Article31st January, 2022 / interview
Designer Discs interview
I was delighted to be the first guest on Matt Davey’s new podcast. It was an opportunity to reflect on my career path and attitude to design, and choose five songs that really mean something to me.
I haven’t sat for an interview for quite a while, and I really enjoyed talking with Matt (on a sweltering July day last year). We discuss my thoughts on design industrialisation, the importance of independence, and seeing with different perspectives. But most excitingly, I also choose five tracks to play.
Designer Discs is exclusive to Spotify because Matt wants to include full tracks, and Spotify makes that easy, although it’s weird timing because Spotify has been in the news all week due to Young vs Rogan, and I’ve made my feelings about that pretty plain. So, let’s listen with our free accounts! Hit play in the pretty embed, or listen in the app.
My chosen tracks are deeply autobiographical. Rather than reflect my current tastes and discoveries, I chose songs that have moved with me and stood the test of time. Before I sat down with Matt, I made loads of notes about my tracks as I wanted to do each justice and really nerd out about them. And so, I thought I’d share those notes here for my fellow music nerds.
New Order - Ceremony
So, imagine me, aged 14, into music but all chart pop and soft rock, still clueless. My dad has educated me with The Beatles and The Kinks and Queen and stuff, but I don’t have my own identity. I wander into HMV, and I see the new compilation from New Order. It’s called Substance, and it’s this elegantly presented collection of 12” versions of their best songs, including a new catchy one I’ve heard on the radio called True Faith, which I love.
So I buy this enigmatic bit of vinyl, and it changes everything. I get home, and the first thing I hear is Ceremony. And this track is fantastic because, as I subsequently discovered, it was an unrecorded Joy Division song. When Ian Curtis took his life, and the rest of the band decided to carry on as New Order, they recorded this song, and so it straddles these two unbelievably iconic bands.
And the words are like poetry: This is why events unnerve me, They find it all, a different story; Avenues all lined with trees — and big progressive guitar hooks and stuff. It’s such a statement.
Björk - Bachelorette
I wanted to pick an Icelandic artist because I spent a lot of time in Iceland in the late 90s; embedded in the art and music scene.
Björk doesn’t do half measures, and I love that. Many women in music have inspired me, but nobody quite as much as Björk, from her teenage punk stuff and The Sugarcubes to the way she makes her art and how she collects and collaborates. Massively inspiring.
It’s hard to choose a Björk track, but this one is massive and ambitious; this swirling narrative about a character called Isobel getting on a train and going to the city to confront all of these people that she loves. Taken all together, it’s musical theatre, especially if you watch Michel Gondry’s incredible video.
Radiohead - Reckoner
I’m sure I won’t be the only one to pick a Radiohead song, but I mean, come on. If I’m going to pick a classic white guys with guitars band, I could go R.E.M., The National, maybe something weirder like Super Furry Animals. But Radiohead. Wow.
I always think of my friend, Greg, who is even more obsessed with music and can be pretty blunt about what he does and doesn’t like. He’s heavily into dance and electronica these days, but chatting over a pint once, Radiohead came up, and he just said, really matter of fact, “Well, they’re the best band in the world, aren’t they?” And then just carried on talking about something else. It was like, yes, indisputable fact.
And it’s not miserable. Radiohead gets hit with that stick all the time, and it kills me. If you only find misery in the music of Radiohead, it tells me a considerable amount about how you see the world.
Radiohead needs to be there, but you don’t need to obsess over it. That said, I was obsessed with OK Computer, but then ten years later, we got In Rainbows, and from that point, I became obsessed with that. Every time I play it, I hear new things in the mix, and it’s packed with weird references.
Like Reckoner, which I think is a song about the cycle of life and death and impermanence, I only recently realised that the barely audible backing vocal in the bridge mentions the album title. I find new layers in it all the time.
Frank Ocean - Seigfried
I could’ve picked so many Frank Ocean tracks, but I picked Seigfried because probably nobody ever picks Seigfried, but it’s this understated thing of beauty. It’s like this strange ambient love poem — it’s a side to his music that you don’t expect going in.
I found many possible reasons why it’s called Seigfried, but forget all that and focus on it as a break-up song. Frank’s essential because he cuts through with all this incredible talent — his voice, his songwriting, his sexuality, his vulnerability, the weird ebb and flow of his albums. And he releases stuff only when he’s good and ready. I mean, you wait for years.
To me, he’s head and shoulders above anyone else trying to make music like this, totally doing his own thing with immense quality.
DJ Shadow - Midnight in a Perfect World
Endtroducing is in my top five albums forever, and it’s linked me to all sorts of Bay Area hip-hop and stuff. You imagine him getting to know all these strange tracks and albums for years, working out how to fit them together and then bang; this album comes out, and it’s like Dark Side of the Moon with decks. Other people can do this technically, but few conjure up these dense moods, and dark feelings —some tracks on Endtroducing feel pretty strange.
I saw him live in Nottingham in 2003, and it was an incredible experience. Two thousand people at Rock City. He spent the first 15 minutes explaining all his equipment, which was genuinely riveting. Then he played for two hours. And then he did a 40-minute encore.
So my closing track: there’s something melancholy about it; impending doom, doomsday clock, Watchmen, the threat to our false sense that everything is ok, I dunno. We’re already deep into uncertain times, and I fear for our future for so many reasons. Music helps, as a kind of medicine, I guess. Anyway, maybe this one is pessimistic, but it feels like a good closing track. And the beats are magnificent.