The YouTube algorithm threw up this quite incredible video by Big Audio Dynamite for The Bottom Line taken from their 1985 album This Is Big Audio Dynamite. Having recently shot a YouTube video around Trafalgar Square it was amazing to see Mick Jones, Don Letts et al rocking out at the foot of Nelson’s Column with the band’s name emblazoned in gold across this most famous of London landmarks while Roman soldiers and Brittonic tribes people raced past the band and into the crowd who bopped along on Trafalgar Square. This was the power of pop music in 1985 and the height of the music video. It also makes me think of Mark Fisher’s idea of Hauntology and how our idea of the future in the 1980s was informed by culture such as that produced by Big Audio Dynamite. They particularly captured my idea of the coming future with their cutting edge use of sampling, hybridisation of music and cut-up video, and what seemed like futuristic instruments (Mick Jones’ digital guitar, snippets of David Bowie in Nick Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth). I certainly have never been the same since I read a Record Mirror article about the launch of the band that talked of their use of sampling, digital instruments, movie dialogue and partnership with then obscure skate brand, Stussey. It certainly triggers my idea of what is perhaps not such a ‘lost future’.