alltimetoptenrecords

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Pelican - Pelican

I think this band are the glue that kept my group of close friends together during our late 20′s. I’d not long met a bunch of them and we all went, it was a group of like 15, all slowly head banging with beers in hand. 

The last time I saw them I just wanted to hear the song mammoth and they played it on an encore. I screamed like a bitch. My girlfriend Cat also loves this band, the first time she told me i fell off the bed. Perfection!

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Richie Hawtin - Closer to the Edit

I don’t think anyone has done as much for techno as RH. Not only musically but through his engineering of technology, constantly pushing the genre forward. Ive seen him many times, the best was in Rome at a palace built in the war by Mussolini. People where smoking and putting out cigarettes on the marble floor. I made some friends easily as I had on an Old Dirty Bastard tshirt. It was nuts. I love this LP as it slowed down the temp to like 132 ish and has a really good vibe for in the car on the motorway. 

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Nils Frahm - Spaces

The only person I know of that can create modern electronic music and make it sound classical at the same time. I was introduced to this by a jewish girl who said he’s cool even if he is German. 

Says is such a moving song, and Said & Done also. I cant really say much else except he’s a genius.

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Les Baxter - Ports of Pleasure

I have always been into lounge music/cocktail music, Im not really sure how I did... perhaps it was growing up forever watching Arabian Nights films with Sinbad but also being drawn to cinema the sound of lounge is rotted in movies of the 50′s & 60′s.  Cat and I where in Portland recovering in the hotel from watching the Olympic opening ceremony. Weed is legal in Oregon and being tourists Cat was pretty adamant to try, I hardly partake these days but i hadn’t been to a dispensary before so we went. they rolled us big time haha, sold us the strongest stuff,  we had to bail back to the hotel and couldn't really get off the bed.. so high... anyway the next day was nearly a right off, Cat still wasn’t feeling great so I went on a mission to find this record. Id only been looking for about 45 mins when i was browsing the 60′s pile and to my amazement this was at the very back. i took it to the counter and was in shock, prob still a bit fried. the server joked saying I just put that out that day and i wondered who on earth would buy it. serendipity as fuck!!! 

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Andy Stott - North to South

I think around this time i was a bit disillusioned with the current state of techno, dubstep had broke in the USA and taken a huge nosedive into the shitpile it is now. Anybody who was good in dubstep distanced themselves and started to produce under a 4/4 again, Martyn, Skuba and 2562 where killing it but Andy Stott stood out taking the dub techno to a whole new place. I listen to his music more than anyone else id say. Its progressed so much and just got better and better. He played in Melbourne on a Thursday and it had to be over by 11 cos of noise restrictions. fucken shit. 

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Religious Girls - Dead Dog

Man, RG are without a doubt one of the best live bands i have ever seen. A friend Sam and I had been in the USA over the summer break and we spent the last two weeks in San Francisco. We ended up at a house party in Oakland and I was telling some guys about the bands we had seen in NYC, they turned out to be friends of the people who we had just met so they invited us to a show the next night. We were staying in the Castro (the gayest part of earth, i think homosexuality began there hahah jk) and had to get a cab across the bay to West Oakland. The cab driver wouldn’t let us get out, he was like you will die, so he waited for us to find the party which was in an old car factory then go back and tell him we where ok, he couldn’t believe two random Aussies would want to go to Oakland let alone the industrial west. The show was insane, RG played as usual on the floor with the crowd surrounding them. We ended up hanging with those guys for the rest of the trip and six months later I returned to tour with their other band around the USA, that was bananas, i went to 32 states in this Orange Chevy, you can see it in the clip. I still talk to these guys and we hung out in 2016 where they played a special house show just for Cat and I. Love them.  oh and i remixed one of there track years ago, here. 

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Kemistry & Storm - DJ Kicks

Man I must have played this mix about 1000 times. The John B drop at 41:10 especially. I had been listening to Jungle heaps and around this time the new drum and bass time signature was taking over which was good cos so much of the Amen break based jungle records all sounded similar. A friends dad would send us cassettes from London and we used to straight up just play them on our radio show, the balls hahahaha. Another mate was studying film and he was producing a show for uni tv, i helped him out as i could use his camera and we went to see them perform in Melbourne, I remember i had a yellow Liverpool away top with Carlsberg on the front and they gave me shit about it. I still have the super 8 cassette but cant bring myself to look at it, too cringe.  This would have bean around 1999.

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Sonic Youth - Disappearer

This was the first Sonic Youth album i got, and probably the one I still listen to the most. Its definately been on every walkman to ipod i’ve ever owned. A friend explained to me that they didn’t stick to a verse chorus verse stye of writing which really spoke to me as a confused teen. It showed me that you can vary of the path taken by most and create something better, its something that to this day i think about, always trying to do something different or at least think that way.  I got to see them in 1996 with the Beastie Boys, Beck, Bikini Kill, Jawbreaker and Foo Fighters. My friends had snuck into the festival the night before and slept on the roof, they didn’t sleep much and where knackered the whole day.  This same festival Ad Rock was introduced to Kathleen Hannah by Kim Gordon and they are still married. Quite touching really... lol oh I met Kim Deal also! 

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Beastie Boys - Ricky’s Theme

I got this around the end of 94, during the summer, my friends at the time has stumbled across a field of weed growing in the bush near their property. So i think I was stoned for the whole summer holidays. We had also started to goto raves around the same time so this album was always our hype up and chill out. This also featured in a film La Haine which was very influential as we had access to cameras and were making small little films. 20 years later I ended up working with the star of La Haine Vincent Cassel on Partisan and got to tell him this story. 

[alltimetoptenrecords]

Nine Inch Nails -  The Downward Spiral

This was a real turning point in my musical taste in 1994. I started to goto live shows every week, I was doing a radio show called La Commisaria with my best mate and we had a band called Dick Turtle. I was introduced to this album by a DJ at the station VYV 99.1 (The voice of the Yarra Valley) named “The Beast” he worked in a toy shop and always played industrial and heavy music dedicating them to different women each week.  I was really into techno and somehow this album combined the production of both electronic and metal. Blew my mind and changed my life. I ended up seeing them headline at a festival that year with Faith No More, Primus Bodycount and Tool. I was 14 and also tiny and had no business being in a mosh pitt but I survived... just.