5/8 : radio

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

Suddenly, you catch a faint, familiar scent — an aroma you first encountered in a far-off country. And it makes you wonder: does anyone there remember you, or that you once walked their streets? Maybe it's the woman in the green car, singing loudly along to the radio, who stopped for you at a crosswalk late one evening. Or the freckled cashier with braces, who rang up your bottle of ice-cold soda on a day when the sun was relentlessly hot, and you wished you could be a smooth, small stone at the bottom of the sea. Or perhaps it's the older laborer in his dusty overalls, passing his lunch break with a glass of beer at a plastic table in a cheap diner. And of course, remembering all these strangers in foreign cities, whose eyes you briefly met, is a far more pleasant experience when you're listening to the matteo just mix for 5/8: radio through your headphones

You look out the window, then at your phone screen, then out the window again. Why is it getting dark so early? Suddenly, images from a similarly cool August evening many, many years ago appear in your mind. The dim glow of a couple of yard lamps (there were three altogether, but the third one, as always, was out). An old bench with peeling paint. The creak of swings on the playground. The clingy orange taste of cheap chewing candy. Zhenka’s classmate’s ridiculously wide sweatpants. A lone rusty shell-shaped garage covered with the first yellow leaves (remember how you always wondered what was inside?). The metallic smell on your palms after hanging on the monkey bars. A throbbing bruise on your knee from falling off your bike at the dacha. And that strange, uneasy premonition that carefree life — the one you’d grown so used to over those three months — was about to end. All of that was there, of course. The only thing missing was Marques’ mix for 5/8: radio. And yes, that’s a terrible omission

This mixtape was recorded for the farewell disco of the senior group of the third stream of the Poseidon children camp 15 km from Varna in Bulgaria.