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Baker's Dozen

A F**king Joy: Aidan Moffat's Favourite Albums
Daniel Dylan Wray , April 2nd, 2015 14:15

With Aidan Moffat's excellent new record with Bill Wells just out, we sent Daniel Dylan Wray up to Glasgow to meet the former Arab Strap man/Quietus sex columnist to discuss his top formative albums. And, with the help of beers, a record player and one powerful deployment of the phrase "get to utter fuck", here's what he picked

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Talking Heads - Remain In Light
My favourite Talking Heads song isn't on this album but Remain In Light is without a doubt the best album. Remain In Light is a funny one, I didn't really get it as a kid. I was quite late getting into Talking Heads anyway, the first time I heard them was maybe 'Burning Down The House', Speaking In Tongues-era and I thought they were amazing and I'd heard nothing like it. I then worked my way back. The first four Talking Heads albums are fucking sublime to me, I absolutely adore them, I still listen to Talking Heads all the fucking time. Remain In Light, in retrospect, is the one that sounds completely of its own, there's nothing like it at all. The records I love tend to open a door to another world, they are a portal, they take you somewhere and they transport you and they keep you there for the duration and Remain In Light is the perfect record for that, there's so much stuff on that record that I still can't get my head around. When you're 12 or 13 years old and you see something like the 'Once In A Lifetime' video you think: "What the fuck is this?!" It's completely otherworldly and I feel like he [David Byrne] is saying something really important but I'm not quite sure what it is, that's kind of like all Talking Heads songs, I'm really fascinated by the lyrics because sometimes you're not really sure what he's trying to say but you know it has some kind of importance and you should be listening. David Byrne was my first gig I ever went to in Glasgow, I was 16. I remember when I was young finding out that David Byrne was born in Scotland, I was so fucking overjoyed. It was hard to find out information about bands back then, I always thought Talking Heads were this strange, otherworldly band that I couldn't quite place and it just made me feel fucking wonderful.