Efterklang – Tripper
This is a very important album for me. When John Peel was alive, before he went off on the holiday that he didn’t come back from, he asked a few of us to look after his radio show for him – Siouxsie Sioux, Robert Smith – and he said that Rick and I could do anything we wanted, which was very generous of him. So Rick asked him if there was anything he wanted us to play and he handed us Tripper and said, “this has just come in and I really like it.” As somebody who grew up with John being my most important musical teacher, especially his philosophy around cross-collateralised ideas between musical genres – this was important because it was the last album he ever gave me. The last record he asked to be played on air. But I loved the sound of the album – again, they have a whole other structure for writing songs. They have this filmic quality. It’s a very panoramic sound. They were one of the first bands I ever heard using that glitchy, cut-up electronic vibe and yet incorporating it with traditional instruments. And when I go and see them live, sometimes they’re a three-piece, then a seven-piece, or they’ll have an orchestra with them – they defy definition. They just make beautiful music.