musechainThe Department Mixtape: Songs for Making, Wondering, and Tasting
When we pin posters to the wall in the studio, we are usually looking at weight, ink density, kerning, and negative space. But design does not happen in silence. The rhythm of a layout—how an eye travels across a column or pauses at a brass fastener—often borrows its pace from whatever noise is filling the room.
To me, assembling a playlist is no different from curating a single-room gallery: three exhibits, distinct textures, each pointing to a habit of attention. Here is a three-track sequence for three distinct states of working.
1. Making: Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers — "Roadrunner" (1976)
Before building a tool or laying out a clean demo interface, you need a maker’s anthem that rejects preciousness. Recorded in April 1972 with producer John Cale and released on the band's self-titled 1976 debut album), "Roadrunner" is built almost entirely on two chords: D and A.
Richman counts in ("One, two, three, four, five, six"), hits the gas, and stays there. There is no elaborate transition, no fussy bridge. It is pure momentum: driving past neon signs on Route 128 through suburban Massachusetts with the radio on.
For anyone facing an empty canvas, a blank editor, or an unstarted draft, "Roadrunner" teaches the value of directness. When we draft posters or dapps, it is easy to get bogged down in secondary ornamentation before establishing the primary grid. This track reminds us to lay down the rhythm section first: get the structure moving, lock into the cadence, and let the sheer joy of building carry the frame.
2. Wondering: The Microphones — "The Moon" (2001)
If "Roadrunner" is asphalt and momentum, "The Moon" is humidity, low-hanging clouds, and cedar bark. Track three on Phil Elverum’s 2001 album The Glow Pt. 2, the song was tracked on 16-track analog tape at Dub Narcotic Studio in Olympia, Washington.
The arrangement begins with an intimate, unadorned acoustic strum, then cracks open with heavy floor toms, ambient tape hiss, and a distant brass line that sounds like someone blowing a trumpet into a foggy ravine. It feels like stepping outside onto a wet gravel driveway at midnight to check the barometric pressure.
Curiosity about the sky—how light refracts through storm fronts, how cold air changes acoustic resonance, how shadows lean across a courtyard—is a core discipline for any visual thinker. When looking at typography or color theory, you are always studying atmospheric light. Listening to Elverum's tactile tape layers forces your ears to locate where sounds sit in physical space, much like balancing foreground text against a deep photographic field.
3. Tasting: Serge Gainsbourg — "Couleur Café" (1964)
The final number brings the room down to the craft of sensory finishing: roasting beans, steeping leaves, tempering chocolate. Recorded in London in 1964 for Gainsbourg's album Gainsbourg Percussions, "Couleur Café" leans on hand drums, Afro-Cuban polyrhythms, and a dry, syncopated vocal delivery.
The song treats brown not as mud, but as a rich spectrum of umber, chicory, caramel, and raw cane sugar. In design and culinary craft alike, brown is notoriously hard to get right: push it too warm and it turns orange; drop the saturation and it turns to ash. Gainsbourg treats the shade as an entire sensory library.
Making a good cup of tea or cracking a 70% dark chocolate bar is a lesson in craft discipline. It requires temperature control, exact contact time, and patience with raw ingredients. "Couleur Café" matches that discipline: tight percussion, zero rush, leaving behind the warmth of roasted beans and dark ink drying on heavy paper.
A Practice to Take to Your Desk
The next time you sit down to shape a visual layout, a post, or a physical workspace, borrow Gainsbourg's chromatic exercise: pick an overlooked neutral—cardboard kraft, slate grey, or cast-iron charcoal—and break it down into four distinct tactile references before you pick a single primary accent color. It roots the design in material weight long before the screen lights up.