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Baker's Dozen

No Music: A Baker’s Dozen with Alva Noto
Ollie Zhang , February 21st, 2018 10:30

From Laurie Anderson’s United States Live to Meredith Monk’s Dolmen Music, Carsten Nicolai tells Mollie Zhang about 13 records that shaped his musical backbone. Photo by Andrey Bold

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Coil - Scatology
A friend of mine collected all of the Coil records, and gave me a tape of this one. I later on got to buy all of Coil’s CDs.

What Coil did was very important for bands like Nine Inch Nails, or more rock-oriented industrial stuff that became a bit more mainstream, even. I always found Coil fascinating, they always managed to invent something new. I guess this record still sounds very ‘80s, but when you listen to their later recordings, they have a wonderful approach.

I’m a big fan of Throbbing Gristle, Chris & Cosey and so on - I didn’t want to leave out that kind of influence in this selection. We collected a lot of records that are probably unknown today, that aren’t available anymore. That was a really interesting period of time, I think, if you think about musical diversity, in terms of style and approach. If you think of Mute, they had a fantastic catalog of artists, from pop stuff like Depeche to more extreme ends of the musical spectrum.