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Baker's Dozen

Musical Delicacies: Sébastien Tellier’s 13 Favourite Albums
Rob Hakimian , July 15th, 2020 08:23

In this week’s Baker’s Dozen the French producer and songwriter tells Rob Hakimian about 13 albums from his youth and early adulthood that left a lasting impression on the way he makes, listens to, and visualises music.

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Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom
In a French music paper during the 90s, I saw an interview with Pink Floyd talking about Robert Wyatt, and I was with my friends like ‘who is this guy, Wyatt?’ Because this guy was not famous in France at all. So we went to the shop bought this album Rock Bottom, and then I understood so much. Listening to it for the first time, all my beliefs were gone – it’s so beautiful, so free, so sad, so intense. I was completely fascinated that the composition, the sound and the goal of the record – to be intense to be sad to explain the sadness, the cruel world.

Before that, for me, maybe The Beatles were always the best, because bla bla bla. But with Rock Bottom I said to myself, ‘ah, maybe there is something better than the Beatles!’ And for me this album stays in my top three, but I can’t listen to it again because it’s too sad, and when I listen to it I cry, I really cry. It’s too intense. For me it’s like that. You know, I listened to it too much, and now when I listen to it I just cry, so I don’t listen to it very often now.

But, I remember it was a very good part of my life because in this period, I don’t remember how, but a girl gave me her apartment in Paris, in a very luxurious street. I was listening to this album in a beautiful apartment with big windows in Paris in the middle of summer, and it was beautiful. So the period of my life was good with this album, it was a ride, it was a shocking time of music for me.