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Baker's Dozen

Songs Of Life: Leftfield's Favourite Albums
Dom Smith , October 13th, 2015 09:32

As he continues his UK dates in support of this year's Alternative Light Source, Leftfield's Neil Barnes takes us on a tour of some seminal albums that shaped his music, alongside a few current favourites

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Martin Rev - Martin Rev
I was probably taking magic mushrooms the first time I heard this. It was 1980 when I bought it. After the band Suicide he went on to make solo records and this is his first record. The track to check out is a track called 'Temptation', which is the first track on the B-side. It's like seven minutes of distortion. Again, it's the drum machine taken to a new level. At the time I was listening to post-punk: Joy Division, who I loved, and The Human League; things like that who are a part of my being. I was 20 when I first heard those records and I love those records. This record was made in New York and it's almost like a hardcore version of that.

It's got an amazing pop track on it, the first track, 'Mari'. It's like a pop record - it's catchy synth-pop, but then it moves from that to distortion. It's a unique record for its time. For years you couldn't get it. Every track on it has a rolling rhythm, it falls in on itself and it's inventive. It has all the distortion and tape loops in it, it was made in 1980 and bits of it sound like a techno record. You could put a bigger bass drum on it and I could put it out tomorrow. It sounds like what people are doing now. In my head it influenced the new album.