1. Steve ReichMusic For 18 Musicians
I picked Steve Reich because I think it changed the parameters of how I thought about music. At the time I was 17, playing in The Edmund Fitzgerald and I hadn’t really ever been aware of modern classical or minimalism and it inspired me and also reinforced stuff that I intuitively liked in music, such as points of sounds and structural emphasis.
The band Youthmovies introduced me to Reich – they had a quite formative effect on me in a sense that, up until then, I still listened to music in a tribal way, as in I had to identify with whatever subculture was going on, so I listened to Skinny Puppy and really plunged my identity into that, for example. I was in that teenage phase of tying up your fashion and your self identity with music. They also played me Gwen Stefani, Missy Elliott and Stars Of The Lid and they showed me that you didn’t have to only identify with one tribe – they broke that way of thinking down.
So that record was really important. And on a more simplistic level, it’s just stunning. It’s the kind of record you can listen to in any environment, unbound by context – it induces a trance-like state. It’s a particularly good record to listen to when you’re on the Underground, it’s soothing – the perfect soundtrack to seeing thousands of people walking past you. He’s one of my top five favourite musicians of all time.
