Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation

Coming from the rock and metal background that I did in the 90s, living in Birmingham, there were so many great bands coming through every other day, and great record stores. Sonic Youth did a bunch of great records, but Daydream Nation in particular, I used to marvel at the sounds and the kind of chords. I thought, ‘How the fucking hell are they doing that?’ Obviously they were using different tunings and stuff, so I tried to mimic how I thought they were doing it, and eventually over the years I’ve slowly slipped it into how I write with Napalm; you mix it up with the old school and the new. At first, when you listen, you go, ‘Oh, there are some sort of discordant riffs going on here’, but then the more you listen, all that discordance becomes really pretty. When you meet people who are musically trained in some way, some appreciate that style of writing, but some can’t help thinking that it’s wrong. Of course it’s not. It’s what you hear, and how you hear.

We watched them a few times live in Birmingham; those were some great nights. A brilliant band really, they’re very influential to me, especially in the latter years with the way Napalm Death has developed – or how I’m hoping it’s developing, mixing up the grindcore thing but also taking that really strange, alternative indie discordant strangeness.