1. OxbowSerenade In Red
James Bryant: Of all my selections this is probably the only proper ‘noise’ record, but Oxbow are incredible and should be revered. They should be massive like Sunn O))) and Shellac and all these bands who do these big festivals. Eugene Robinson is a musician, he’s a writer, he’s also a fighter who fights for a sports magazine and writes about how he lost or how he won and how they fought. He’s a pugilist in the purest sense.
John Atkins: They hijacked one of our shows. We were playing in Bradford and their show got cancelled so they rocked up to ours and said, ‘Can we play?’ JB: Any time I see Eugene he always laughs about that night. We have an in-joke with them that they owe us a show.
JA: They do owe us a show. JB: The first time I saw them perform, Eugene had, as usual, stripped to his pants within a few minutes. Eugene’s a huge hulking mass of a man – a scary man – and an insanely good frontman. The first time I heard an Oxbow record was like stumbling into the scene of a hate-crime. They are masters of discomfort. I’ve chosen Serenade In Red but there’s another album named An Evil Heat. The two are almost inseparable. If you need to start with Oxbow start with those two. The end of one track is a 32-minute drone thing with the drummer. Eugene said somewhere that it was Oxbow’s homage to Palehorse.
JA: He’s clearly lying. It can’t be true.
