The Summer That Starts With a Hula Hoop

Turn off the radiator. Take the fixie. Grab the hula hoop from the ledge above the door—not ironically, not as a prop, just because it’s there and it’s warm enough now. That was the ritual, the specific sequence that marked the beginning of summer, the signal that the city was available again.

The mixtape I put together around this time drew from Craft Spells, Wolf Gang, and Yuksek: three acts doing something similar from different angles. Craft Spells had that quality of sounding like a memory of something that hadn’t happened yet, the dreamy guitar-pop shimmer of Idle Labor drifting in from somewhere slightly out of reach. Wolf Gang pushed in a more orchestral direction, more theatrical ambition. Yuksek holding it all together with something warm and synthetic underneath.

Summer mixtapes aren’t for careful listening. They’re for existing inside—for the forty minutes on a bike between one part of the city and another, when Berlin stops being a logistical problem and becomes just a location. The best ones feel like they already know where you’re going.

The hula hoop didn’t survive the first week. The tape lasted longer.