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BEATS OF LOVE

79. Every Cloud (Coastlines remix) by Simon Peter 

THERE IS a strange irony in how people attach themselves to "the tops"; that high ground where locals convince themselves they’re in Saddleworth, when they are, in fact, in Oldham just like me.

As a young girl, my mother used to walk these hills with my grandfather, in an ill-fitting trench coat. Yet, as the years passed, she grew disenchanted with the memory. Perhaps she saw me echoing him, inheriting his complete lack of ambition. 

In those days, I’d push my beloved Raleigh Fourteen up the incline toward Bishops Park, obsessively playing pitch-and-putt. Back then, I needed a prize; now, the walk itself is the reward.

My mother and uncle’s ashes rest near the monument there. Other trails may be objectively grander, but nowhere else does the earth speak to me so clearly as I try to untangle my family's ghosts.

It makes the perfect backdrop for this phenomenal four-track release. Every Cloud is a gentle, acoustic meander, elevated by Katie English’s flute, an undulating swell so light and effortless it breathes pure warmth and colour into the air. There must be something in the water at Flower Sound Studio.

But it’s this rework by the ever-reliable Coastlines that takes it to another level, weaving in steel pan and Spanish guitar. It is a masterclass in understated perfection, the ultimate soundtrack for zoning out after a freezing hill walk. As the piano ascends, I’m left in a state of absolute, eyes-closed bliss. If daily life felt this good every time the postman delivered a parcel, I’d face the end contentedly, long before they lower me into the cold ground of Moston Cemetery, into the family plot nobody else wanted.