Real BAE Shit

Doru Vatavului lives in Bucharest, where he writes theater, prose, screenplays, and code. He is sometimes a fake ass DJ.

"For a beautiful walk in an unwalkable city

When I first moved to Bucharest in 2023, Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want to Turn Into You had just been released. Pretty in Possible instantly became my favorite song on it, with lyrics that merge the mundane with the absurd in a way that deeply resonated with me. I felt the city resonated with it too. It’s quite random and has nothing to do with the actual music heard on these streets, but now that I live here, this is still how Bucharest often feels to me: like muffled drums, abrasive and soothing at the same time. Because of that one song, I started listening to a lot of trip-hop from the 1990s–00s. I began collecting songs (in a playlist called woosh woosh) - starting with stuff like Massive Attack, Everything But The Girl, Portishead, Saint Etienne, and Madonna’s Ray of Light. Over the past two years though, this has branched out in all sorts of new directions. Here’s how it sounds now."