Tim Dowling: this hold music is stuck on repeat – like my life

The piccolo tune could only have been written to intentionally drive people completely crazy I’m sitting in the kitchen with my phone on speaker, listening to an instrumental work featuring a repeated piccolo melody, as I have been for the last half hour. At first it seemed to be a composition without end, cagily constructed to fold back on itself, but after giving it close attention for some minutes I realise it’s just a short section of a larger piece – comprising the four bars before the d...

By Tim Dowling