5. Ike Yard
Absolutely brilliant. The Regis mix has been in my record box for a long time. I lived in New York for seven years – after Satan’s Circus I got dropped, so I put Death In Vegas on hold – I went to art college to study photography. While I was there I put together a band, Black Acid. It was an interesting time on a lot of different levels. I discovered a lot of music that I hadn’t heard first time round. Ike Yard was one of them. I love the looseness of it, but it’s also so stripped down. It’s like Factory Floor. That syncopated, one or two-note part that’s holding it together as everything else is falling apart around it, which sounded a little bit like my life!
I did a bit of DJing in New York, but the scene was terrible. It wasn’t really where I was at, but I was also playing a bit in Detroit and Chicago. But then I met Oliver [Ackermann], who was the singer and guitarist in A Place To Bury Strangers, and he joined Black Acid. That scene was really healthy – the out-of-town live music scene. But the New York I’d fallen in love with in the movies didn’t really exist. This was post 9/11, during the Giuliani clean-up. I liked what was around New York more. I spent a lot of time in Catskills. But it was a fantastic time to study. When I was at college in my 20s, I was putting on club nights and I had a record deal, but as an older student it was a most enjoyable experience.
