So this is it. The big day. We've all woken up early, wolfed down a big, nourishing bowl of Lidl granola, washed it down with a tumbler of tap water, put on our best shirt, and marched to the polling station.We've hovered inside primary schools up and down the land, transporting ourselves back into a childhood that we'll never have again, found ourselves sodden with saudade as a nice elderly woman with thick-lensed glasses valiantly tries to find our name on a list. And we've done our democratic duty, scrawled an X, slid our slip of paper into a black box, and left, knowing that we might, just might, have made a difference.
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And now we wait. This time tomorrow we'll know whether we were right to hope, to dream, to admit to wanting a different, better nation. Until then, we'll be nervous wrecks, refreshing Twitter even more than normal, soothing ourselves with cans of Tyskie and episodes of How It's Made.With that in mind, we've put together this playlist of pre-election anxiety-busters. See you on the other side.It's that time of the year again where I find myself asking the same old question. Why isn't Mike Dunn running for Prime Minister? Bringing to every single track the kind of stirring and reverberating vocal poetry you'd expect from a battlefield pastor, Dunn's refrain 'nothing stays the same (everything must change)' is the mantra you must whisper to yourself over the next couple of days. Let it become your quiet promise, your solemn prayer.Without wanting to sound too defeatist, for many people politics—the idea of it rather than the actuality—is exhausting. It requires a seemingly endless devotion to gossip, in-fighting, and tittle-tattle. It forces you into viewing life and the forces that mould life into whatever the fuck it is in 2017 as little more than a Radio 4 parlour game, a point scoring exercise that benefits no one but ruddy-faced Telegraph columnists. British politics is an infinite cycle of posh blokes berating the poor; an odious ouroboros that turns us all into idiots. All of us but the ruddy-faced Telegraph columnists, obviously. This punishing slab of brutalist avant-techno acts as a mental palate cleanser, allowing you to momentarily believe in a world where peace and unity are achievable, and Michael fucking Deacon didn't exist.
1. MD + VS + LR feat. Mike Dunn - Nothing Stays The Same (Victor Simonelli's Lost In The Groove Mix)
2. Scalameriya - Ouroboros
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3. Schatrax - Restless Nights
4. Chris & Cosey - Walking Through Heaven
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5. Needs - Walkin' Thru Circles (Part 2 - Thump Mix)
6. Apiento - The Orange Place
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7. Norm Talley - Change (Mike Huckaby Remix)
Norm Talley and Mike Huckaby. There's a political partnership I could get behind. Would make Corbyn and McDonnell look like PJ and Duncan. If anything is going to make you at peace with the universal truth of change and growth, this has to be the track. With Change as the manifesto, Huckaby gets hold of it and smoothes out every u-turn into a delicate spiral. Instead of knocking back a valium on Thursday night, beatmatch "Changes" with your racing heart-rate and feel yourself vibrate with the inevitable throb of fate and destiny.
8. Voyager - Hypersleep
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9. LNR - Work it to the Bone
OK, OK. If we really are in for another five years of Tory rule, we should probably begin to acclimatise ourselves to the drudgery of labouring inside the high-capitalist machine whilst public services crumble around us like sandcastles stamped on by a kind of grotesquely chubby Baby BoJo, stinking of yoghurt and toilet roll whilst his parents look on from their deck chair thrones sipping Pimms impassively. If virtual reality and the cultural echo chamber has taught us anything, reality is what you make of it maaaate. Zero hour job in a coffee shop with no workers rights? Nah mate, you're an artisan in an apron making Matisse cut-outs in the foam! And your boss is a bloody lovely guy! He buys the coffee in hessian sacks and everything! Yeah of course I'll work all weekend! And 50 hours next week too. Holidays?! Why would I want to get away from this steaming java?! Let's work it to the bone! Five more years! Five more years!