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Baker's Dozen

A Babylonian Tower: Marc Hollander's Favourite Music
David McKenna , June 17th, 2020 08:34

Marc Hollander's Aksak Maboul have released one of the albums of the year and his Crammed Discs label have consistently provided a wide-ranging soundtrack to the globe. He guides David McKenna through favourite albums in this week's Baker's Dozen

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Pink Floyd – Interstellar Overdrive
I put this because there’s a moment when the bands I was listening to, like The Yardbirds, started becoming louder and a bit psychedelic. I was listening to these bands and I was listening to modern European music already, and Ravi Shankar, and I was into jazz as well, and there was a moment when these things started blending. You could see the influence in pop music. That first Pink Floyd album was one of these albums. But actually there’s The Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High’ because of the guitar soloing. Roger McGuinn by his own admission was trying to play like Coltrane, but Coltrane himself was influenced by Asian and African music, so everything started to coalesce.

But that Pink Floyd track is great because it’s kind of abstract, it starts really very rhythmic and then it drifts into something almost abstract, like… insects jamming. But with the steady beats there’s something exciting about that.