1. Bloc PartySilent Alarm

I must have been 16 when this album came out and it was such a soundtrack to my youth. My family left London when I was about nine and moved down to Hampshire. I can remember bombing through the English countryside in a mate’s Peugeot 206 with the shittiest sound system ever, tinny as fuck, with Silent Alarm playing. There are lots of other records from around that era that define that time for me, but I think as a body of work it’s pretty much flawless. 

Bloc Party just come out of the gate kicking and screaming with such a visceral tone, whilst being so real, so raw and exciting. We definitely all tried to emulate that. Of course at the same time you have bands like Arctic Monkeys who I also love, but I’m from the south, so Bloc Party was the big thing for me. I like the artiness of them; that was so important to us as kids growing up, how out there can you be? And then it was about how skinny your jeans were and whatever else. 

I was playing music at that time as well, drumming in an indie band. We used to play shows at [Soho club] Madame Jojo’s when it was still around, and we’d go to a club night downstairs at [London venue] Mean Fiddler called Frog. The indie superstars were people like Kele [Okereke, Bloc Party vocalist] and you would just hope that you may see them on a night out.