And then, and then... my journey to work this morning was transformed by the CD Marcus gave me, 4am Eternal. It's one of those leftfield downtempo chilled compilations which are just so de rigeur, darling, but this one is good. Really good. Yes, there's the usual suspects: Bent, Lemon Jelly, Thievery Corporation [nothing wrong with any of them] but there's also some more challenging choices: To Rococo Rot, Scanner, Boom Boom Satellites, and the perfectly-monikered The Cinematic Orchestra.

Cinematic is the word. My tube journey was straight out of Koyaanisqatsi or Baraka. The escalators inhaled and exhaled brightly coloured patterns. The trains sighed and soughed. Streams of commuters time-lapsed and mitosed.

All the while, strings soared, muezzins wailed, and the cymbals went tsss-tsssch. I merged and separated, cocooned in sensurround, disengaging, observing this foreign city.