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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Scottish songwriter Kenny Anderson and Tower Recordings alum Helen Rush.
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Listed: King Creosote + Helen Rush
King Creosote
Kenny Anderson, a.k.a. King Creosote, has released more then 40 albums since he first took up his moniker in 1995. Most of the Scottish songwriter’s records are on his own label, Fence, but every once in a while, they surface on Domino Records. This year, that indie major dove into the massive King Creosote discography and picked out the best song, then had Anderson re-record them for the label’s North American audience, resulting in Thrawn, which hit shelves last month. Anderson has also been re-recording some of his songs with producer and electronic musician Jon Hopkins. Their collaborative album, Diamond Mine, is due for release on March 28.
1. Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
Try pressing play on your Talk Talk loaded Walkman as the bus leaves St. Andrews Square, Edinburgh, and prepare yourself for what happens to your heartbeat when the sight of the Forth Rail Bridge coincides with "Inheritance".
2. Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Rattlesnakes
For widescreen Scottish guitar bands, squint no further … in fact, the widest fisheye lens would struggle to capture the vista painted by LC&C. Scotland is small, but this record is huge.
3. Dexy’s Midnight Runners - Too-Rye-Ay
There’s one comment I’ll cherish above all others after my first gig with the Earlies in Preston, Lancs., and that’s the first "sounds like Dexy’s!" one (there were several). Celtic soul brothers were we.
4. Les Negresses Vertes - MLAH MLAH
Busking around Europe in the early ‘90s was a grimy lo-fi highlight of my musical life. I gave up busking in 1991, but can’t stop dusting off the accompanying soundtrack now and again.
5. O.M.D. - Architecture and Morality
For an example of the great tunes I first heard aged 14 at sailing club discos, the near-to-boiling "are these the girls in MY year!?" moment cruelly doused by choking dry ice and parents tooting their car horns outside … well, it just doesn’t get any better than this. And no, actually, it didn’t.
6. 90˚ South - A Distant Memory of Home
“Stunning three-part ambient piece about the journey of Adelie the penguin” is what Jason, my co-worker in our fence record shop, said in 2001, and he was bang on.
7. Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider
I cried real tears when I heard about Mark Linkous’ death. Talk Talk -> Sparklehorse -> King Creosote. Yeah, I wish :(
8. Fujiya & Miyagi - Transparent Things
I love driving albums, and this’ll get you 60 miles down the M6 in less time than you think.
9. A-Ha - Minor Earth, Major Sky
Yeah, thought I was too cool, huh? You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face when you crank this up and sing loudly (and proudly) to every track. Every. Single. Track. Laughing.
10. Gavin Bryars - Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet
My version has The Sinking of the Titanic on it too, and no snappy sentence can convey how majestic and spell binding this music is.
Helen Rush
One lysergic third of the psych-folk group Metal Mountains, Helen Rush first made a name for her noodles and jam with that lumbering Northeast collective Tower Recordings — long before the freak folk fad and the Finns came down from their fjords. (Or, as Dusted’s own Ethan Covey confessed“one of the underground’s best kept secrets.”) Rush, P.G. Six and Samara Lubelski released their debut proper as Metal Mountains, Golden Trees, on Amish Records earlier this year. Aside from repping obvious touchstones like Bert Jansch and Pentangle, Rush also writes about discovering Faust, what it’s like to be a woman who likes Incredible String Band and, curiously enough, listening to the winter version of “Summer Babe” on a hot summer day herself.
1. Morgen - S/TOne of my all-time favorite records. The term “Essential Listening” comes to mind. I guess this came out on the cusp of that ‘60s psych pop / ‘70s heavy psych era. I don’t know what that kind of cusp that would be called but it should totally be adopted as an astrology term or something. Love, love, love this record... did I mention it’s sexy, too?
2. Bert Jansch - S/T
Beautiful songs. Bert sounds so earnest. It’s such a warm record and beautifully sequenced. Perfect for solo times in winter rooms shadowed with flickering light.
3. Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted/Perfect Sound Forever/Watery Domestic
Reminds me of sitting in an open door, catching the breeze of a hot summer day glistening with ideas. Some of my favorite Pavement songs are within these three titles.
4. Cold Sun - Dark Shadows
Listening to this record is like being on a carpet made of big soft bubbles floating through space and you are kind of going fast but in slow motion. Awesome.
5. Magical Power MAKO - Super Record
Such great sounds, amazing acoustic & electric blending/bending.
6. Damin Eih, A.l.k & Brother Clark - Never Mind
Images of psychedelic butterflies floating around smoky mirrored rooms with multicolored walls covered in falling stars engulfed by the sounds of echo and fuzz guitar… yeah, something like that
7. Pentangle - Basket Of Light
This is a great, great easy listening record, very soft & mellow, and I really do mean that in a good way.
8. Faust - Faust IV
I was so glad when I first bought this record. It reminds me of starting to discover sound for sounds sake and of how it changed us, my friends and I. FYI: “Giggy Smile” is an AMAZING song.
9. Incredible String Band - The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion
I once read that 5000 Spirits is the only ISB record that girls love. Well, I am a girl and I love that record, but I also love their first record and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter so, are those “girl” records now too?
10. Areski & Brigitte Fontaine - L’incendie
So simple, sparse and arresting and I love the black & white cover, of course. Chanteuse et I’homme x La Musique = Extraordinaire
By Dusted Magazine
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