An ode to summer in the city...

More specifically, Augusts in Paris, when only a handful of fun bars and clubs are still open. Humid nights that begin with calm intentions and end with the light coming up as you wait with friends for taxis in quiet cobbled streets. Boulevards that feel empty in the afternoons and ripples of unrelenting heatwaves. Little signs tacked against the glass door panes of bakeries signalling their date de reouverture. Dried out stretches of grass on the lawns of Parc Monceau. For whatever reason you’re still in the city while those more fortunate vacance somewhere along the Mediterranean. It’s sort of like Le Rayon Vert if you just lightened up and made it a mood. Enjoying those seemingly endless days where heat burns the pavement slabs and smoulders inside you, with no other outlet than to just walk around the city and long, living a thousand summers, glimmers of romance and mischief, in that sublime space between your headphones.

A disco-heavy mix inspired by my research into Parisian record store Champs-Disques, as well as for a fiction piece set in Paris in 1983.

"It was one of those nights where you can’t believe you almost didn’t go out - life had been getting you down and when dark thoughts seep in and the sun goes down the temptation to shy away from the outside world can be hard to push through … But something that night pushed you. A little lipstick and perfume and you actually felt kind of cute on the metro making your way to that first bar. Soon enough it's free shots and new faces and of course you’re going on to the club with everyone after.
You’re with the right people and so you get in swift.
The glittering smiles and giggles swimming around and the music all pull you to the floor - a chequered kaleidoscope of swirling Ferragamos - and keep you firmly there. You’ve arrived. The shadows and shimmers and exquisite melodies envelop you; you become one with the scene. There’s nowhere more perfect to be.
It's a sudden realisation ... A drop of nocturne clarity:
A dance is what life was made to be."

A party mix to promote the launch of a monthly Wax Poetics night I hosted at Le Pigalle in Paris.

My radio show on Scandle FM in Paris. Sound quality not great but the tunes are.