Not long after moving to Manchester the isolation and pace of big city life started to eat away at me. One night I got on the bus to the airport. I took my MP3 player and as the bus pulled into the airport bus station I put on my headphones and set Brian Eno's Music For Airports playing. I spent the next two hours wandering around the empty terminals and traversing the blue-lit travelators listening to this album. I stopped for a coffee at about 3am and sat watching the aircraft being refuelled as their wingtip lights flashed in the darkness. After I had listened to the album twice through I got back on the bus and made my way home. It was a truly surreal and utterly wonderful experience. Anyway, this experience got me thinking about the relationship of music and places. So here is an my top ten list of albums and places that work really well with those albums:
- Brian Eno Music For Airports - Manchester Airport (in the middle of the night)
- Joy Division Substance - Manchester City Centre (on a dull, grey weekday morning)
- Radiohead Kid A - Peak District National Park (at night in the snow)
- Elbow Asleep In The Back - Lake District National Park (on a crisp, bright winter morning)
- Spy Versus Spy Little Lights - Stoke-on-Trent City Centre (on a cold winter night)
- David Bowie Heroes - Berlin (on an autumn afternoon)
- Nick Drake Pink Moon - Tanworth-in-Arden (in summer)
- M83 Dead Cities Red Seas And Lost Ghosts - On A Train On The West Coast Mainline (early evening)
- Thom Yorke The Eraser - Westminster (on a warm summer Sunday morning)
- Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Driving Along Highway 192 (on a hot summer night during a storm)
