5. Matt Johnson

From Marc & The Mambas I bought Soul Mining, which was the huge The The album at the same time, and I played that all the time. I wanted to listen to this, but at first I was a bit unsure about it, it was all those elements, heavy on one side, commercial on the other, but also neither and it fell into this really weird area. Matt Johnson has this ability to make the most beautiful guitar melodies in the midst of all this noise, segues one to another. It’s all 60s psyched-out beats and droning guitars, and when you listen to that you think The Stone Roses really ripped it off, and not well. I used to listen to The The whenever I came to London, and had them on my Walkman the day I left school – the day everything changed, I’ve left school, listening to The The, things are going to be OK. I always associate them with liberation and freedom. This was a Christmas present, bought from WH Smith in Halesworth.