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Baker's Dozen

Magical Cuts: Anthony ‘Surgeon’ Child’s Favourite Music
Luke Turner , March 30th, 2023 07:45

With the new Surgeon album one of the highlights of 2023 so far, Anthony Child guides Luke Turner through a psychedelic journey that takes in The Cure, King Tubby, Sylvester and Alice Coltrane, and John Taverner’s quest for the sonic divine

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Sylvester – ‘I Need Somebody To Love Tonight’

It's just so amazingly sensual and sad, it strongly transmits a whole bag of emotions. Having a combination of Sylvester and Patrick Cowley is absolutely amazing. I’m a big fan of Patrick Cowley – his 15 minute mix of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ is the greatest all time ecstasy dance record that will ever exist. Getting into disco happened in parallel to the rave scene in the early 90s, joining the dots between different types of electronic dance music, techno, house, disco, and seeing how they connected and fitted together. All these genres can get a bit siloed off. It’s like so many things – religions and everything like that – that start off with a certain intention and then over years end up being the complete opposite. There's a lot of techno that's so conservative in terms of its sound world and what you're allowed to do, but then again there’s always people who are creating really different and interesting music. I’ve always had this idea that if I'm not excited by what I'm hearing, I'm just looking in the wrong place. I'm not going to stand there and go, ‘Oh, it's all rubbish they don’t know what they're doing these days’. I need to make more effort and look somewhere else. There's an infinite world of music that you just don't know exists. It's just endless. Even though I picked a Cure track, I am a very optimistic person.