100 Greatest Songs of the 2010’s #48 Blanck Mass – Sundowner

Released : 2011

It’s passed into myth now, but were the 2012 Olympics the last time Britain, collectively, felt good about itself? If you listen to the wrong people now they’ll tell you that it was either a capitalist sham, or a liberal fallacy, but either way Danny Boyle’s choreography and a cast of thousands touched the country’s soul in a way no event has done since.

Ben Power may under different circumstances have spent the rest of the decade playing the fact that Sundowner had been re-interpreted by the LSO and featured in the Games’ opening ceremony; instead it’s an episode overshadowed by a darker present. In full form it’s possible to understand how the original work’s rolling, post-classical comedown and futuristic bursts bridge the gap between the country’s 20th century’s industrial past and a future which, at the time, looked full of optimistic possibilities.