On Thursday 26 March 2020, the Eve of South Africa's lockdown in South Africa, Soleil and I took a drive through Jozi (Johannesburg) City, to get one last outing but also to get a feel for the vibe on the streets. We brought our camera with, wondering whether we would find a deserted city, or the apocalyptic undertones of police and army presence. Instead we found the roads quiet, but not empty, and the mood tense, but not panicked.

We were aware that these lockdowns represented some kind of turning point in global consciousness: our sense of fragility, our reliance on tenuous systems, our interconnectedness - but how these events would play out has been a source of apprehension throughout the world.

The music was initially written as an exercise using a technique known as 'Equal Interval System' (or EIS to its acolytes) which seeks to escape from conventional tonality by assigning each note with it's own gravitational pull, as opposed to the more conventional hierarchical tonal systems. The neon synth lines and alien harmonies are underscored by an ever-present bass drone, and the atmosphere is reminiscent of the ambient techno works of Wolfgang Voigt, or the dark, urban two-step of Burial.

As we drove along Joburg's arterials, I was struck by how the geography, the structures, the names of the roads, reflect these moments in history, from the full on functionality of early mining names like 'Fuel Road' and 'Main Reef Rd', to key figures in our city’s history like Albertina Sisulu, Enoch Sontonga, Henry Nxumalo, Lillian Ngoyi, De Villiers Graaf, etc.

Plunging forward into the future, these events also provide for reflection on the age-old questions: Where are we going? What is actually important? What does all this mean? Does meaning even matter?