Justin Bieber – U smile (800% slower)
It must have been amusing. It must have been amusing to timestretch innocent Bieber’s voice 800%; but little did the stretcher know that they would uncover the sound at the heart of the universe. I have spent countless hours huddled at my laptop weeping for joy as the smeared drums give way to the angelic swirlings of Bieber, gently lulling me to sleep. All the YouTube comments are about grief, divorce or the passage of time – it is a place of solace and resplendence. We are all beliebers in the end.
Gimme gimme gimme (A Man After Midnight) – ABBA
When deciding the preshow music, there was much rancour in the Midnight Snacks team. Exasperated by ambient tunes, we settled on the national anthem for every nation on the planet. ABBA’s piano makes any audience feral, and is the perfect energy maximiser. I must then spend the rest of the show wrangling the front row to achieve our goal of getting everyone to sleep. It’s a tough job, but luckily I have three amazing guests every night to help soothe the rabble.
Smooth brown noise sound – 8 hours (remastered) (no ads)
Brown noise is every noise perceivable to the human brain compressed into a single low hum. Everything that is, everything that can be, everything that will be, sludged through our tiny little ears – and what can we do but comprehend it as fizz. It is the perfect sound to keep you calm, collected, and task-oriented – why not try when writing a Fest mag article.
Asmr Girlfriend comforts you after a bad day (sleep-aid)
The fourth law of motion: every new technology will soon be adopted by incels to create horrors unknown.
There are thousands of these strange videos – women gazing into the camera, tapping the microphone and gently assuring that your powerpoint actually went well despite the micro-expressions of your belligerent boss. I once played this at the dinner table to my friends. We laughed at first, but as her soothing voice slinked out the speakers, a strange silence filled the air. It was comfort. We never spoke of that night again.
Hush Little Baby
This is a lullaby about how an upset child can only be soothed by relentless materialism. This is a vital message. The billy goat runs away, which I think is beyond fair given that the hushed little baby broke the looking glass. Sometimes the writing is on the wall. My mother would sing this song to me when I was a child: her gentle Scottish brogue, wafting me to sleep. Thinking about it too much makes me weep, so I must move on to relentless self-promotion instead.
Midnight snacks theme – Comrie sf
The show needed transition music between the acts, so I hunkered down and Clockwork-orange-style-watched every smooth jazz video, lift music album, ambient tune, and vaporwave remnant I could find. I digested them and regurgitated them into my music software, birthing this tune, and kicked it onto Spotify. It’s real nice. It is also getting a lot of plays in Brazil. That’s really nice!
Midnight Snacks (with comrie sf), Monkey Barrel COmedy (Cabaret Voltaire), until Aug 13, 11.25pm