London 4am Torrential Rain Walk — Soho & West End

Recorded at around 4am on a Tuesday in October 2021, thirteen degrees and pouring, over two and a half miles through Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, Soho, Oxford Street, Seven Dials and Covent Garden. Watched Walker films these in 4K with binaural audio and no commentary, and publishes the route map and the temperature with each one, which tells you roughly how seriously the genre takes itself.

Four in the morning is the specific hour that makes it work. London at 4am is not asleep so much as briefly emptied — night buses, a cleaner, one taxi — and the rain flattens what noise is left into a steady wash. The city that fills these streets by day is entirely absent and everything built for it is still lit and still running. Good for work, and unreasonably good for insomnia.