December 8, 1999

Big Ben : Millennium chimes

It kicks in with an elegant yet portentous, grooving yet arhythmic introductory peal of chimes, and you half expect a thumping house beat to kick in.

Every so often there comes a record that puts all other records into perspective as the trivial, over-hyped blusterings of fools that they undoubtedly are. This record is so simple it's beyond genius. It samples the chimes of seminal London clock Big Ben in their pure, unsullied entirety, and reproduces it - no beat, no atmospherics, just the stark, hypnotic, mesmeric sound of the world itself turning a page of history.

It kicks in with an elegant yet portentous, grooving yet arhythmic introductory peal of chimes, and you half expect a thumping house beat to kick in. But it doesn't. It chills down to quite literally nothing. And then there's the breathless, minimalist simplicity of 12 equally spaced chimes. And finally silence. And a new day. Extraordinary.

They don't write them like this any more. As far as anyone can tell this song is so beyond music that no-one actually wrote it... it was simply plucked out of the ether. It belongs to me. It belongs to you. It belongs to all humanity. As timeless as time itself, as perfect a piece of music as has ever been recorded. I predict this will be a massive global hit, and that it will be the soundtrack to New Year's parties everywhere. Remember where you heard it first.

Johnny Cigarettes