Dear 2120,
One of my main worries about this extremely one-sided correspondence is that you’ll have no idea what the hell I’m talking about. To that end, I’ve decided to merge a contemporary, cultural phenomenon known as Game of Thrones with Special Request’s latest junglist piano house banger in the attempt to accurately convey how music can make people feel about things in 2017.
Picture the scene: you’ve been walking for ages in an unforgiving winter wasteland with only the obstinate, smart-alecky interjections of a hideously scarred, smelly sociopath called The Hound to keep you company. The quest: acquire a hissing, undead corpse for the Dragon Queen. It’s the only way she’ll ever believe there’s an army of White Walkers coming to kill life itself. Things go awry at some point and you end up in the middle of a frozen lake surrounded by a vast phalanx of hungry zombies in various stages of rot and decay. The Hound is a belligerent fuckhead, so he throws rocks at your enemy, which ends up setting everything in motion, including the patch-eyed, Lord of Light servant’s flaming sword.
Enter Special Request’s ‘Brainstorm’:
As the undead army approaches, you press play on your medieval/fantasy soundsystem to get pumped for battling the Night King’s army of skeletal reprobates with your boss weapon forged from newly excavated dragonstone.
The booming kick makes the rocky foundation you’re standing on reverberate with the golden age of rave – and you have to slap some sense into the ginger wildling to keep him from busting trippy, Fiorucci Made me Hardcore/ 90s warehouse moves. The dead-eyed freaks come at you in droves and the Kool Keith sample eggs everyone on. You’re putting up a formidable fight, swords singing and gleaming in the pale winter light, White Walker heads fly left and right. At some point, though, you run out of steam and the Walkers start eating your buddy’s face and pulling people into the lake.
But then. A soaring, HI-NRG piano riff accompanied by slaying diva vocals lights up the sky; the Dragon Queen Khaleesi has arrived on her surly dragon to save your ass and incinerate the enemy. You barely manage to hang on to the scaly beast at it leaves and in your mind’s eye you can’t help but notice how Paul Woolford’s hardcore barnstormer of a track makes the perfect soundtrack for fighting off White Walker’s with a flaming sword.
If you’re a connoisseur of popular culture in the 2010s, this will all make perfect sense. If you’re not, I suggest you start reading up on things. Some people have given up on GOT here. They don’t know what they’re missing.
‘Brainstorm’ by Special Request is out now on Houndstooth.
Letters to 2120 