Baker's Dozen

Artists discuss the 13 records that shaped their lives

2. KraftwerkThe Man Machine

It was the kind of electronic music where although it was really precise it still had feeling in it. You don’t get much like that. As soon as you hear it you’re in there. Some electronic music you can go ‘woah’, recoil a bit and then get into it, but this you’re straight down with it, I just loved it. Because we were getting into drum machines, I’d already heard Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, it was all in the pot. In TG I was the only one inhabiting a space where chart material was, and things coming through like that. Chris was interested in equipment, Sleazy was doing album covers, but Pink Floyd and Paul McCartney, so not that world. I was hearing all kinds of music, it was really useful. You could imagine Sleazy in Kraftwerk, contemplative and still, but churning up on the inside. It’s a bit like Chris actually, with him you see the eyebrow go up and the foot will tap, that’s as far as he gets to dancing, and Sleazy was the same, unless he was really drunk and out for the night. As far as the gigs go, it wasn’t a head-banging session in that sense.

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