7. Alice ColtraneJourney In Satchidananda
If we’d done this list pre-lockdown it would look very different, but I imagine that’s the same for everyone. Even though lockdown was a while ago, every time anyone sends a record in, or we get anyone in to do sessions or mixes, it is often still a result of how people were feeling and the things they were making during that period. I don’t know how much longer this will continue for. I still get people saying, ‘this is something that I made during lockdown’, and I’m like, ‘how much did you make, that’s four albums now!’ It also probably changed people’s listening habits too. I suspect that certain genres did quite well out of it, including spiritual jazz and ambient music generally. Ever since lockdown, I’ve been slightly locked in a kind of ambient world, and I might just be here now for good. I listened to a lot of Alice Coltrane during that period, and she became one of my favourite all-time performers. We listen to her a lot at home, and she just brings a calmness to a very chaotic world for us. It’s such a magical piece of music. We’ve got four kids under nine-years-old, and Alice Coltrane counteracts that.
I could probably have just chosen 13 quite mellow ambient records. This is just where I am, this is what I listen to when I’m not working. When I DJ, I play quite aggressive electronic music, but I’m not going to listen to that in my living room at home. My listening habits seem to work in extremes, really. Things need to be either very peaceful and ambient or incredibly aggressive and noisy and there doesn’t seem to be much in the middle.
