6. Scott WalkerBisch Bosch
It’s not in any way an exaggeration to say that Scott Walker is an idol of mine. Early Scott Walker is untouchable, just fantastic pop songs. Post Nite Flights, he gets far more peculiar, experimental and challenging. He’s not being difficult for the sake of it – he goes to these lengths because he has a drive to be expansive, both sonically and lyrically. His trajectory in music is an incredible inspiration to me. I don’t know if I will be able to, but I want to make records until I die, exploring different things as time goes on. Having Scott Walker as the model for that keeps the lights on creatively for me. You know, I’ve been listening to records intensely since I was about nine or ten-years-old, not only as a music fan, but also as a way to learn, to find out what artists have to teach me. The downside to that close attentiveness means that I now find a lot of music extraordinarily boring – what it’s stealing from or repeating becomes glaringly apparent and therefore less interesting. With Scott Walker records, however, it’s all completely groundbreaking. Even with the first track on Bisch Bosch, ‘See You Don’t Bump His Head,’ where there’s almost nothing happening. Just an intense drum machine loop, his weird singing and some peculiar guitar riffs. But within those incredibly simple elements, there’s juxtapositions that I’ve never heard anyone do before in quite the same way.
