Amid the spiralling pandemic anxiety and cabin fever over the last few weeks, there’s been an arms race to see who can adapt quickly to this shapeshifting new way of life in self-isolation.
With gigs and festivals cancelled, social media’s music bandwidth has shifted from promoting concerts to promoting live streams, so you’re even getting FOMO when there’s literally nothing on and every (sensible) person in the country is at home, in the same boat as you. Within a few days there were actual live stream gig listings and previews.
Aside from the fear of missing out on live streaming events, you might be crippled by inertia scrolling through posts on how to boost your productivity, how to work from home while making jigsaws with your kids, or posts declaring that humanity is the real virus because dolphins appeared in the Venice canals.
Sometimes you want it to just fucking stop, and you know what can make it stop? an eight-hour ambient music cocoon. This was initially created for an eight-hour remote work shift, but I’d also prescribe it for reading, going for a sunset walk, drifting off to sleep or drowning out Paw Patrol with noise-cancelling headphones. Or simply daydreaming.
It’s eight hours of amniotic drones, dubby echoes and occasional far-off piano and vocal abstractions. It veers from usual suspects like Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Biosphere and Pauline Oliveros, to Grouper, Dedekind Cut, Jeff Mills, Caterina Barbieri, Fennesz, Dopplereffekt, Julianna Barwick, and deeper cuts from albums covered in Moo Kid’s All the Right Noises monthly round-ups.
Deep breath…
Moo Kid 