“How to dress, how to play, how to dance”: S.C.U.M pick their 12 most influential albums

S.C.U.M aren’t hanging around. No sooner have they digested their Christmas pud and folded up their festive jumpers than they’re releasing a brand new single ‘Faith Unfolds’ which is out this week. To celebrate its release and to hail the beginning of the New Year, the band have very kindly agreed to unveil S.C.U.M’s favourite 12 albums. Read on to find out about the band’s rather diverse influences, and some of the musical elements that have brought the band to where they are today.

Pharoah Sanders– Thembi
“Ideal music for walking on your own, makes Peckham appear brighter and a lot less shit. Michael White’s parts are perfect just like most of the stuff he does.”

Dr Octagon – Octagonecologyst
“A friend of my old man copied this onto cassette for me when I was eight or nine and I guess it was his way of trying to deter me from listening to Eminem and Slipknot.”

Brian Eno– Here Come The Warm Jets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjg7xE0a_QE

Add N to (X)– Avant Hard
“One of the noisiest records to accompany us across Europe in a freezing cold van.”

Les Rallizes Denudes– Heavier Than a Death In The Family
“I live for this record. Since I heard the title, let alone the content I’d written it on everything, like some weird school boy thing. When I finally managed to get a copy from a friend it was all I listened to for months. It’s without doubt one of my top five records of all time. It’s like a thousand bomber raid in your head, the deconstruction and massive ‘fuck off’ to traditional song structures and ideas is such a big inspiration.”

The Pretty Things – S.F Sorrow
“So much to bite into on this record, you can constantly discover new things on repeated listens. Harder than anything Beatles and The Stones ever put out. They’re another band I really admired, now they’re completely sub standard but watching live footage of them in the late sixties is a breath of fresh air even now after fifty years. They just tore shit up, this record and the singles that surround this time in their career are so well produced and beautifully written. They taught us a lot about the shit you can get down in one song.”

Ennio Morricone – Singles Collection Disc 1

“Morricone’s is one of the sweetest records. ‘Bird With A Crystal Plummage’ sounds like it’s written for a Riviera mountain side, but in reality is a brutal murder scene. We’re obsessed with how music can be interpreted when it doesn’t accompany a moving image, and how something so devastatingly beautiful can be the darkest accompaniment to a scene and vice versa.”

Big Black – Atomizer

“Pretty hard to beat this record, as albums go it’s faultless. The way Albini sings ‘Kerosene’ is like watching a film, guy tells a story like not many people can. It’s a pretty funny record and completely fucking reckless. The lyrics are spot on throughout. I’ve been trying to work out the sound on ‘Passing Complexion’ for years, still no closer.”

Neil Young– Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

“Like most of the best records on the planet, this creates the feeling of extreme happiness and following close behind, the inevitable feeling of intense sadness with a change of key or beat of the drum. On ‘Everyone Knows This is Nowhere’ no song preceding a track sounds the same.”

Butthole Surfers – Live Pcppep
“For some people it’s a joke, for some people it’s not their favourite by them but for me, I found this in a bin on Portobello after the market had packed up. I’d never heard them before but the same guy who made me the Dr. Octagon tape used to have a Butthole Surfers surf board which I used to chuckle at when I was small, so when I saw it I picked it off the top of a cracked computer keyboard and a stinking new balance trainer and took it home. I fucking love it to this day, it’s funny, stupid, loud and aggressive – as a band I love them and their attitude to making music. ‘Revenge of Anus Presley’ is fun to play at shitty fashion parties or in general to get rid of people.”

Captain Beefheart – Safe As Milk
“This is a bench mark for me in everything, how to dress, how to play, how to dance, it’s all dictated by this record. Beefheart’s lyrics are so wonderfully odd. There is so much fire in this record, the times the theremin decides to join in the party are my favourite.”

Serge Gainsbourg – Histoire de Melody Nelson
“Purely a concept record – a soundtrack to a film to a film that didn’t exist.”

‘Again Into Eyes’ is available now through Mute.