It is so crucial to find new music that connects with you, to fall in love with it, play it intensely, then LEAVE IT BE, as much as you can.
Don't wear it out. That's your connection to You when you discovered it.
I just listened to Manic Street Preachers' A Design For Life and was teleported back to age 16, having recently left home, sitting on the bed in my first flat, having just pressed play on the CD. I was right there again. Everything so vivid. The peeling magnolia wallpaper. The cereal I'd bought from Safeways with the dehydrated strawberries in it that was my dinner. The bicycle in the corner of the room with the flat tyre. The smashed glass on the carpet from the burglars that had come in earlier through the window and stolen my Smiths and Oasis LPs. The tears in my eyes and the hope in my heart.
I did that deliberately. I'm scoring the strings on the new Marcus Aurelius album, and I wanted to remember the way the string sections on that album made me feel when I first heard them and put that feeling into the music.
Musical time travel is dangerous. It's tempting to lean into it, go deeper, go further. Many people do that, and they get lost. My uncle died not much older than me, drowned in nostalgia and alcohol, listening to his David Bowie LPs, remembering the boy he was, wondering what the hell happened.
One song is all I needed. I got what I came for. I left that kid in that bedsit, listening to A Design For Life, gazing through wet, blurred eyes through a smashed window at the stars above, and went back to work on the music.
Some day, someone will use it…
For time travel.
Akira The Don
Don Studios Playa Del Carmen MKII, July 2023
LATEST SINGLE: Akira The Don & Naval Ravikant - Escape Competition Through Authenticity ft. Nivi | SINGLE
LATEST ALBUM: Akira The Don & Naval Ravikant - How To Get Rich Vol. 3 | ALBUM
LATEST VIDEO: Naval Ravikant & Akira The Don - You Will Need To Rent Your Time To Get Started | Music Video
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