Ahead of this November’s Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht, we are presenting a series of previews centred around the coinciding Mega Record & CD Fair, and artists playing at the festival.
Last week, Kranky-signed Ana Roxanne talked us through formative records by Cocteau Twins and Deerhoof, among others, and this week we are joined by Vanishing Twin to talk us through their favourite Library Music and the record they’ve had on rotation most over the last year. They join us ahead of the release next month of their new album Ookii Gekkou, which will no doubt make its way into their set at this year’s edition of Le Guess Who?
Le Guess Who? will this year welcome the likes of William Basinski, faUSt, Pa Salieu, Vladislav Delay, Jesu, Alabaster dePlume, L’Rain and Duma, as well as guest curation from Midori Takada, John Dwyer, Phil Elverum, Matana Roberts and Lucrecia Dalt. The Mega Record & CD Fair will run alongside it in Utrecht. You can find more information about the fair here.
Le Guess Who? will take place from November 11 to 14, 2021. Find more information <a href="https://www.leguesswho.nl/" target=“out">here.
Which three records would you be on the hunt for at the Mega Record & CD Fair?
Valentina Magaletti: I am always looking for a VG Mono original pressing of A Love Supreme by John Coltrane on Impulse! from 1965.
Cathy Lucas: I’m after a copy of Don’t Lose Your Cool by Basil Kirchin, Jack Nathan and John Coleman (De Wolfe 1967).
Susumu Mukai: Record shopping on the continent, perhaps I would look for Zdeněk Liška’s works in general. It’d be nice to find Ossuary, the music from the later version of Jan Švankmajer’s The Ossuary in some format.
When / how did you get to know these records, and why are they special to you?
VM: A Love Supreme is hardly an obscure choice I know, but it was one of my first jazz listenings when I was a teen and it became my church, my spiritual healer and my safety net.
It would be the only record I’d keep if I had to pick only one from my collection.
CL: Don’t Lose Your Cool is a totally enchanting record. Tightly orchestrated big band stuff with these long chords held over lots of bars and perpetual modulations that have influenced my writing style quite a bit. It’s very visual music, full of fantasy and magic. I’m a long-time Kirchin fan (since Amos Memon played me Particles back around 2010), but really got into this one over a long, quiet lockdown winter.
What album have you listened to the most over the last year?
Phil M.F.U.: Ariel Pink’s House Arrest. He can prank the intelligentsia and vote for whomever he likes. His nature is rebellious and contrary. I already knew that about him. I also know he’s made some of the finest, most original music of the past 20 years and House Arrest, one of ten reissues over lockdown 2020 of his early four-track LPs, is an immaculate West Coast masterpiece. It’s kept my brain saturated, formaldehyde style, in a psychedelic la la land like no one else can through the worst times of the past year. I eagerly await what he does next and I hope it’s a lot like what he’s already done.
What’s the Library Music disc you’re always on the lookout for?
PMFU: I’m always looking for a reasonably priced copy of Moods For Drama, catalogue #04 from the Canadian label Parry Music Library. I have 26 LPs from this series, all of them quite righteously electronic and far-out. Some of them cost me more than I would like to admit, but there is an unusual price war on this one which, even though it’s a killer library LP, is a bit silly as it’s no more special than some of the others, so for that reason it’s currently unobtainable for me. There is no reason to spend £300 on a record ever, unless it’s the only copy of House Arrest.
