It was one o'clock in the morning and we were on a vast pier way out in the docklands. It had rained not long ago and the wet asphalt gleamed under the floods of a nearby refinery. The luminescent strip of the highway was flickering in the distance. Cars were regularly distributed over the pier with open doors, islands of light in the blackness. People were hanging out in small groups between them, chatting, waiting for something to happen.

At first it was barely audible, a subsonic vibration, more of a feeling in your intestines than a sound. It was slowly swelling towards a low, throbbing humming, like the sound of a badly grounded hi-fi system on standby. It came out of the cars. All the cars. The whole pier was becoming a quivering field of sound waves, a single, huge bass woofer. The crowd turned silent, slightly disturbed. Still very slowly, a steady pulse started to emerge from the monotonous hum, a massive, pounding heartbeat.

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