Happy weekend.
I wanted to do something a little different for this one. Not a think piece. Not a long teardown of AI, security, or the latest incident.
This time, it is a soundtrack.
While I was finishing Signals in the Noise, I kept hearing certain songs in the background. Dark, cinematic tracks that feel like dashboards at 2 a.m., city lights through rain, people doing quiet work inside big systems.
So I built a playlist around that feeling.
In this post, you will see the Spotify embed.
The Signals in the Noise working soundtrack
This is the unofficial soundtrack to Signals in the Noise, a book about security, AI, and the hidden patterns of modern risk.
It is built in movements, not genres.
Opening Frame
Massive Attack, Portishead, and NIN score the sense that the world is too loud, dashboards are always red, and something big is moving under the surface of everyday work.
Inside the System
Rob Dougan, Don Davis, Amon Tobin, and The Chemical Brothers live where logs, networks, and operators overlap. This is the “seeing the grid” section, when you realize reality is more system than story.
Machine Logic
Daft Punk, Justice, and Carpenter Brut go inside the circuit. AI, automation, MLOps, and the feeling that the game really has changed, not just the tools.
Fieldcraft
Propellerheads, UNKLE, and others score the boots on the ground work. Physical security, investigations, and red teaming when there is a system watching above you.
Governance and Power
Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode, Peter Gabriel, and Talk Talk sit in the boardroom and ask who really runs the system, and what they are optimizing for.
Feedback Loops and Obsession
Clint Mansell, Hans Zimmer, and Michael Nyman push into bias, blind spots, repeated incidents, and organizations that will not learn until something breaks.
Futures and Second Order Effects
Vangelis, M83, Explosions in the Sky, and Zimmer again close things out with foggy cities, neon reflections, and the people trying to build better systems inside all this noise.
Threaded through are a few brighter tracks from Moby, Bowie, and LCD Soundsystem, because this is not a disaster movie. It is a field guide for people who still believe the work matters.
Use it to read the book, write your own playbook, or just think a little differently about the feeds in front of you.
How to use this for your weekend
A few ideas.
If you are reading
Queue the playlist, start at track one, and let it run while you read a chapter or two. Notice where the sound and the text line up. Notice where they clash.
If you are working on your own “signals.”
You can use the playlist as background while you sketch your own risk map. Your own incident playbook. Your own career moves for the next twelve months.
If you just want something different in your earbuds
Put this on for a commute, a walk, or a late-night cleanup of your inbox. See how it changes the way you look at the same old feeds.
What I am curious about
I am genuinely interested in how you pair music and thinking.
Do you have a default “operations” playlist
Are there tracks you always go back to before a big decision or a big presentation
What would you add or swap out from this list
Hit reply and tell me your one or two “must include” tracks. I may build a reader remix version later.
Enjoy the weekend.
Press play. Then start looking for the signals.