Interviews

Talking Heads - Speaking In Tongues

I got obsessed with Talking Heads in my 20s, and if I had to pick one this would be my favourite album of theirs. The mixture of African rhythms, funk and post punk ticks a lot of boxes for me; all gloriously brought together by David Byrne's unique and awesome songwriting. And there's some very tasty synth work from Wally Badarou all over it – the icing on the cake!

Neil Young – After the Gold Rush

This album put me right back to the time I was getting into collecting vinyl and this was one of the batch I inherited from my Dad's collection. I listened to it on repeat when I started at university, with friends and alone. Although I was already very aware of Neil, this was the first album that really got me into him and so it's quite special to me.

Daft Punk – Discovery

This has massive nostalgic value and an otherworldly quality to it. My brother and I would listen to it in his car in our late teens. I suppose it was the first ever dance music album I got into, although it felt more like robot rock with synths at the time. I love the aesthetic, the artwork, and the majesty of the baroque-esque synth guitar parts. It's flamboyant and excellent in a way only the French can pull off!

The Bees – Sunshine Hit Me

I’ll never stop championing this band. As, like most, I navigated the choppy waters of musical tribalism through adolescence, this group’s confident commitment to cohesive eclecticism schooled me that it’s not only OK to disregard pressure to identify as some narrow tribal thing. In fact, it’s preferable to cherish a breadth of excellent music (and culture, and people…) no matter its stripes. Sounds basic now as a fairly fully-formed adult typing it out, but was a revelation at the time and did much to bolster my magpie love of music. Thinking back, it took about 25 full listens for me to 'get’ that side of it, but then BAM. What immediately spoke to me about the record is they were making music that also happened to sonically represent the rolling South Coast hills, cliffs and beaches that they and I independently grew up on – they made it on an island a stone’s throw across the water from me, visible on the horizon. Strangely, depending on the weather, the island seems to shift – forwards, backwards, left and right – just like the record, always the same, yet always different.

Leftfield – Leftism

Ben mentioned his sibling associations with the Daft Punk record, and this is a similar kind of choice for me. My older brother used to get major label CD albums from the Britannia Music Club – something mad like four for £4 – I remember one delivery including the Lightning Seeds – ‘Jollification’, a couple of others and this absolute monster of a record. We went on holiday to a really hot and arid part of Spain, listening to this, and it blew my nine-year old mind (as did grape juice). It sounded so futuristic, so exotic, and though I wasn’t exactly capable of art criticism at the time, I do remember noticing how I enjoyed getting lost in the whole world they’d built through those 12 tracks. I’ve DJ’d a couple of the tracks out in recent years – it still totally holds its own.

Sofrito (Tropical Discotheque)

Absolutely loved going to the Sofrito warehouse parties these guys threw back around 2010. This compilation captures to some extent the range of musical styles you’d hear there – zouk, cadence, disco reggae, cumbia, soukous – and its impact on me as a fairly inexperienced DJ at the time was one of confirming in me the belief that you didn’t have to (just) play electronic music to fill a floor and see people truly let their hair down. Original dance music!