4. SlowdiveSouvlaki
My first album ever, Early Works, was released by Simon Scott, the drummer of Slowdive, on his old label named KESH. When he contacted me through a private message on MySpace, I really couldn’t believe my eyes. At that exact same time I also had to quit my drum studies to concentrate 100% on the world of electronic music: I have always been very dedicated to what I was into… So when I made the decision to not try to become a professional drummer anymore, I felt that the time spent between snares and cymbals had suddenly become just a heap of dates in the calendar. Day and night, I was studying Max/MSP and sound synthesis, but on the first record there are many guitar samples that I processed with my first patches… All those ‘early’ sounds that I had recorded, they were made while I was seriously looking into the world of shoegaze. I’ve always been a big fan of Slowdive, and that’s probably because they’re less distorted and more tuned than other affiliated bands like My Bloody Valentine, Galaxie 500 and The Jesus & Mary Chain. In comparison to these bands, I’ve always found myself listening to Slowdive for longer periods of time without losing interest. To me, Souvlaki is a special kind of record – when listening to it, I could easily link every track to an image or a short story taken from my life – ‘Here She Comes’ was the soundtrack of my first solo tour in 2008.
