The Quietus - A new rock music and pop culture website

Baker's Dozen

Baker's Dozen: UNKLE'S James Lavelle On His 13 Favourite Records
Lev Harris , April 20th, 2011 04:56

UNKLE’s James Lavelle steps up to the Baker’s Dozen plate to illuminate us on the records that have shaped him and his band’s sound.

Rsz_beastie_boys_check_1303223733_resize_460x400

Beastie Boys - Check Your Head
I personally think it’s their best album. It personifies everything they were doing with hip hop, hardcore and funk, and brought it together. It was very much out of the box. People had written them off, and then they became a band. It proved how individuals can change and become unique. I liked Paul’s Boutique but I just preferred the songs here. It was a great record to discover because people wrote them off. There’s a crew of people who discovered this record -it was one of those weird things where you knew people for knowing Check Your Head at the time, almost like an in-joke. It had everything in it that I loved about that band.

It was unreal to get that support from Mike D on Psyence Fiction. It was unheard of at the time to get the Beasties on another record; they were killing it at the time, and they were at the top of their game. To have that support when I was so young was amazing.