special provision for armchairs in darkened rooms, if you have a good imagination. Beyond that, you are on your own as regards coming to an understanding of this music.