Name: Useful Music #049 by Cargo
Duration: 49 min 57 s
Description: Track Listing: usefulmusic.cargo.site/Useful-Music-049

The Pet Shop Boys formed in London in 1981 after the two members, vocalist Neil Tennant & keyboardist Chris Lowe met by chance in an electronics shop. They broke through into the mainstream in the mid 80s with "West End Girls", a shimmering, decade-defining lament of capitalist ennui. Tennant's wry & culturally incisive lyrics, along with the duo's intuition for timeless & sleek production would help form the blueprint for modern chart pop music.

https://www.nts.live/shows/in-focus/episodes/in-focus-6th-december-2019

In Focus: Pet Shop Boys 061219

Track Listing: usefulmusic.cargo.site/Useful-Music-049

Useful Music #049

Transportive sessions with UK saxophonist, composer, and bona fide jazz innovator Shabaka Hutchings.

Image: Udoma Janssen 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/shabaka-hutchings/episodes/shabaka-hutchings-19th-november-2024

Shabaka Hutchings 191124

Rinse France Podcast

LES YEUX FERMÉS invitent MABE FRATTI - 13 Janvier 2025

Wake up with NTS... 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/breakfast/episodes/breakfast-charlie-satsusmas-10th-february-2025

The NTS Breakfast Show w/ CHARLIE SATSUSMAS 100225

Jess Sah Bi & Peter One "Our Garden Needs Its Flowers" was a revelation to many folks outside West Africa when it was reissued worldwide a few years ago. However, the Country-Americana duo from Ivory Coast has been massive since they emerged in the mid-80s, playing stadiums and making a beloved home in peoples' ears across the region for decades. The enormous response from listeners and press around the globe speaks for itself.

Now we are making Jess Sah Bi's beautiful first solo album widely available for the first time. Recorded in South Carolina and released in Ivory Coast in 1991 only on cassette, Jesus-Christ Ne Deçoit Pas [Jesus Christ Never Gives Up] comes out April 18 in restored and remastered audio on digital and tape formats. It is the first in ATFA's new African Devotional Music series.

Jess Sah Bi narrowly survived a brush with death and promised himself and God that he would record an album in praise. While on an exchange visit to South Carolina he arranged to record some new songs and later released the album in Ivory Coast. At the time, locally-produced gospel music wasn't big yet—most of the well-known West African gospel artists hailed from Ghana and Nigeria. But with the success of Jesus-Christ Ne Deçoit Pas, Jess Sah Bi helped kick off a homegrown Ivorian gospel music movement that today thrives in many parts of the country and beyond.

Jess Sah Bi—Ile De Goree (Album Out 18 April)

An hour of Ryuichi Sakamoto's piano focussed compositions, in memory of the legendary musician's passing.  
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/the-nts-guide-to/episodes/the-nts-guide-to-sakamoto-piano-works-28th-march-2025

NTS Guide to: Sakamoto's Piano Works 280325

A Low Susurrus of Desolation: Echoes in the Void of Being
In the vast, reverberating chambers of existence, there lies a sound—faint, elusive, almost imperceptible—a low susurrus of desolation. It drifts between thoughts, coils through the hidden crevices of the self, a gossamer thread of melancholy: fragile in tone, yet unyielding in presence. This is not the piercing cry of despair, but something quieter, more insidious—a constant undertone to the human experience. It is a sonic haze, wrapping itself around the soul, enveloping it in the muted twilight of being, an ever-present murmur beneath the rhythms of modern life.

The Anatomy of the Whisper
A susurrus is a murmur, a whisper so soft it barely brushes the threshold of sound. Desolation, in contrast, evokes a vast emptiness—bleak, lifeless, and stripped of warmth. When these converge, they form a paradox: the whisper of absence, the voice of a void that is not silent, but softly humming. It doesn’t shout or plead. It persists—a lingering undertone, subtle yet unshakable, a slow vibration that hums beneath awareness, infusing everything with an aura of weightless sorrow.
This low susurrus is the background music of modernity. It pulses beneath the surface of urban life, beneath neon lights and algorithmic noise. It resonates in the quiet of empty office buildings, in derelict suburbs, and in the flicker of screens that promise connection yet deepen dislocation. It is the faint drone of progress turned hollow, of meaning stripped down by acceleration and abstraction.

Whispers in the Mind
To hear the susurrus is to become attuned to a quiet kind of despair—not the agony of sudden loss, but the erosion that comes with time. It is the dull ache that grows from small, daily failures: missed connections, drifting dreams, the steady accumulation of the almost. This murmur is not loud, not sharp—it is gentle, almost soothing, a background hum of resignation that settles over the psyche like dust on forgotten things.
In its whisper lies the voice of surrender—not of defeat, but of acceptance. The susurrus speaks the language of postmodern fatigue. It echoes the unraveling of collective meaning, the decline of shared truths, the slow fading of belief systems once seen as immutable. It is the sound of drifting in a world where all anchors have lifted, where every certainty is questioned and every answer provisional.

Echoes of the In-Between
This sound cannot be escaped. It is woven into the very fabric of experience. It echoes what has been lost and what will never come to be. It lingers in the liminal—between joy and sadness, movement and stillness, longing and numbness. In this in-between, emotions flatten and motivation dulls. The world becomes a place not of clear highs and lows but of muted grays.
And yet, strangely, this whisper brings comfort. It is familiar, a presence we recognize even if we never named it. It rocks us gently, not toward hope, but toward stillness. It asks not for striving but for still surrender. It is the lullaby of the weary, the ambient hum that invites us not to resist, but to rest.

A Silent Requiem
In the end, the low susurrus of desolation is not a threat but a teacher. It reminds us that emptiness is not a flaw in being, but a fundamental rhythm. It is the voice of impermanence, the song of all that was, all that might have been, and all that will pass. It is not nihilism, but clarity—the soft illumination of finality.
There is peace here—not fulfillment, but quiet. Not triumph, but cessation. The susurrus whispers the universe’s oldest truth: all things return to silence. And in that silence, we find something beyond despair. 
We find release. 
We find rest.

Enthéogène

Instrumental dark ambient album that was created during attacks of depression and anxiety. Portraying what I felt as genuinely as possible.

Embrace It All

Ride With Me

Mix of Japanese new-age/ambient/minimalist music, mostly emanating from the corporate infrastructure of the 1980s asset bubble. FM synthesis, prefab "lifestyle" soundscapes and the illusion of nature in a hyper-urban environment.

Tracklist:
Hiroshi Yoshimura - "Water Planet" from Soundscape 1: Surround
Toshifumi Hinata - "Colored Air" from Reality in Love
Midori Takada - "Mr. Henri Rousseau's Dream" from Through the Looking Glass
Yas Kaz - "Jungle Book/Windscape" from Jomon-Sho
Yutaka Hirose - "Nova" from Sound Scape 2: Nova
Shiho Yabuki ‎– "Tomoshibi" from The Body Is A Message Of The Universe 
Inoyama Land ‎– "Mizue" from Danzindan-Pojidon 
Yoshio Ojima ‎– "Sealed" from Une Collection Des Chainons II: Music For Spiral 
Yoichiro Yoshikawa ‎– "Nube" from Cyprus 
Interior ‎– "Park" from Interior 
Yasuaki Shimizu - "Kono Yo Ni Yomeri #2" from Kakashi
Hiroshi Yoshimura ‎– "Water Copy" from Music For Nine Post Cards 
Yoichiro Yoshikawa - "Crater on the Moon" from Miracle Planet
Haruomi Hosono - "(In-store background music for Muji storefront)" from Muji BGM
Kenji Furukawa - "(Untitled Water Recording) from Sound Stream: Mizu

Music Interiors

Tools to design and build unique websites.

Useful Music #049

Cargo

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