Xenz – Influences

I remember this song from a music lesson at my junior school, we were given sheets of music paper and told to draw what we heard. I started drawing these little people walking along like music notes into this monster’s mouth. Everyone in class came over to see what I was drawing and I think this was one of the first times I connected music to drawing and felt some kind of thrill from my imagination. I must have been about 7 years old.

As a kid my dad used to take me for a drive at night to get me to sleep and he used to play this album called My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. He explained about this song being a live exorcism. It was terrifying but the hypnotic rhythm must have worked, it also set the scene for my love for tripped out music later in life.

Even now when I hear this I break out into a robot dance. I was about 10 years old when I first heard electro. We used to go to the park with a square of kitchen lino and spend all day practicing breakdance routines to tapes on our ghetto blaster until the batteries died.

The lyrics tell a story. The video was a window to New York. This was mind-blowing for a 12 year old kid living near York in Yorkshire back then. This, along with Beat Street, really got me into all things hip hop and USA. It was either this or be a punk.

I think this song was on rewind for about half a decade while I was a teenager. It reminds me of summer days in the park, we would blast these reggae tapes out of a car stereo while everyone sat on the grass and watched us paint a graffiti piece on a wall. Throughout my life since these years I have always had a love for dub reggae. It seems to be the thread that joins most of my influences musically.

Having spent most my childhood breakdancing to electro it was only natural that I gravitated to acid house. I loved how this album felt live and just has a different vibe and flow to other stuff at the time.

The influence electronic music and the rave scene has had on my work is significant. I chose this because there is darkness in this tune, an atmosphere seems to swirl in my head every time I hear it. I remember going to raves in old warehouses along the river Hull in the early 90s. This song sounds so good echoing round that derelict industrial landscape with the blue police lights as the only source of “disco lighting”. I feel blessed to have spent my teenage years with this music.

The comedown soundtrack of the 90s, it’s such an extra-sensory textural cosmic journey. We used to just put it on and draw crazy pictures in our sketchbooks, filling pages and pages while this music massaged the brain. It will always remind me of the times me and my mates were going through that “experimental’ phase.

Having lived in Bristol I feel this song encapsulates these times. It’s a recent release and is a tune I have been playing recently to get me back in that zone. I love the story-telling and the twisted lyrics. Knowing the guys as friends just makes the track even more special. Bristol is a very special creative place.

This is a bad influence but an influence all the same, there have been many times when this comes on and it has reminded me that nothing really matters. It makes me want to go out have some fun. I suppose it gets me hyped and ready for whatever. An enter the room type karaoke good time song…