Learning Through Listening: Shabaka Hutchings Favourite LPs | Page 13 of 15 | The Quietus

Baker's Dozen

Artists discuss the 13 records that shaped their lives

12. Venetian SnaresHuge Chrome Cylinder Unfolding

I listened to this a lot throughout college, so around about 2005 and 2006. This album it feels like conversation, it’s like a speech! There’s this vocabulary used throughout the music, throughout the rhythm. The sounds clearly belong to his corner of the electronic genre. When I started listening to Venetian Snares, this entirely new vocabulary, new way of phrasing things showed up and made me ask myself how I speak. Is the way that I speak in line with the music that I listen to or is there actually another way of accessing a new musical vocabulary? ‘Ion Divvy’ was my access point and just opened up the whole album to me. The way he’s conversing with himself between this track and ‘Bonivital’ just amaze me. I’ve never heard anyone hold such an intricate conversation with themselves in music before. None of that makes any sense! But I don’t know enough about the genre to know if actually it’s just my novel relationship with this kind of music that’s causing my fascination, or if this is actually groundbreaking stuff. All I know is that when I heard it, my mind was officially blown and that I needed to start thinking officially about phrasing and vocabulary in my music. 

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