The first time I travelled to Europe I was 14 years old. I fell asleep on a flight to Vienna with my airway headphones on and the in-flight system played East 17′s ‘Around the World’. Something about the track hit a chord with where I was at the time and what I was doing. It was before I knew what pop was and drew lines around what I liked and didn’t like about music. It was before I discovered metal, got lost in electronica and sold my soul to breaks. It was just a song that captured a time for me, even if it is a weak piece of drivel from a forgotten boy band.

For the second time on board an aeroplane I found a piece of music that just nailed the milieu for me this week. I was on my way to Japan, flying between Hong Kong and Osaka, when I watched the movie ’21′ based on Ben Mezrich’s book ‘Bringing Down the House’ that tells the story of the MIT black jack team. The intro to the movie features a piece of music that intrigued me, so I tracked it down.

The group is MGMT. The song is ‘Time to Pretend’.

MGMT is a Brooklyn-based hippie duo that describes their music as “surf / jungle / country”. It puts a glitch spin on hippie surf rock, paying tribute to the Summer of Love – and it just works for me. MGMT sound fresh and fad-proof. The kind of music I could get lost in. I won’t disservice their art by drawing comparison. But I will thank them for it.

They’ll be playing in Osaka four days from now – the city I was on my way to when I discovered them.

Where is my bayou paradise? Nice.

Check out MGMT’s Myspace page.