Seven Favourite Albums and Why We Make Lists

Technically eight but shush

There is a personality type that enjoys making lists.

I wish I could list independently of subject, the repetitive sequential action distilled in a pure form, but the act of listing itself coheres, generates meaning. I will list whatever random objects I see becomes A List of Things in My Bedroom. Likewise, I will list whatever random thoughts enter my head simultaneously groups around difference while creating a reading, projective associations, unconsciousness revealed…

This is why the cliche, that music soundtracks our lives, is so anaemic to me. The soundtrack, the list, generates meanings on top of our narratives, takes on a life of its own. Far from language being static, dead on the page, the soundtracks of our lives becomes an embodied, breathing, document.

With this in mind, I present seven of my favourite albums.

Geogaddi by Boards of Canada (Warp, 2002)

I’m aghast that Geogaddi is overshadowed by Music Has the Right to Children, which was a real darling of music journalists. I even remember reading somewhere that a few initial reviews for Geogaddi said it was too similar to Music Has the Right… What? That first Warp Records release had sparse layers and explicit references to the media BoC grew up on. Geogaddi is dense and mysterious. There are entire Wikis dedicated to its occult symbolism. I can’t help but wonder if the indie rock critics didn’t know how to “read” electronica. In any case, this album would form my aural imagination. It is the sound of my inner world.

Haha Sound by Broadcast (Warp, 2003)

Broadcast were among my favourite bands as a teenager. Their blend of vintage pop and harsh electronic noise is toffee and fudge for me.

I say this with nothing but love: Haha Sound is such a coherent and fully realised album that it makes the rest of their (very good) albums sound like footnotes to it. In some ways I would spend my subsequent decades unpacking Haha Sound: its references to 1970s Czech cinema and obscure adaptations of Alice in Wonderland; the lyrical images cut from bygone British culture.

Trish Keenan sang as if her voice didn’t originate from her body but had travelled through history, moving beyond the present to enchant the future. It makes her tragic passing in 2011 all the more poignant.

Fun fact: the drummer for Haha Sound was the drummer in Neutral Milk Hotel and would go on to form A Hawk and a Hacksaw, who will make a second cameo below.

Sound Dust by Stereolab (Duophonic Records, 2001)

A lot of creatives desire a career arc where they start small then build up to a masterpiece. Stereolab have never had such pretensions, spending their time widening out their interests from 90s indie rock to psychedelia, library music and B-movie scores, perfectly content with going deeper and deeper into their style. Sound Dust is the best showcase of this.

London Zoo by The Bug (Ninja Tune, 2008)

England, 2008: rising knife crime, an incoming recession, terrorism paranoia, ASBOs rolling out in a desperate attempt to solve youth crime… And then London Zoo is released.

All the challenges England faced were used as a smear campaign against the working class. London Zoo is a collective response that doesn’t resort to stabbings or robberies but violence through music as a way to address and condemn crime.

But also, I can never get over just how inventive this album is. It is ostensibly ragga but takes from dubstep, R&B, industrial music and classic British rave. It’s heavy as fuck.

If I could write a doctoral thesis, it would be on London Zoo. I believe it is the greatest album of its decade.

Love is Real / We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves by John Maus (Upset the Rhythm and Ribbon Music, 2007 and 2011)

Are you kidding? A handsome philosophy professor performing 80s-style synth pop alone on stage like karaoke? Hell. Yes.

I cheated and included two albums as one, both equally special for me. I had gone through a horrible - horrible - break up and was working in a horrible - horrible - contact centre in Bristol, answering customer service emails. I can’t remember how my ageing iPod would come to have just these two albums on it. Maybe it had more and I could only listen to these two. But hearing them back-to-back over and over for eight hours a day was what I needed to pull me through. If only to be reminded: love is real.

Recordings by Able Noise (GLARC, 2020)

Glasgow’s own GLARC can do no wrong, frankly, but I’m addicted to this album in particular. Full blown. I can happily listen to it on repeat all day. In many ways it’s representative of the musical aesthetics I most love: broken, ad hoc, incidental but emotive.

Originally released as a cassette, Recordings gets me with its jump cut mix of lo-fi songs, sonic collages and ambling improvs, violating the academic stuffiness that can plague contemporary experimental music. I love the whole record, but all of ‘Side B’ heals my brain.

Surprising Sings Stupendous Love by Scatter (Pickled Egg Records, 2003)

Violating the academic stuffiness of free improvisation is this album’s specialty. A Glasgow based collective ranging from two to nineteen performers, they released a couple of albums exploring frames for improv in different genres: primarily, different strands of jazz and world folk musics. Surprising Sings… has straight up structured songs alongside what most think of when they think of free improv.

European improv has often been built on socialist utopian ideals but, as a result, feels detached from the social world. Through imbuing it with a collective spirit - that is, a network of different genres referring to the world outside of the album - Scatter, perhaps unknowingly, discovered a truly interesting political model.

But let’s not pretend Surprising Sings… isn’t ridiculously fun. ‘Orbling’ especially, revelling in the expressive modes found in Pentecostalism. A pure, chaotic, giddy venting of joy; of having bodies, of having voices, of having life itself.

It may interest readers to know that Krzysztof Hładowski, a founding member of Scatter, would go on to play with A Hawk and a Hacksaw and the modern incarnation of The Incredible String Band. Alex Neilson, another founder, would go on to perform with Will Oldham. Incidentally, Neilson played drums for Josephine Foster when I saw her live in 2019.