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Baker's Dozen

Learning Through Listening: Shabaka Hutchings Favourite LPs
Olamiju Fajemisin , March 28th, 2018 09:07

In anticipation of the release of Sons of Kemet's latest LP, Your Queen Is A Reptile and their appearance at this year's Field Day Festival, saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings detailed the thirteen albums that shaped his experiences as both a man and a musician to Olamiju Fajemisin

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Death Grips – Exmilitary
I think the first tune I heard of that album was 'Thru The Walls', it's the most drastic approach to soca I've ever heard. I could never have imagined that anyone would treat a basic soca groove with so much roughness. It's what encouraged me to start checking out the album and listen to the group as a whole. Most of the time I'm on stage I'll try to embody different characters and different ways of approaching intensity. Who I am in real life is different to me on stage. You've got to kind of somehow find a medium to channel that energy. When I watch or listen to Death Grips I just witness two guys that are tapped in. There's a direct line between that energy and the creative process. They're one of the few groups that make me think, 'these guys have it!'. These two guys have really considered the intensity of music. It just takes me and slows me down. In some way, it's a strange album, I can listen to some of the more intense tunes and I think, 'they can't sustain that amount of creativity through this intensity.' but then they do! It's such a detailed album in terms of nuanced music – this is what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to get that level of 'give', in terms of how much I am pushing emotionally but also being able to have really detailed production.