As part of the campaign "More of life brought to life," we show in this film how a simple topic - Sneakers - can expand reader’s worlds by taking a journey across the different parts of New York Times journalism. At the core of the films is one long connected thread of type and stream of consciousness that mimics readers' curiosity and understanding.

Acting as the guide, the narration takes viewers on a delightful and unexpected journey of topics, all of which are interconnected through journalism, across the New York Times and returning to where the reader started.

To musically accompany this unpredictable journey our composer went down his own rabbit hole. Thinking about New York City, about the people, about its musical history. About frenetic jazz drums, of the sliced-up samples of Golden-Age hip-hop, incongruous sounds wedged together like the different architectural building styles on a single street.

What does this process of exploration sound like? What does the New York Times itself sound like?

“I sat down and tried to bring all those ideas together in this piece.

There's a sound of what could be the beating heart of the modern city, which acts as a through-line; this builds and develops with elements of jazz instrumentation. There are quirky characters represented in woodwinds. Strident strings represent the tough edge of the city and people. All the orchestral performances were thrown into my old Akai sampler to get the cut-and-paste feel of 90s hip-hop in there. I didn't want to make anything too pretty, so there's no reverb on there – everything needed hard edges. There's a lot of subtle distortion and grit. The track evolves to the point where it almost feels out of control. And then we come back, as the films do, to that first simple seed of an idea.” - Philip Kay, Composer.