noise

Last night I’m walking through the city centre when my ears are assailed by bad dance music. I look around to see which idiot is driving along with his car stereo turned up to Rammstein concert level, when I realise the music is coming from above me. It’s the good folk of the Centralny Universalny Magazine, or central universal shop, like a Harrods or Macys without the sense of understated good taste.

They have fixed speakers to the side of their shop, about ten feet above ground level to blare this crap at the world passing by, because, as is well known, the effect of crap dance music on a street at minus 12 is to force people to spend $1000 on a pair of jeans.

Between there and the metro I pass a sound system playing drum heavy, tribal bilge, apparently inspired by that Ukrainian nonsense that won Eurovision a few years back. Follow this link at your own risk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48XfMRxp6IM  and on top of this sound system, there stands a man, clearly suffering from hypothermia in his medieval peasant garb, and trying to drum along with two felt covered mallets on a giant fur clad bass drum. I try to listen to the lyrics, it’s something about Russia being a land of peace I think, but it’s hard to be sure, for behind me the theatre ticket kiosk has its own speaker and it is fighting against a babushka with a megaphone sitting on a box howling about lottery tickets.

I could flee to a cafe, but they will be playing fm dance radio at high volume lest any fool should try to have a conversation with his friends, I could dive into the metro but the speakers built into the escalator will try to make me go to a new shopping centre in East Bumblefuck. I just want them to stop shouting at me.