Some things, it is said, can only be known by witnessing them.
Tonight Ruth White sets her synths to this Baudelaire poem (back in '69, but once again on the show):
Evening Harmony
The season is at hand when swaying on its stem
Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!
Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
The violin quivers like a tormented heart;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!
The Sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar.
The violin quivers like a tormented heart,
A tender heart, that hates the vast, black void!
The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar;
The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals...
A tender heart that hates the vast, black void
Gathers up every shred of the luminous past!
The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals...
Your memory in me glitters like a monstrance!
Remember having the radio at the side of the bed at 4am, you'd just got back home, couldn't sleep due to the thrill of being alive, awake with the dawn chorus and listening to tracks on air you couldn't hear elsewhere? Those dulcet tones at 4am belonged to Patrick Forge, a man as passionate and determined about specialist music as those who ran the pirate radio station from which his voice reached us. At the time KissFM was a groundbreaker, it was fun, it had that home-made edge before becoming corporatised and same-same-same-ish (Rinse, take note). Forge played out latin-jazz and early electronica hosting nights across London, championing new music and DJing on KissFM for no less than 18 years from 1990. We love this man!