5. This HeatThis Heat
Hearing this album was such a punch in the face in a way – it was both an inspiration, but it also put a stop to what I was trying to do. I heard it at the start of a second period in my life in which I started to be exposed to more experimental music. I was still in Dijon and became friends with three guys, two brothers and a friend of theirs, who had an ambient trio called The Ultra Milkmaids – and it would be good for you to mention them, because they were really influential on me too. They were more like nerds compared to me. I was never a nerd. I was always like the girl who was into literature and that kind of stuff. But they had a computer and they made music with the computer, which in late 1994, felt really new.
I had bought a four-track tape recorder, and I was trying to make music on my own with my guitar, experimenting with slowing down tapes and putting things in reverse – I even tried to sample vinyl records by just putting a microphone in front of my speakers! It was all very, very lo-fi. Then I heard This Heat, and it felt that album so ahead of its time, and it was a shock to me to read it was recorded at the time of my birth – it was released in 1979, but it was actually recorded between 1976 and 1978. It kind of made me feel like I was never going to be able to do anything of value, in a way, but I also thought the track ’24-Track Loop’ was just really, really amazing: I think it’s definitely an influence for instance on maybe the angrier parts of my last album. From here, I really started to develop an interest in repetition and longer forms of tracks as well, outside of a traditional song format. But I think interestingly, This Heat still make what are recognisable as songs. They’re just weird songs. The idea of making weird songs is something that I really identify with.
