Being charged with the Quietus’s Bakers Dozen challenge has brought out the philosopher in NYPC lead singer Ty Bulmer. "You do have to understand the past," she muses after a bleary-eyed night of rummaging through her record collection to pick out the 13 most important pieces of plastic in her development as a musician. "If only so you don’t repeat the mistakes of your peers…"
Which, quite frankly, sounds bloody odd to me, considering that I deem NYPC to be both nigh-on faultless and peerless: from the slinky sass of debut LP Fantastic Playroom via the disco-murk of 2010’s The Optimist and now the clean and crafty electro-archness of new album NYPC Bulmer and multi-instrumentalist/producer Andy Spence have always had a knack for writing pop music that sounds simultaneously familiar and futuristic; songs which tip their hat towards great pop music of the past but without ever sounding stuck in retrograde.
It’s no great surprise, then, that her list shows an inclination for some of the bravest and most forward-thinking albums of the past century or so – from David Bowie’s Low to Fela Kuti’s Yellow Fever and Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions… to Grace Jones’ Slave To The Rhythm. "I feel like we’ve talked a lot about the most superficial influences we have," she says. "The B-52s, Talking Heads… but I think there’s a lot of other stuff that’s in this list that people wouldn’t necessarily point to as influences or things we love."
NYPC is out now via The Numbers. The band are starting a UK tour in November; head to their site for full details and tickets. Click the image below to begin scrolling through Ty’s choices
