The old me would start this with an apology for being rambly and pushing it to the absolute limits of the month before publishing 2026 blog post numero dos, but I don’t think anyone let alone myself should see any reason to care. All my resolution bingo targets were to do the equivalent of one per month the whole time, honest! And besides, any efforts to do any these things however successful (or otherwise) they might end up being is still an effort I’m consciously putting in to make my life better and richer and brighter and more interesting than it otherwise might have been. When I eventually got around to mentioning these goals to my therapist a couple of weeks back he seemed delighted to hear self-improvement concepts finally coming out of me after almost five years of Monday morning calls in which I’d simply vent about whichever new mild to strong inconveniences had got the world feeling like it was crushing me into a pulp that week. It’s nice to feel earnestly better and happy with myself and my place in the world and my friends and engage with hobbies and fun as I often do now. It’s nice not to fear free time and being alone with my thoughts, and also know there’s always someone around to talk to or spend time with. It’s nice to feel like I have at last started to get somewhere, or at least carry a greater appreciation of how I’ve managed to eke forward through and despite it all into a life I can and should be proud of.
My main idea for a spiel this month was going to be about why I love the music and new cinematic exploits of Charli XCX, 10 years on from her releasing the Sophie-helmed Vroom Vroom EP I reviewed on release for a uni magazine. I still might write that piece one day, even if only to give Sophie’s legacy due respect at long last and to place on record how and why Charli’s music and our shared love for it led to (no exaggeration) me talking to and eventually meeting my 22-year-old American half-brother for the first time last summer. I haven’t made enough of that. That was truly wild. We really should probably file some sort of paperwork to legally replace our mother with Miss C. E. Aitchison of Bishop’s Stortford, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind and I know her fans have done far worse. But instead, seeing Emerald Fennell’s truly astounding(ly bad) “Wuthering Heights” on Friday afternoon has likely permanently altered my brain irreparably and that’ll all have to wait for another day, and the blurbs I dumped on Letterboxd from the train in the evening for both “Wuthering Heights” and The Moment will have to suffice for the time being.
Instead I’m writing all this from the Brixton Academy, one of my favourite places on earth even if the last couple of times I’ve gone have ultimately been truly miserable experiences in terms of my brain wandering errantly into abject sadness about people I wasn’t there with. One of those I alluded to in the first blog back: at an impulsive LCD Soundsystem show at the start of last summer, while already sweltering out every fluid from every pore, something in the intro to James Murphy’s ode to a dead therapist ‘Someone Great’ just flicked a switch in my brain to have me bawling my eyes out on the floor outside the urinals for the rest of the evening about an old friend. She’s not dead, just she feels like it to me still, and with eight more months and not that many more breakdowns to reflect on her wake I do feel like I let something go a little that day. And not just half my body weight in literal sweat and tears. The other more recent breakdown was watching Dijon last month, where I was there in physical presence but my mind was off lamenting who I wished was sharing that moment with me. Maybe I’ll touch more on that soon – there’s 10 more of these that need to be written after all – but again I did at least feel the crisp air hit me differently on the way out and get home feeling refreshed and like life might not be defined by fear and loneliness after all. Even the shittiest times can have their merits.
Anyway, fast forward 18 hours and I’m reflecting on last night’s show – my 15th there if I’m counting correctly – from Tourist, a man whose electronic missives have been so comforting and euphoric and powerful for me across the last decade. There’s ‘Run’, the mesmerising track that hooked me and many others in 2016, and one of the very few moments of his back catalogue to get a run out as he lived out his wildest Tiësto fantasies for one magical night in his south London home. But then there’s tracks like ‘Emily’ and ‘Pieces’ from 2019’s Everyday which had such a profound effect on me in the worst depths of depression and self-loathing, or ‘Last’ with The Range that’s best described as literally the track that started a playlist of mine called Life Is Not Entirely Shit Actually, which I keep downloaded and at the ready for any moment where I desperately need that reminder. I want to say there was an interview or something once where he said he made dance music for people who didn’t really dance. At the very least last night he said his favourite place in the world was his studio, and that seeing so many people connecting with his work as we were was properly overwhelming.
This tour was all about Music Is Invisible, a so-called “pub trance” record released in December and launched in that most conventional of ways: T-Dog booking out The Barley Mow near Baker Street a few nights beforehand to play the new songs and pour a few drinks for anyone who fancied coming along. They say never meet your heroes but I can absolutely say if they’re offering you an open bar with free T R A N C E t-shirts and you happen to be in London for a Wolf Alice gig that evening anyway then you should make an exception. Not only was the man himself (aka Will Phillips) so welcoming and happy to meet and greet everyone, who I’m sure were mostly like me and had spent so much of their lives holding his music close to heart on their headphones, but being in a room full of the friendliest strangers comparing notes on which of his shows we’d been to or favourite festival recordings and wanging some darts around was just one of the most beautiful and rejuvenating human experiences I’ve had in a long time. Though the group chat that popped up after four or so drinks to organise a reunion ahead of the Brixton show didn’t end up serving its purpose, I hadn’t even been inside the Academy for 30 seconds before embracing a familiar face from that night in our matching uniforms, and I wonder if we collectively set a record for the most smiles, nods, and quips of “nice shirt” exchanged in one room in one night.
And then there was the show itself. I think I spent about half of it with eyes shut just letting the sounds and lights surround me with bliss, and with no disservice to that pub and its speaker system I think it’s more than fair to say the record does work just that little bit better in a room of 5,000 with arms in the air feeling every pulse in their bones and souls. The setup as teased by Will to us a few months ago was just the man himself with his laptop et al in front of these four rows of spotlights, but as I rack my brains for a more impactful and affecting light show the only thing coming to mind is Four Tet’s five hour epic at Alexandra Palace a few months back. Maybe I’m just getting caught up in the euphoria of it all – I think it was during the Grimes-sampling ‘Veil’ the only thought bouncing around my head like that DVD logo was how I fucking love music and how I fucking love being alive, and there was a moment I genuinely considered pissing myself instead of risking missing anything, but thankfully on writing that in my notes here I realised pretty quickly how insane that sounded, and was back in place with an empty bladder five minutes later before the intro of the next track was out – but either way I had an absolute fucking blast.
‘Run’ set me off crying probably more than anything since that round of ‘Someone Great’, but hearing one of your favourite songs ever in that sort of context when already feeling elevated beyond what you used to think possible is obviously going to do that. His remix of ‘Pure Shores’ by All Saints kicked off the trance era last spring when he messaged a WeTransfer link to 2,500-odd different followers before it got an official release later in the year, and as a moment of singalong glee it was immense. The real surprise package in terms of emotional impact was ‘Outside’ from the new LP clicking for the first time, and linking its words and this version of myself back to that despairing and hopeless character on ‘Emily’ in a real (teary, shout out to the guy near me who I think tried fist-bumping me and telling me he loved me out of nowhere during it) moment of accepting how much things are different now for the better.
Not to get too parasocial or main character about it but when he closed on his 2017 remix of Wolf Alice’s yearning classic ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’ I want to believe that was a little gift from the universe and from him just for me. Exchanging pleasantries at the pub that December night I mentioned I was on the way to their gig afterwards and how much I adored what he’d done with the song, and he mentioned something about how he’d been thinking about that particular edit earlier that day before I relayed a question from my grandma regarding why he called himself Tourist in the first place and conversation moved on. Then, for whatever reason, he chose to close this night of throbbing trance with that lovesick throwback and I’m grateful for a perfect end to a perfect evening, and one I certainly won’t forget in a hurry. I’d say I ended the night speechless but if anything it was the opposite, and I’ll once again emphasise that “Wuthering Heights” is absolutely batshit and was still the one thing about yesterday that floored me more than anything else. But not for the first time a night at the Academy has charmed and exhilarated and given me that thrilling reminder of the sensation of being alive, and with a few more mental demons banished I cannot wait to get back.
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