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Bobby Gillespie recommended MetalBox by Public Image Ltd in Music (curated)

 
MetalBox by Public Image Ltd
MetalBox by Public Image Ltd
1979 | Alternative
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Yeah, my mum bought it for Christmas. I must've been 18 at the time or something. I find it quite cool that my mum actually went into a record shop and asked for Metal Box by Public Image! There were only a few thousand made, so it was limited edition. But I was a huge PiL fan, I loved the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten/Lydon and when the Pistols split, everybody was waiting to see what he's going to come back with. Nobody could believe that he would return with this. They sounded like nothing you'd heard before. The first track, 'Albatross', is basically listening to Lydon screaming that he wishes he would die for ten minutes, or a junkyard having a nervous breakdown! The album has these metallic smashes and clangs, which I'd never heard in music before. This is considered one of the first post-punk albums, alongside the Siouxsie and the Banshees record, but before Metal Box, it would probably have been Pere Ubu's first album. From a UK fan's perspective, Banshees and PiL would have made the first post-punk records. We'd bought 'Death Disco' on 12"" records, but to buy an album in a canister, cut and mastered really loudly, bursting out of my speakers was something strange. These were not rock & roll songs, they didn't have a lot of dynamic to them at times either. They were danceable though, with a disco drumbeat, a dub reggae bass, playing Swan Lake on guitar, with Lydon screaming about his mother having cancer over the top of it and ending up on Top Of The Pops. That's avant-garde being taken into the fuckin' mainstream. To me that's very revolutionary and subversive. It was a real howl from the soul. Every time I listen to Metal Box, I remember what it was like to live in Britain in the late '70s when I was a teenager. It was a grey, damp, repressive country and that record reflects the state and times perfectly. It was a snapshot of the times."

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Gruff Rhys recommended Elektronik Turkler by Erkin Koray in Music (curated)

 
Elektronik Turkler by Erkin Koray
Elektronik Turkler by Erkin Koray
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I was playing a festival in Istanbul and asked Andy Votel and Dom Thomas if I should look out for any records while I was there. I got a bunch of records from shops, taking them to the counter where I was asked 'do I want them with the picture sleeve or without?' So I asked 'what's the difference?' and it was half price without the sleeve! So I took them without the sleeves, which they removed and tried to chuck away into the bin, but I convinced them to keep the sleeves for themselves. Anyway, I got a bunch of records and many of them were incredible - I used to play and dance to them a lot. They're really upbeat and vibrant with a brutal electric sass fizzing through them, with rhythms that were new to me and this whole new world opened up. I got hold of this Koray album, which is really playful and has had a direct influence on me musically and maybe took me out of Anglo-American song writing [habits]. Although it engages with Anglo-American rock, it's a unique album. It's a parallel pop universe that we're not exposed to. We're more exposed to the music of the economic settlements of the post-second World War!"

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