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Baker's Dozen

Overlapping Terrain: Richard Skelton's Favourite Music
Luke Turner , February 26th, 2020 09:18

Following the release of his new album LASTGLACIALMAXIMUM, the prolific Richard Skelton speaks to Luke Turner about the music that inspired his own work, from Thomas Tallis to Phuture, Nico to Sly & The Family Stone, The Stooges and Gorecki

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Vainqueur – 'Elevation' 
That leads into Vainqueur's 'Elevation' - I don't think there's even a drumbeat in this track. It's just these washes of sound fading in and out and overlapping each other, just a sense of a fluid, moving, organic sound – even though is entirely synthetic. There's a real sense of it being alive and having its own energy. I found that deeply inspirational when I was thinking about how I could produce music. When I started thinking about the way that I could write using computers but with acoustic instruments, I was very heavily inspired by this early techno and house music, believe it or not. If someone else brings out something that's really amazing, I'm not drawn to want to imitate it. It's possibly why it took me so long to start making music; to find my own vocabulary. Even though I've drawn upon these kinds of music I've never really been too interested in, say, making house or techno tracks. There's enough people doing that already. I wanted to do something else.