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Baker's Dozen

Harmonic Worlds: Colin Newman's 13 Favourite Albums
Ben Graham , July 17th, 2018 10:09

The Immersion, Wire and Githead founder member chooses a list that goes from minimalism to maximalism, via Steve Reich, LFO and Todd Rundgren, and tells Ben Graham how Britpop was rubbish but The Beatles have never sounded better

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LFO - Frequencies
This is such an important record. It spawned a whole scene of music. You talk to any electronic musicians from the 90s onwards, and they'll say that. And they were just two boys from Leeds. I haven't seen him for a long while, but we worked with Gez, G-Man, we released his records in the 90s and I know what kind of guy he is. But I'd also spoken to Mark Bell, and Mark was very different. When I talk to Gez, I just talk to someone who's made a record, and he's just talking about his music. Mark was very clever and he was obviously the thinker of the two of them. But that combination of the two of them, those two guys: the title track with that bass, and 'Simon From Sydney', again it's a record that we've listened to a billion times. Gez used to say that they were part of a breakdancing crew, they were just mates, and they were so young when that record came out. I think they were 19, and they had a song in the top 20 and somebody on Radio 1 said their music was awful or something like that. They had everything happening at once at a very young age. I'm sure it affected them. But LFO were lads, you know. It wasn't high concept. It was dancefloor. That was what they were trying to do: to move people's butts and shake the bottom end.