5/8 : radio

You're standing in front of a monumental building made of concrete and glass. The wind blows dry leaves across a small square paved with stone tiles arranged in a pattern that looks like your grandmother's living room rug. Under a wide canopy, an old-fashioned sign glows with cold neon light: "Cultural Center."

A young man in a turtleneck sweater—with a strikingly familiar face—dashes out of the lobby, only to be called back by a girl in thick glasses: "Borya, what nonsense are you up to now?" But Boris disappears into a shady alley lined with towering firs. The wind picks up, and an unusually large moon peeks out from behind the clouds.

Swarms of young people rush past you toward the building. You catch fragments of conversation: "I don't need a lab assistant job—I need to lie on a pebble beach." "Lyubochka, you don't pine over men in hideous shoes like those." Suddenly, a captivating voice over the speakers announces that they're about to play the call weirdo's mix for 5/8: radio — and your feet carry you forward, straight toward the Cultural Center. Because missing something like this is simply not an option.

Cloower Wooma — 5/8 : Radio #257 by 5/8 : Radio

You're standing on the embankment of an old town, pieced together like a construction kit from dozens of different places you've already been. Ahead lies a wide strait, where large cargo ships glide slowly past. On the opposite shore, veiled in a light haze, are the crimson lights of a TV tower and the sharp spire of a town hall, hemmed in on all sides by intricate old houses. You absolutely must get there.

Against the sunset sky, painted in every shade of orange, seagulls circle noisily. In your hand is a crumpled paper ticket for the ferry, which stubbornly refuses to dock, though it's long overdue. Suddenly, from the cheap eatery behind you — where middle-aged men in loose shirts, sitting at plastic tables with empty shot glasses and unlabeled bottles of cheap liquor, are locked in a chess match — a mix by shtozh poigraem for 5/8: radio begins to play. And you want to stay. To listen to the music, to watch the waves break against the embankment stones, and to wait for the night to descend upon the city

Maybe it’s the pattern of the paving stones, or maybe it’s the design on a stranger’s scarf in the metro, but something suddenly reminds you of that apartment carpet.

The very apartment that, not so long ago — just yesterday, it feels — was the very definition of home. With its old, creaky parquet in the hallway, the clothesline with multicolored pegs on the balcony, the sideboard from a city starting with a "B" (Bucharest? Budapest? Bryansk?), the terrifyingly gas water heater, and, of course, the big living room carpet.

Now, it is home to completely different people. People who know nothing about the sideboard, or about how you used to love studying the patterns on that very carpet, watching the shadows of the towering poplars outside the window while your grandmother conjured up lunch by the stove in the kitchen.

And doing so would have been a hundred times more pleasant with Andrey Panin's mix for 5/8: Radio playing in the background. That much is certain

You notice that nearly all the leaves have fallen from the trees outside your window, and through their bare branches, you can now clearly see the lights on in the bulding across the street. It suddenly brings back a memory of an autumn evening many years ago.

It had grown dark with startling speed. Your parents were taking you with them to visit friends — there was no one to leave you with at home — and all you wanted in the world was to stay behind and watch cartoons. Under the soles of your small, disliked shoes, you felt the squelch of puddles, the slick of wet asphalt, and the soft decay of rotting leaves. A commuter train hummed in the distance. In the twilight of the back courtyards, you could just barely make out the silhouettes: a woman in a puffer jacket with a German shepherd on a leash, the building of a long-shuttered shoe repair shop, a man in a huge coat drinking alone on a bench, and the old garages where a group of teenagers was leaping across the rooftops. But what captivated you most was the light in the windows of the surrounding apartments. It was so fascinating to peer through the bare branches of the poplars and chestnut trees. The only pity is that on that walk, you had no way to play the Grisha Gerg mix for 5/8: Radio