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Baker's Dozen

Cinematic Quality: Blanck Mass' Favourite Albums
James Benge , May 12th, 2015 13:12

He's just released his second solo album, Dumb Flesh, and is set to play tQ's stage at The Great Escape on Friday. Before that, the Fuck Buttons man gives James Benge the rundown of his top 13 records

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Pan Sonic - Kesto
I can’t pinpoint the first time I heard Kesto but that wasn’t the first Pan Sonic record I’d heard. It probably would have been a toss-up between this and A. But there’s a palette on this one that’s a lot harder and I definitely feel more in tune with. It’s heavy, one of their heavier moments. This is one of the albums that I would tend to dip in and out of a little more, I don’t usually like to do that because I feel like it’s a slight injustice to the writer. They’ve structured in the same way as myself and many of the other musicians here, but it’s such a long record [the quadruple album’s full title, Kesto (234.48:4), indicates its length].

There’s a couple of moments on there that just epitomise it, ‘Rähinä II / Mayhem II’ is hard from the get-go, then it pulls back to a gated, simplistic pattern, but it still doesn’t lose any energy at all. It’s a challenge, but I like that.