The other history of house

It was the kind of building where strange experiments are conducted in high-end horror films, secluded, rectangular and surrounded by a perpetually mowed lawn. No name or logo in sight, they didn’t have to advertise. My companion scanned his iris. When it was my turn I tried to follow the laser across my eye. The glass door slid open and gave access to the reception room where we were welcomed by an elegant woman.
“Doctor Eveline Bowman, welcome.”
After we exchanged mutual bows, hers slightly deeper, as it should be, I bade farewell to my taciturn companion.
“Please follow me, almost everyone’s here.”
A lift took us to the 20th floor and eventually to a large room with a view of Old Berlin. Several people were already seated at the long table, including some acquaintances from the scene. I took an empty chair and entered the ritual of nodding my head followed the stare of disinterested anticipation. In my case towards two men who clearly belonged together. Dressed inconspicuously until I noticed their ridiculously wide trousers which forced me to suppress a giggle. Only a tall figure with a beard and bewildered eyes broke the silence, interrogating his neighbour on percussion and the right speakers. A few minutes later Bowman reappeared, this time in the company of a gingered-haired man.
“So, with Mr James, our company is complete.”
Her colleague, who up till now had waited in the corner, walked up to the table. With a single hand movement, he activated a screen revealing another room with a group of black men and one bespectacled white guy sitting at a table.
“Detroit. Welcome to, if I may be so bold, the most important day in the history of music.”
The man placed his hands on the table while his gaze, filled with obvious pride, passed us, one by one.
“This is the day we’ve been working towards. Making history, how easy those words are uttered. How trivial compared to what we are going to accomplish today. After all, soon you will be sent to 1980 where your exceptional musical qualities should fully bloom.”
He folded his hands for a dramatic silence.
“Five centuries back in time.”
Nobody made a clever remark, so they were just as tense as I was.
“Despite the meticulous preparation, and also for my own peace of mind, I’d like to go over the most important points one last time.”
Normally this was my cue to start turning in my chair, but the sedative I had taken earlier this morning definitively colonised my nervous system, muscles and synapses.
“Well, you’ve been divided into four teams. Two American, two European. One from each continent will end up in this past.”
He coughed lightly.
“Due to quantum effects, the other two will arrive in a parallel timeline. This is inevitable. And more adventurous, because you don’t know how much this world differs from ours.”
Both teams examined each other as if a clue of our fate could be read somewhere.

“In 1980, Kraftwerk are at the top of their game. You are all electronics musicians so I don’t need to expand on that. After this, the group will slowly fall apart and their innovations are to be forgotten. Until the recent boom. Around the beginning of the 21st century, the world enters a dark period of which almost no sources survive. It is only in 2220 that the Rebirth begins, civilisation regains consciousness. But the lag is too great, it took us almost 300 years before we recovered. And that is too late.”
Now we followed his gaze outside, the ruin under construction, the traces left by the jackpot unmistakably visible in the landscape.
“It is our hope that you will be able to continue the futurism Kraftwerk established, provide it with radical new impulses and in this way ward off the dark period, or at least soften the impact of the jackpot. As Mr Aphex expressed so eloquently recently, we are the music makers and we are dreamers of the dream. That is your job: to make our ancestors dream that a better world is possible.”
The Autechre boys kept looking in front of them, but I noticed something like a proud smile. Rightly so, we’re damn good.
“Of course, you may build and use your own instruments, but try to hold back. Embrace the secret. Digital is just coming up, keep that in mind when you decide to program.”
Autechre gave him a sheepish look.
“Experiment successfully and you’ll find that curious colleagues start to copy your innovation. And that’s what we want, for ideas to spread. A certain eccentricity is allowed.”
Here he glanced at the Icelandic singer with the strange name.
“It is almost expected of artists. If you accidentally blurt out that you’re from the future, don’t panic, but never get too detailed. Especially if you end up in this timeline you should be careful with mentioning events that are going to happen in the future. There is always a wise guy who recognises a pattern at some point. Be wary of patterns in general. One of you can claim that he didn’t know his parents, if you all do, it will be noticed.”
The long-haired figure next to me closed the antique book he had been reading during the explanation and lit a cigarette. He clearly had started playing his role.
“What if we run out of inspiration?”
“Interesting question for a man of great ideas. Study the masters of Düsseldorf. If necessary, contact one of the people present today, but be reluctant with collaborations. The remix is the safest bet. And you can always fall back on dub reggae”.
Weatherall’s cigarette had clearly broken the attention and the short-haired one from Autechre inhaled with noticeable satisfaction. I seriously doubted that I would adopt this 20th-century habit.
“But enough talk. Let’s go on a journey.”

Everyone was led to a separate room where two employees began the procedure. Despite the sedative, I felt restless as I sat down on a nicely shaped couch. I would never return to this time. I was given a cup containing a pill.
“Psilocybin, to set the Dream in motion.”
After I swallowed it, they wrapped a bracelet around my upper arm that was attached to a machine.
“Now put this over your eyes and sit or lie down as comfortably as possible.”
The strap looked normal but was also attached to the machine. Once in place, a soft light began to pulsate.
“We have begun.”
The pulsating lights helped to calm me down and slowly I felt the psilocybin rising, a sigh that caused small waves to travel through my veins, through my whole being. Every breath was like Adam’s on the morning he awoke. Gently my ego extinguished and time melted away. Nothing is.

The lights returned and started to flicker faster and faster. I felt the wind of time rising, a storm in my head that became unbearable, to suddenly lie down again. The lights died which meant I could remove the strap. I was in an empty room. Even the machine had disappeared. Almost all the panes of the window were broken and through it sounded a dull buzz of moving machines. A chemical stench penetrated deep into my brain. Hopefully, I would get used to that. I shifted my attention to the wall, full of cracks that inadvertently reminded me of timelines, bare except for a faded poster. An exhibition that had taken place in 1978. A woman is sitting on a bed looking outside, the sun is entering the room. Was this a message, left especially for me? With some difficulty, I rose from the couch that had clearly had seen better days. Muscles collectively demanded that I sit down again immediately. Slowly I moved towards the poster. Neue Nationalgalerie. Despite the unmistakable melancholy of the scene, I liked the light. I systematically went through the pockets of my coat, checking whether everything had been transferred safely. I stood in front of the door for a while. There was no other way. All of a sudden I grabbed the door handle and walked towards the sound.

West Berlin proved to be the perfect landing site. For a moment I considered retreating to Amsterdam and live on a houseboat. Change in my home town was slow compared to other capitals so even the jackpot would arrive later. However, in this city, I would hardly stand out. The years before the fall of The Wall presented a beautiful incubation period for a soul from the future. And if all went well, I would meet many of my futuristic colleagues here. In short, I moved into an apartment in Neukölln which had plenty of room for a studio. My days soon consisted of wandering to record shops and music stores. Back in the future, they recommended buying the Roland series of drum computers as soon as they came out. The rest of the time I tinkered with home-made synthesizers or taught myself programming on an extremely primitive computer. I tried to carefully acquaint myself with the period so that I could strike at the right moment. Since I didn’t have to work, I went clubbing almost every night of the week. This allowed me a good look of the West Berlin scene, the musicians and intellectuals, the remaining Prussian aristocracy and the countless druggies. The music disappointed me. The disco that invariably sounded should have had its day by now. Perhaps Berlin was not as cool as the history networks claimed. I was only impressed by a singer by the name of Grace Jones. Her captivating, almost mechanical voice, like a black Dietrich, a decadent calling from the city itself. The more I returned to the clubs, the more I began to suspect that something was amiss.

That day I decided to refresh my memory. My fingers danced through the record bins towards the letter K. They were popular because I could only find Ralf und Florian. I took the LP to the cash register and asked the employee in a torn P.I.L. shirt whether they carried Computerwelt or Die Mensch-Maschine. He looked at me somewhat surprised: “By them? Never heard of it. But I’m not a fan, sorry.”
At that moment I didn’t pay any more attention to it. Of course, there was a lot of demand for those records. A few days later during the evening news, my doubts suddenly became manifest.
“President Carter is unfolding ambitious plans to reform American inner cities. Detroit and Cleveland, for example, are to become a major hub in the emerging computer industry to create jobs lost in the ailing car industry and…”
The next morning, I rushed to the library looking for a history of pop music. Couldn’t find one. I tried a book on the avant-garde and German pop music. I was relieved to find Kraftwerk in the index and proceeded to browse to the corresponding pages: “…formed by students of Karlheinz Stockhausen. At the end of the sixties, they formed a group called The Organisation, that disbanded after one album, after which they started the Kraftwerk project. The group’s sound was dominated by primitive electronic instruments. Their performances gained them certain cult status, but after two albums this group too was dissolved whereupon both core members turned their backs on the music industry. An interesting group, certainly worthwhile to give the hard-to-find albums a listen.”
I walked out of the library in a daze, overwhelmed by the inescapable realisation: I had ended up in the parallel timeline.

Once I regained my wits, I began to calmly reflect on the consequences. The absence of Kraftwerk created a big void. But they were not the only ones. I had to establish who did exist in the here and now. Moroder. George Clinton. Maybe that was enough? The music in the clubs didn’t reassure me. And then what? Building on Kraftwerk in 1987 was one thing, but without their preparations house and techno would sound incomprehensible to people. I tried to breathe away an oncoming panic attack. Would the whole timeline implode without futuristic music? Surely something else would take its place? The video games in the arcades that turned the faces of the youth blue had potential. The PC was already on the market. Now that I was here and had nowhere to go, I concluded it would be best to just carry on with the original plan. Did the other guys find out yet? I was fucking stuck with Alex Funk, that overrated chancer, while in the other timeline they could lean on Aphex Twin, Carl Craig and Autechre. I had to watch everything, listen to everything, read everything, look for signals coming from Chicago and Detroit. In the meantime, enough with the procrastination, time to make music.

What if I simply took on the role of Kraftwerk? I started working with the instruments at my disposal. After a month I managed to finish something like a complete version of ‘It’s more fun to compute’. Technically it was quite an achievement but it felt fake, a remake, inauthentic. I didn’t believe in the upbeat message and somehow this was discernable. We had to accept that this was going to be a universe without the illustrious Kraftwerk. A melancholic thought that in a strange way also felt liberating. I could shape the future. Far more than I originally thought possible. After the messianic kick had subsided, the possibilities overwhelmed me and I did not touch an instrument for a long time.

During this windless period, I hardly visited any nightclubs. At the beginning of 1983, there was a Beatles revival, so I didn’t feel like listening to the radio for months. If nothing started to happen soon, time would come to a standstill. I spent my days at the local arcade, nothing seemed more futuristic than the symphony of bleeps performed by Zaxxon, Galaga and Centipede. The trance these primitive games induced felt deeper than the immersion of the virtual games from my youth. The cabinets were never turned off so the records remained intact. More and more, the initials O.R graced the top position. In time I realised that I should never be associated with those initials: “Who is the mysterious arcade king of Neukölln?” That kind of nonsense. It was still too early to step out of the shadows.
“Omar Rodríguez!
Startled, I lost a life in Crystal Castles. I looked up from the screen with some irritation. And so the future returned. Books would be written about this moment. Strange how I could already imagine this.
“Andi von Bleifeld, in person. It’s been a while. What is it, almost five centuries?”
I left the joystick to an eager spectator.
“Am I glad to see you, man.”
“Same. Things are pretty weird here. Shall we get something to eat, with some privacy?”

Dasai sake flowed abundantly. The gentle euphoria of a summer breeze, the whispering spring in the forest, all worries evaporated.
“Did you find out about Kraftwerk?”
Andi nodded as he sipped the miso soup.
“It’s quite something. But I have to confess that I don’t care. I always thought they were overrated.”
I feigned amazement and tasted the silky beef. He had said something to that effect in a notorious interview. Interesting that he had been invited to this project all the same. Well, he was certainly a master of bass and echo.
“You’re not German, so you don’t know what it’s like to feel that weight on your shoulders as a musician. Not one, but four father figures. Always present. An iron grip on the German musical identity. Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Kraftwerk. For me, it feels like a total liberation”.
I poured the sake and raised the choko.
“Anyway, it’s the little things that fascinate me. The changes you don’t expect. Which, of course, all have consequences and make our mission more difficult.”
“Yes, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been thinking about this for a while but we just have to make something of it. That’s very liberating, isn’t it?
He nodded.
“Have you tried tracking down Hütter or Schneider?
Out of politeness, I took a bite of rice. No matter the quality, I always remained a noodle man.
“No, I’ve considered it, of course, but it’s just too much trouble. Eventually, I’d have to come clean, “I come from the future, Herr Hütter” and still make ‘Autobahn’. It’s just too late for that.”
“By the way, do you know who I run into from time to time? Bowie! He stayed here. He’s doing a lot of coke again, but he still makes records. Always looking for new input. Last time I spoke to him he was very enthusiastic about a group, Einstürzende Neubauten. He is going to collaborate with them. Maybe that’s a path we can explore. Bowie as a kind of futuristic musical dictator that you feed ideas”.
“Me?”
He bowed quasi-ironically.
“Yes, you, Rodríguez-san. My musical adventures are over. I’ve been making tracks like crazy for the last few years. A whole vault with at least 500 tracks which, when the time is ripe, can be released, just at the right moment. As far as I’m concerned, the next 30 years are set”.
And I still had to begin.
“I’ve had it. I’m going to look for another hobby. At the moment I’m busy mapping out East Berlin. As soon as The Wall falls, I’ll strike and buy a shitload of buildings there”.
Satisfied, he leaned back, his eyes closed as he sniffed the glass of Yamazaki 12.
“With all those buildings, I’ll launch a network of clubs, restaurants, galleries, coffee houses and trip rooms. All under their own names, it has to feel organic and grow in unexpected ways. I’m going to make this city the capital of the good life. Berlin 2000, the culmination of Western civilisation. I like the sound of that”.

That night I woke up at 3:15. The Wall! Of course, that was the solution. When the hateful Wall came down, we would be ready. A new music for a new time. Everybody coming together in the clubs and parties we had prepared. A historic event without precedent. Whatever happened afterwards, this would always be the benchmark. The storming of the Bastille on ecstasy. The next day, I visited Andi to pitch the idea.
“Great. Nobel Peace Prize guaranteed. Although, aren’t they going to release Mandela around the same time? But…”
I didn’t feel like ifs, buts or maybes at a moment.
“…there is one thing, and it already has troubled me with my investment plans. Are we sure that the Wall will open on 9 November 1989?”
“What do you mean? Even though it slowly dawned on me.
“Well, those little differences we were talking about yesterday. Some of them you could call big. I am thinking mainly of Carter. During his second term, he is spending less and less money on the military-industrial complex, investing in a digital infrastructure instead. America will change enormously in the next five years. Increasingly I read news reports that they want to close military bases in Germany. The Cold War is fairly lukewarm at the moment. Look at the Soviet Union. Undoubtedly, the system is slowly getting bogged down, but is this happening as fast as in our timeline? Don’t forget that they wiped out the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Do you see where I am going with this?”
I was overwhelmed by the possibilities and doubts. This way 9/11 was out of the picture too. Which suited us perfectly. If my plan succeeded, the utopian momentum would not be hindered. This was the way to make the mission succeed.
“We need to find informers in East Berlin. Keep following the news. It is unbelievable but we are living a unique experiment. We can observe how much has been determined in history. And otherwise, we just have to give history a helping hand.”

Andi and I quickly agreed on the division of tasks. For the business empire of his dreams, he had to build contacts in the GDR anyway. With the help of some targeted bribes, he soon gained access to Stasi communiqués. This way we also learned that they were in the dark about time travellers. One thing less to worry about. In the meantime, I had to invent the Berlin house scene. I regained my inspiration and began to produce a series of tracks, sometimes accepting directions from Andi. I also rented a retail space where I established a record store named Time Travel. I allowed myself this small gesture because I largely operated anonymously and certainly wasn’t planning on giving any interviews. Around that time I received the first signs of life from Chicago. Detroit soon followed. I immediately made contact and ordered a large number of 12-inches to gain their trust and inject money into the scene. After a while, we sent our 12-inches to America in order to develop a musical dialogue. Within a year, both teams were complete and in contact with each other.

On 27 April 1986, I received a telephone call at lunch from Andi.
“I have something like good news. My Stasi informants say that the Chernobyl disaster took place yesterday.”
“Let’s stay inside for the next few days then.”
“Yes, and watch what you eat and drink.”
“That’ll be a gin-tonic diet.”
“Still, it’s fascinating.”
“What?”
“Well, apparently some things just have to happen. Like a rock in the flow of history or something. Things are in motion but only to a certain point.”
My mind automatically wandered off into history.
“Do you think…”
“Yes, I think it’s impossible to kill Hitler. No idea what happens if you try, but it will fail.”

Thanks to Time Travel’s underground status, I befriended a large number of club owners and up-and-coming party organisers. At the end of 1987, it was time to sow seeds. It took me little effort to persuade Jürgen from Der Blitz to organise a Chicago Housenacht. I invited DJ Pierre and Jefferson Grant, both acquaintances, Pierre from the past, Grant from the future. That night, I learned that Berlin’s disco-marinated audience was not ready yet for the acid bleeps that Pierre chased through the speakers like newly discovered pleasure molecules. So what? I was witness to a legendary event. The birth of the future. When Grant started at 4:00, there were only a handful of people left on the dance floor plus some characters watching the DJ in rapt concentration, all of whom I recognised from the shop. Every single one of them was going to make their own music. Guaranteed.
Once, in a distant future, I had made a name for myself with an experimental interpretation of house. I was proud of several tracks I had made, especially when another DJ played them and the mix brought out details that I had never heard myself. I had followers and imitators. I had listened to thousands of house tracks and yet, when Grant was spinning, I felt awe. He moved between three turntables with singular focus, it was rough, technically far from perfect, but as a dancer you were thrown into an energy flow that was repeatedly interrupted, to be taken to the next level with the help of scratches and backspins. He was half-human, half-crossfader. It was house as truth.
Somehow it got busier again. What were these people’s thoughts now that they faced the future for the first time? I saw wonder, contemplation, scepticism, laughter and head shaking. Was this the lightning of the flame? At the bar, Jürgen shouted that we should go on until the morning.
“Impressive! With some proper advertising, we can really make something of this. Do you think you can organise another event next month?”
I just said yes.

At Time Travel the demand for American imports rose noticeably. More and more bins were set aside for vinyl sold in anonymous white sleeves. Suddenly I started to receive phone calls from Manchester, London, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Paris and Ghent. Not only to order records but also to offer new local material.
Two months later Jefferson Grant returned for a third date in Der Blitz. This time a queue went around the corner. Already people started to wear different clothes. The traditional leather jackets were swapped for loose-fitting coats in bright colours. Someone came up with the idea to turn on a stroboscope and blow a massive amount of smoke on the dance floor. Lost in the mist, among the shadow dancers, I believed in telepathy for the first time in my life. Everyone was sucked into the moment. Afterwards, Grant announced that he wanted to stay in Berlin.
“You’re doing something big here and I want to be part of it.”
Within days he lived a few streets from my place.

During the spring of 1988, West Berlin was under the spell of house and I was the King of Acid. I finally became the person I had always wanted to be. Such power to shape present, past and future. Was this what the great figures of history had known? Did they possess this vision naturally and was I a mere cheat? Or had time travellers preceded me? The subject had been raised at the introduction but was resolutely brushed aside as taboo. “Experience it as if you were the very first traveller.” They knew we knew, but when I studied history I quickly got bogged down by speculation. Plenty of suspects but perhaps they were the unknowns, the silent forces, whispering advisers whose names rarely made it in the history books.

But what was the situation in East Berlin? Andi emanated a permanent state of uncertainty.
“I just started smuggling ecstasy to the east. Won’t actually hurt, right? Maybe it helps to relax that policeman in the head. They continue to be such fanatics in the GDR. Gorbachev seems to be getting it right. And the Russians are trying to catch up with the Americans. Have you heard of the Digital Five-Year Plan? ‘Comrades, let us all work with 256 K!’ I don’t know, Motorola is about to launch a wireless phone with a digital screen that has perplexed the Japanese. Anyway, even Soviet computers will be able to do something, and I am wary.”
To be honest, my mind was focused on next night’s set and how to incorporate my new imports. Semi-distracted I asked, “Why?”
“Dude. They are going to connect the computers. All the data that can be stored on them will be in the hands of the KGB and Stasi. Shit, those bastards are already masters of the control state with mere pen and paper. So imagine that for a moment but, I don’t know, ten thousand times more efficient. Soon I’ll have to develop a virus to bring things to a standstill. And, of course, those paranoiacs have probably thought of that already.”
To distract him, I put the needle on a new record.
“Here, new stuff from Detroit. It’s a relief that Kevin Saunderson also lives in our timeline. A world without this bass line is a cruel joke.”
Of course, Andi’s concerns were justified, especially since everything depended on the timely fall of The Wall. But I was surrounded by positivity. House Nation. Pink clouds, hugs. And that was contagious.
“I’m super confident about everything, man. Der Sommer der Liebe, that’s what Ossie’s want to experience too. It’s an idea that sells itself.”
His fingers ran along the wall of vinyl.
“That may be true. I’m told that illegal parties are being organised. Very niche and small-scale. Just like punk used to be. Don’t have Technics, of course. They probably build the mixer themselves. Police are all over it. You can’t take a piss there without a policeman looking over your shoulder.”

Toward the end of October, we were on high alert. Erich Honecker had been ousted after all these years. You never knew whether the date of this historic event had shifted thanks to our intervention. I had trouble sleeping, which increasingly resulted in hazy days.
“Let’s just start.”
Andi wasn’t in good shape either.
“It’s the seventh today, isn’t it? Three nights of pre-partying. They should be able to handle that here. The city is bursting with drugs. So that’s sorted.”
His rasping laugh assured me that he was indeed on top of things.
“Yes. Let’s go. We start tonight at Der Blitz, tomorrow we’ll add more clubs and then the ninth at full speed. We’ll blow that Wall down ourselves if needed.”
The party at Der Blitz just didn’t end. Grant kept on spinning. At one point I had to drive to the shop through a deserted Berlin to fetch some new crates for him. After 18 hours he collapsed. The next night he was up and running on the other side of town. The time travellers all knew that this was our chance. We were the Angels of History and unlike the other guy, our faces were turned towards the future. The storm from Paradise carried us to the inevitable liberation of mankind. Bring that beat back.

9 November 1989. The past few days I only slept in the car. Around 7:00 I played my last record, ‘Gabi’, which I had saved for this occasion. A deep voice kept repeating “Destruye el Muro” while gradually an acid line increased in intensity, then a well-timed silence followed by the voice saying “Zerstören die Mauer” once and the beat explodes. All hands were in the air. My work was done.
The set gave me a temporary burst of energy, but now I fell on my bed, drained. When I woke up twilight was already upon us. After a quick shower and an attempt at breakfast, I wandered semi-dazed in the direction of Checkpoint Charlie. Even my first DJ gig hadn’t been so nerve-wracking. Well, there would always be another opportunity if this failed. It didn’t sound convincing to me either. Arriving at the crossing-point I actually noticed a group of people standing around. A good sign as their posture suggested expectation and curiosity. Some of them kept a transistor radio to their ear. All I could think of was to maintain a slightly awkward waiting position.
A heavy English accented voice asked me in German: “Haben Sie eine Zigarette für mich? I forgot mine at home, unfortunately.”
I recognised that courteous voice. Bowie. I pulled out two cigarettes which he lit with an elegant gesture. Gold Dunhill. Naturally. With his grey hair, he was a shadow of the pop star from golden years long past, a gentleman, skinny, dressed in a fine black coat, undoubtedly from one of those Japanese designers everyone in Berlin wanted to wear.
“Beautiful evening for a walk, isn’t it?”
He knew. The twinkle in his eyes betrayed him. That was probably the intention.
“Yes, a breath of fresh air is quite the luxury for me these days. I’ve been living the restless life of a nocturnal animal lately.”
When he laughed his crooked teeth were everywhere.
“Ah, the life of the young vampire.”
I offered him another cigarette. I had seen him chain-smoke at the shop many times, intently listening to new records and then buying them all.
Isn’t it a strange sensation, that all seems to go your way? As if you can impose your will on the world. Nobody really knows what artists are. Artists certainly don’t.”
Was he trying to lure me out of hiding?
“Ha, I’m rambling again. Have you heard that I’m reinterpreting Low? With some young producers. Do you know Moritz?”
I nodded.
“I caught some rumours in the chill-out rooms.”
“A remix as you’d call it these days. I don’t know. I never liked to look back, always forward. And the moment is so exuberant and positive. But maybe that’s appropriate, to go against the flow.”
The lights were lit behind The Wall. Checkpoint Charlie bathed in cheap fluorescent light. Were those guards getting nervous or had they stopped caring? I heard a bass drum pounding in the distance. And another one. With my eyes closed, I tilted my head to locate the direction from which the growing vibration sounded.

(Amsterdam, 2020)