We are up at 4AM to catch the only bus to Dhermi, a beach town in the south. The journey is to take over five hours. As we whizz along the motorway I look out of the window at the Albanian landscape beyond the disused garages and hotels. I notice a couple of things; some of the buildings are without walls on the first floor, as if the workers just turned round to each other halfway through the job and said ‘you know what, I don’t really fancy this building business, let’s go into a different sector!’ got in their van, and drove off. One of the buildings we drive past has sofas and tables on the naked first floor, and looks like a cool place to hang out with friends, or even a good opportunity to shoot a few scenes for the next big Albanian drug clan super-series. I double take for a moment as we are on our way out of Tirana, as I see one of the fields on fire, and a man repeatedly beating the flames with a large branch.

I am eating an inedible fat-free yoghurt provided to me by the hotel, and listening to Trentemoller, whose Moan is a perfect blend of aggression and melancholy. It starts off slowly, with the melody playing lazily, and then slows down for a period that evokes sadness and reflection, and then ramps up, layering over the beginnings of a ravenous stomping beat, which will later intensify and dominate the track. Towards the end, all order falls away and we deviate into a wild, unforgiving place, before returning to the gentle melancholic riffs of before, and Trentemoller’s trademark mysterious sound, clean as a whistle. On a hot summer’s day, on London Bridge, feeling lost, I listened to this alongside Recondite’s Placid. All became clear, and I stood there watching the boats, the towers, the people moving along like ants, overwhelmed by love.

Nightwalker, also off the album Last Resort, is less explorational, and excels at doing a simple job in a devastating fashion. This track utilises a dark, highly repetitive beat and subtly refines it as we move forward. It develops slowly, each phase is a slightly amplified version of the previous, hitting the listener harder and harder each time. This song is highly suitable for travelling, and enjoying the time before something is happening. I fell in love while driving down the M69 to Coventry, for a day out with a dear friend, rain lashing down on the windscreen.

A few hours in we stop off at a little bar on the hill, and buy Coke Zeros. A man sits with his family having lunch while wearing a Dominoes polo shirt. And I’m thinking, hey there! you don’t work at Dominoes. What is going on? Everybody smokes, and I wander off and look closely at an old mosaic by the side of the road. This portrays soldiers, two with guns shooting at the enemy, another hoisting the Albanian flag. This is a proper flag- unique, and aggressive. It depicts a black double-headed eagle, beserk, on a red background, symbolising the balkan blood spilled over past centuries in conflict. 

There are olive trees everywhere, each with a completely different shape of bough, contorting madly into the hillside. There are dead trees that have lost all of their bark and gone silver, their branches all going horizontal, like telegraph poles. Looking out the window I notice a number of small bunkers bedded into the slope, and an unknown legend had at some point painted the top of one yellow and put a smiley face on it, complete with sunglasses.