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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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Run-DMC - Raising Hell
I have such good memories of listening to this album at school with my friends. For me it was the beginning of ‘oh I like sportswear - Adidas, ooh la la, so cool!’ It was not just ‘I love this song’ or ‘I love this album’, it was more than that, it was ‘I love this culture, hip-hop culture’ - very easy to play, very easy to listen to, cool attitude, super good style. I was so proud to come to school with this album like ‘you know what I have in my bag? I have Raising Hell by Run-DMC!’ I was like ‘I’m the king of the school.’ It has for me many very good memories.

I remember I discovered the drum machine through Run-DMC, because I asked a friend how the drummer played that way, and the guy told me ‘mais non, it’s not a drum, it’s a drum machine. It’s a box that you can create rhythm in it.’ I was like ‘wow’. So for me it means a lot because now I use a lot of drum machines in my music, Sexuality or the last one, there are a lot of drum machines, but it comes from Run-DMC.

And so Run-DMC was just a door on the hip-hop world, and I was full of dreams about the US – it was a long time ago, it was not the same country – I was like ‘wow, US, super cool guys making hip-hop!’ For me it was important, it was a dream, like some people far away from me are super cool and they are in US and I was like ‘I want to go to New York, I want to go to Los Angeles.’ It created in me a kind of fixation.