13. An Electric StormWhite Noise
As I’ve just released a collage album, I thought I had to finish my list with the ultimate one! I’d always thought this album was made in two weeks, with Delia Derbyshire and the gang holed up in a room getting high, but that’s another myth – apparently it took a year to make six tracks, although they had to rush the last one out in a day. God, I’ve played Love Without Sound on so many mixes. The way it opens up your ears to the Radiophonic Workshop and musique concrete – and this was from a group who were bloody signed to Island Records! Not that their efforts sold more than three copies, or something, but that’s that. It’s become such a cult record, and rightly so. So many musicians I like do collage with sound in this way. I nearly picked the Dirty Projectors for this list – the way they record ensembles and chop them up into bits and play over it live – I love that stuff. Hip hop artists like Kool Keith, LL Cool J and Ol’ Dirty Bastard from the Wu Tang Clan do that too. It’s like they’re taking scissors to a magazine. And I’ve loved doing so much of that with Utopia. It’s been like living inside a real collage, and I made the videos and artwork myself this time, too. And coming back to Warp to do it… I mean, I’ve not really been away, but is special to me. I became who I was there – all these different people – and I’m still taking them with me.
