I was walking through Shibuya at night. Through my headphones, Underworld’s "Born Slippy .NUXX" was playing at full volume.

I was probably just walking. Maybe I was heading somewhere. Maybe I was on my way home after meeting someone. Maybe I was alone. Maybe I was walking from Shibuya toward Harajuku. I no longer remember the fine details. But I remember the sound.

The beat sounds. The voice repeats. I only understand about half the meaning of the words. But it was actually better that the meaning escaped me. The sound enters the body first. Feet step forward, traffic lights change, people flow past. Neon blurs, shop lights slip away, the sound of cars mixes in the distance. You lose track of whether the city is moving to the music, or the music is playing to the city. There was a night like that.

"Born Slippy .NUXX" was not a song to listen to while sitting at home. At least, not for me. That track enters a walking body. It enters the night city. It suddenly begins to carry meaning when you are swept up in the velocity of the metropolis. Listened to in a room, it is music. Listened to in the night of Shibuya, it is the city itself. It had that kind of feeling.

In the Shibuya night, there was velocity. The flow of people, the flow of cars, the blinking of traffic lights, the glitter of advertisements, the sounds of shops, the voices of strangers, the stairwells of multi-tenant buildings, the lights of convenience stores. People heading to clubs, people heading home, people who didn't want to go home just yet. The city was not standing still.

I walked through it all, listening to music on my headphones. Looking back, I wasn't observing the city. I think my entire body was swept up in the city's velocity. To observe, you need a little distance. But at that time, there was no distance. My body was wedged between the sound and the city. I was walking between the neon and the beat. Before there was meaning, there was velocity.

Underworld's music possessed that kind of power. There are human voices. Yet, they sound more like fragments than singing. There are words. Yet, they are not words meant to explain a narrative. They are repeated, broken down, and become part of the beat. That was the beauty of it. Meaning does not come first. Words become sound. Sound moves the body. The body passes through the city. Only after that does it finally become a memory. This was the order of things.

Nowadays, you can search for lyrics instantly. You can read the background of a song, or look up its relationship to a movie. You can add it to a playlist, and recommendations will show you similar songs. But back then, I didn't listen to it that way. It was just playing. I was just walking. That was enough.

I think it is a memory from a time when music was not information. No, to be precise, music was information even then. CD's existed. Magazines existed. Reviews existed. There were songs recommended by others. Yet, I feel music was much closer to the physical body than it is now. Listening to a song playing in a shop. Buying a CD. Looking at the jacket art. Listening with headphones. Walking the city. Lending it to someone. Putting it on an MD. Putting it in a bag. Music existed alongside physical objects, locations, and movement.

That is why, when it remains in memory, it does not remain as sound alone. When I hear that song, the city returns. The light of the streets, the humidity of the night, my own walking body—they all return. It is not a memory of the song itself. It is a memory of the body that passed through the song.

"Born Slippy .NUXX" is a powerful track. But I don't think it remained in my memory because it was powerful. It remained because it bound itself to Shibuya that night. The song, the city, and the body overlapped at the exact same velocity. There aren't many moments like that. I have listened to a lot of music. I have many songs I love. Yet, the songs that remain inside the body along with their locations are limited. This track by Underworld is one of them.

Shibuya at night. Extreme volume. Headphones. A walking body. There are memories that only arise through this particular combination.

Perhaps in the city of one's youth, there was a way of listening like that. Walking while listening to music. Just by doing that, you felt as if you were in a slightly different place. You weren't being watched by anyone, you weren't broadcasting anything, you weren't taking photos, you weren't recording. The city simply becomes like a movie inside you.

When music plays, the familiar city looks different. The movements of people slow down slightly. The red of the traffic lights looks strangely intense. The lights of convenience stores float up in white. The face of a stranger rests in memory for just an instant. Headphones were a device for editing the city. While silencing the sounds of the world, they overwrite the world with a different sound. But it does not disappear entirely. The hum of the city still remains outside the music. Footsteps, the sounds of cars, the voices of people—they still leak in slightly. That way of mixing was beautiful. It was not complete immersion. It was not complete isolation. The boundary between the city and the music becomes blurred. That is where the body exists.

On the night I was walking while listening to "Born Slippy .NUXX," was I thinking about anything? I probably wasn't thinking about anything of great importance. Yet, my body remembered something. The velocity of the city. The repetition of the music. The solitude of youth. The feeling of wanting to go somewhere. But also the feeling of not knowing where to go. Shibuya at night was just right for absorbing those kinds of emotions.

Bright, yet dark. Crowded, yet you can be alone. Noisy, yet you can find solitude inside your headphones. The city was a contradictory place. Underworld’s beat suited that contradiction perfectly. It feels like moving forward, yet it repeats in the same place. It feels ecstatic, yet somehow hollow. There are human voices, yet it is mechanical. It is mechanical, yet strangely physical. That feeling was Shibuya at night itself.

When I listen to the same song today, it sounds different from back then. That is only natural. The city has changed. I have changed. The way of encountering music has changed. Yet, when the song begins, a part of my body reacts, if only a little. It still remembers the velocity of that beat. My feet that walked the night streets still remember it, if only slightly.

Music is not something remembered only in the head. The body remembers it. It is different from playlist history, play counts, or bookmarks. It is a memory that remains deep within the physical self.

Walking through Shibuya at night at full volume. That was all it was. Yet, that "all it was" grows larger after the fact. Walking the city. Listening to music. Being lonely. Being young. Moving forward without any meaning. Everything connects later on.

There was a night when music became the city itself. And only the body that passed through the city still remembers that sound today.

© SHIRO & Co.

First published: 2026-06-08