Two Random Finds

It starts the way all these stories tend to start.

By all these stories, I mean the ones where people talk about how they stumbled upon the random song/picture/show/epiphany/etc. this one time. It usually starts with a time stamp, a brief insight into what they were doing at the time and segues into how this random thing came into their lives. These stories are usually rambling in nature, and probably have nothing to do with the thing they found. And you, the listener/reader, will in all likelihood not remember the story but maybe the random thing might stick with you. One can only hope.

I have two such stories today. Two stories, two random finds.

The first one starts with me sitting at the kitchen table in my apartment, the oven clock reading a little after 4 in the morning. I had just finished a rather emotionally taxing episode of The Knick (great TV show, more on that later), tired but not wanting to go to bed yet. I briefly pondered whether to go on with the next episode of the show, but my tired eyes whispered loud protests. I like to listen to music as I fall asleep, so I turned on Soundcloud and started to drift off to sleep when this song came out of nowhere:

Turns out I had accidentally clicked on ‘Folk’ instead of Indie. I’m not a massive folk music fan, wasn’t particularly feeling folk-sy, but the song captivated me. I don’t know if I would call it folk, but it still worked for me. In fact, their whole Soundcloud page worked for me (maybe with the exception of the Coldplay cover), ‘Run’ being followed up by an indie song then a trip hop song, ending in two low-key, somewhat acoustic feeling songs.

I listened to them again this afternoon, just to make sure my sleepy self hadn’t prematurely taken a liking to something that my non-sleepy self wouldn’t have. Verdict: non-sleepy self was indeed still impressed. Lucky finds, oh the things we stumble on at 4 in the morning.

The second story is shorter than the first, I promise.

I was looking for bike horns online, to give to a friend who had recently gotten a new bike. Google recommended that I also look up ‘bike horn mambo no.5,’ because apparently a lot of people search for bike horn mambo no.5. Thinking what an awesome bike horn that would be (can you imagine, a bike horn blaring Mambo No.5?), I had no choice but to click on it.

I was close, but I got much, much more than what I was expecting.

I got this.

A whole album with song covers played on bike horns. Mambo No.5 was indeed on it, as well as Pokemon and La Cucaracha (of all songs). It was so annoyingly impressive. I mean, the work that went into this album must have been quite an incredible amount because the songs are very intricate. But the result is so abrasively enchanting and addicting in a weird way. In other words, my morning alarm for the next few months.

Here’s to the endless number of random things still waiting to be discovered.