“I’ve been dreading doing this to be honest,” laughs Jason Pierce, as we connect on the phone. “I find it difficult to talk about music in this way.”
Despite his reticence to be drawn into talking about records he loves in this way, Pierce has offered up a really thoughtful selection of music that goes well into the deep cuts. For years, the Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized man has been associated with certain influential bands that have helped shape his life in music – one that currently brings us up to a brand new live score album Pierce made with John Coxon for William Eggleston’s Stranded In Canton, as well as a recent reissue of Spiritualized’s 2008 album Songs In A&E – but he’s chosen to take a different approach here.
“The Stooges was the first and most important record that changed the whole trajectory of my life,” he says. “But it feels like anybody who has read a single interview with me must know that already. So I felt like I would choose records that were just slightly outside of that.”
Instead he has circumvented a greatest hits list for something more immediate. “It’s kind of nonsense to have a list of favourite records,” he says. “Even this morning, I was like, fuck, I haven’t included Lee Perry, Brian Wilson, Kraftwerk. And so I guess really, in a way, these are just records that just happened to be around the deck that have been played a lot recently.”
Spanning soul, gospel, country, jazz and R&B, there’s no theme as such but there is an inescapable feeling that many of these records are slightly overlooked or less well known – in some instances even to Pierce himself. “I’m fascinated with records that I know nothing about and then find out that they’re absolutely incredible pieces of work,” he says. “I used to think with, say dub reggae or soul music, that you start to get weaker the deeper you dig, but that’s really not the case. Then when I find these records I love, I can drive people crazy with them. I can endlessly play the same thing. At that moment in time, there’s nothing better.”
Jason Pierce and John Coxon’s new score for Stranded In Canton is released on 18 October via Fat Possum. A new reissue of Spiritualized’s Songs In A&E is out now. To begin reading Pierce’s Baker’s Dozen, click ‘first record’ below.
