AFTER MIDNIGHT

Anthony Gonzalez made the squealing hook that runs through it from his own voice, heavily distorted. Stay for the ending: the saxophone solo, played by James King of Fitz and the Tantrums, is the 1980s arriving all at once.

From Daft Punk's Discovery (2001). The title is usually read as a pun on "very disco", but the track is slow, faux-baroque synthesizer music, chords unfolding at a walk. The first breath of the night.

From Midnight Marauders (1993). The loop comes from Ronnie Foster's "Mystic Brew", with a piece of Brethren's "Outside Love", and Q-Tip and Phife Dawg trade verses over it as if there's nowhere to be until morning.

Herrmann recorded the score on 22 and 23 December 1975 and died hours after finishing, on Christmas Eve. Scorsese dedicated the film to him. Listen for the drums and brass giving way to the saxophone.

Recorded on 2 March 1959 for Kind of Blue, with Davis on muted trumpet. The tune runs in a ten-bar cycle, unusual in jazz. The record credits only Davis; Evans said in 1979, "The truth is I did."

Two chords, C major seventh and G with a suspended fourth, rocked back and forth in the left hand while the right hand drifts further out. Evans improvised it at the end of a December 1958 session. The same material opens "Flamenco Sketches" on Kind of Blue.

Field, born in Dublin in 1782, published his first nocturnes in 1814 and died in Moscow. Chopin took the name and the shape: a singing melody in the right hand over a wide, rocking left hand. This one is short and very calm.

Debussy said it shows "the slow, solemn motion of the clouds". The idea reportedly came to him crossing a Paris bridge on a stormy day, as a boat sounded its horn. Listen for the cor anglais: a short chromatic phrase that keeps coming back.

From Out of Doors (1926). Bartók wrote down the sounds of a Hungarian summer night: birds, cicadas and the call of the fire-bellied toad. A soft cluster chord ticks under it all, and at one point the pianist is asked to play a cluster with the palm of the hand.

Thom Yorke wrote the lyric after seeing an exhibition of ancient Egyptian underworld art while Radiohead were recording in Copenhagen; the song also owes something to Charles Mingus's "Freedom". The piano lurches so freely that people still argue about the time signature. Jonny Greenwood told the string players to swing.

This is the full 10:40 take; the original LP faded out just short of ten minutes. Richard Lloyd plays the short solo after the second chorus. Tom Verlaine's solo, after the third, takes up the whole second half of the song.

From Jon Brion's score for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Michel Gondry's film about erasing the memory of a love affair. At about a minute it's the shortest thing here: a cue, not a song, and a breather after Television.

From Greenwood's score for Phantom Thread (2017). He named Glenn Gould's Bach recordings and Nelson Riddle's arrangements among his models. Katherine Tinker plays the piano, with the London Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Robert Ames. The score was nominated for an Oscar.

From Another Thought (1993), the first collection of Arthur Russell's music released after his death in 1992. Russell was a cellist who moved between disco, experimental composition and songs like this one, which are plain, close and a little unsteady on their feet.

From Bryter Layter (1971), produced by Joe Boyd. John Cale plays the piano, celeste and organ, and it's his celeste that makes the song glow. Drake sings it unhurried, as if it's already very late.

From Mutable Set (2020), co-written by Blake Mills and Cass McCombs. It moves at walking pace for more than six minutes, which is about the right speed for the last stretch home.

Chopin wrote it in 1830 for his sister Ludwika, to practise before she tackled his Second Piano Concerto, and it quotes that concerto. It was published in 1875. In September 1939 Władysław Szpilman was playing it live on Polish Radio when the German assault on Warsaw cut the broadcast.