8 Tracks: Of All Sorts With Xam

It’s hard to do this clip justice with words, really. It absolutely floors me every time I watch it, even in its low-res, crappy YouTube quality. There are tons of proper songs and records I could talk about in reference to Sanders and everything he’s been associated with, but a lot has been said about them already, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to cheat a little and talk about one of the best things the internet has ever spat out at me. I think I may even prefer his sax playing to Coltrane’s, which I know is bordering on sacrilege.

The original recording of this song is cool (perhaps best known for featuring in the film Love Crime), but this stripped-down version recorded in a tunnel near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is just something else. The natural reverb and resonance of the tunnel creates this beautiful wash of sound. We actually have a harmonium at our practice space and have done some recording with it, maybe that will come out at some point. It sits beautifully with synthesizers as well as saxophone. People talk about “spiritual” jazz, and everyone goes “yeah, yeah…” and rolls their eyes a bit, but this just can’t be described as anything else. It’s perhaps especially weird for someone like myself to love spiritual music so much when I wasn’t even christened, and only ever really step foot inside a church when some has died or is getting married, but I find so much to admire in the dedication and intensity of it. The part midway through where he gets into the circular breathing and his eyes roll into the back of his head; the man totally leaves this earth and joins the astral plane, if just for a minute or so. Even just how symbolic it is for him to start at the entrance of a tunnel, walking from the light into the dark and back out of the other side, it’s almost like he’s trying to cram the ebb, flow and intensity of a lifecycle into 10 minutes with two simple instruments.
– Matthew Benn

I love how she combines the weird and cosmic with the dancefloor. This song leans towards the former, but on her more recent records she strikes that balance between the two really well. I love a lot of techno, house, electro and more dance friendly things, but I’m always going to be listening to that kind of stuff in the car, or while I’m cooking at home rather than in a club, so I suppose it serves a different function for me and, as such, I prefer it a little more abstract. That whole culture of b2b DJs and club nights that start at 1am has never been my thing: I’m more of a ‘four pints and an early night in with the dog’ kind of guy.

We’ve tried a couple of more techno elements during our live improvisations, but in a very subtle way, a bit like some of Karen Gwyer’s stuff, and other music I’m into like Gas. I’m a big fan of most of Opal Tapes’ output, that new Personable album ‘Oyster’ is one of my favourites of the year. I try and buy everything she puts out; she’s one of those artists for me. There’s barely a dud in her whole back catalogue. When I was still doing solo shows I played an earlier slot at a gig she was doing while she was very heavily pregnant, so she understandably didn’t want to hang about at a stinky venue in Leeds for very long, and as such I didn’t get chance to tell her how much I love and respect her music, so here it is in writing instead.
– Matthew Benn

It probably goes without saying that I’m a massive fan of the music that came out of Germany in the ’70s. The Can and Amon Düül II influence is a bit more apparent in Hookworms, but my real favourite is the more experimental stuff from around that period like Cluster, Harmonia, Ash Ra Tempel, etc. XAM Duo supported Michael Rother recently and he played some Harmonia stuff, which was very special to finally hear live, even if it was minus the Cluster lads.

The rhythmic element of Cluster has been hugely influential on the way I play and program synths. Even when there’s no drum machines involved their songs totally pulse and groove in strange and polyrhythmic ways, which is something I’m always attempting to do. ‘Zuckerzeit’, ‘Cluster II’, and ‘Sowiesoso’ would all feature in my favourite albums list. Some of their ’80s output like ‘Grosses Wasser’ and ‘Curiosum’ have their moments, too, and that last album ‘Qua’ was surprisingly excellent. That’s the dream, you know? To be in your 70s/80s (or even 40s/50s!) and still be making totally out-there, forward-thinking, experimental music and just not giving a fuck, right up until the end of your life in Moebius’ case. The stuff with Eno, with Harmonia, by themselves, and with tons of other artists, it’s all great and has its place. The back catalogue they share is so vast that I think I’ll still be discovering new things they’ve recorded for the rest of my life, which I reckon is the most special gift you can leave behind on earth. What a wonderful pair of humans.
– Matthew Benn

When that expanded (excuse the pun) version of ‘The Expanding Universe’ was released with an hour or so of extra material included it totally felt like Christmas. It’s a big ask to listen to that whole thing in one sitting, but the enormous scale of it means you can keep going back to sections and discover new things, and it never gets old. The random/generative aspect of her music is something I’m always aspiring towards, but to be honest it’s easy enough to not even get into the technical reasons why I love her music and just say: it’s really nice. It’s just straight up lovely and pleasant to listen to. I find her music extremely calming, and it is just the right side of peaceful, almost new age relaxation music. All of her pieces take their time to slowly unfold, there is no worrying about track lengths, and the beautiful tones and drones she coaxes out of her Buchla and EML synthesizers are left to develop at their own pace, which always stops me worrying about the fact that a lot of the pieces I record are usually more than 10 minutes long, and often more than 20. I’ve not got into releasing anything past the 25 minute mark yet, though, as the limitation of one side of vinyl is always at the back of my mind. I get a huge amount of enjoyment from the other minimalist, experimental synthesizer artists of the ’60s and ’70s like Suzanne Ciani, Morton Subotnick, Charles Cohen and Éliane Radigue, as well as Spiegel. For me they’re the obvious continuation of the work that went on in the Radiophonic Workshop, and before them the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète. – Matthew Benn

I chose this for a few reasons. Firstly, Coltrane’s music, especially his later period work on records like ‘Ascension’ and ‘Offering’, have been hugely important to Matt and I whilst putting the XAM Duo project together. We bonded over those records in a big way and, while it’s difficult as a sax player to say Coltrane influenced us, as I certainly don’t sound or play like him (don’t get the wrong idea, jazz fans), his work certainly has. The second reason I chose this is because of Stan Getz’s sound. When I started playing the saxophone Getz’s sound was the sound I wanted to emulate – my first teacher, an incredible guy called Pete Fraser, was a Stan Getz devotee which would play a huge part in this – and while my style has changed somewhat to how I played and felt back then, I can still hear that influence on my tone, it’s breathy, sub-toned and I try and be as lyrical as I can rather than as flashy as I can. I think it’s incredible to hear two masters play the same instrument in such a different way, their lines, tones and overall vibe are so different, but there they are standing side by side, like chalk and cheese yet still able to complement each other. The third reason I chose this is because Pete died earlier this year and so, this one’s for you Pete. Thanks for everything. – Christopher Duffin

What can I say about Alice Coltrane that hasn’t already been said? Again her records were such a huge influence on us, records such as ‘Journey Into Satchidananda’ and ‘Turiya Sings’ were pored over at great length when Matt and I first met (and still are to this day) and you can hear little nods to her music in our music for sure. The reason I chose this video is because watching her play is utterly mesmerising, it’s so visceral and intense yet so beautiful and tender. Not to compare her to her husband just for the sake of it, but John would create sheets of sound on his saxophone and I think that Alice does the same here on her harp, but she takes it to the next level and tears open the universe with this. It’s cosmic, it’s uplifting, it’s meditative and it heals me… I should make this my alarm call thinking about it. Watch it and then watch it again. – Christopher Duffin

This track has been at the top of my most played list on iTunes for at least two years now. It’s my go to track when I have a short car ride, walk to the shops, want to hide in the work toilets for a bit or need a quick lift. I was a little late to the party with Broadcast, so I never got to see them play live, but their records are a constant go-to for me. I love how this track feels so unruly and like it’s held together with the smallest of threads, but in terms of influence it’s the outro of this track that I try and use as a reference point as often as I can. In my other band, Deadwall, I’ve tried to recreate the pitch shifts and sliding synths that are peppered over the rhythm section so many times… I’ve totally failed every time (as I’m not the synth/electronics whizz I pretend to be) but it’s always ended up with me coming up with something cool and fun. The unflinching repetition of the band as it all falls down is something that influences both bands I play in. There always has to be a rock, a focus point and that’s what I think we’ve achieved with the XAM Duo record, it might get a bit heavy at time but I think there’s always something there to hold on to. – Christopher Duffin

I couldn’t write a list of influences without mentioning Prince. None of the music I make has ever sounded anything like him at all (not without trying though, ammirite friends?) but he has absolutely influenced the music I make. Mainly due to the fact that he was everything and didn’t conform to labels; he was jazz, he was pop, he was funk, he was rock. Everything. The thing he taught me was that you shouldn’t just try and conform to whatever label your music/band might kinda/nearly fall under. Just play and see what happens. I was lucky to see him play live quite a silly amount of times, but the moments that really stood out were the aftershow parties in small(ish) clubs when, at 3am, he would just lie on his back and play 20-minute long blues guitar solos, or the time I saw him play drums for an Afrobeat band (and then bass and then keyboards and then guitar) like it was no big deal at all, and certainly not like he’d just played a three-hour arena show to 12,000 people. He was continually learning, playing and trying new things, and yeah the hit rate wasn’t always so great, and there were plenty of cringe moments, but he was out there doing it. His pop music was always so fucking weird, too, as a kid who grew up in a sleepy seaside town I just couldn’t get my head around this alien, this weird, spooky musical genius. I tried to find a link to the track ‘The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker’ but I couldn’t seem to find a decent version so this one came in at a close second… and actually it’s probably the best pop song ever written by a human being, if indeed he was one. – Christopher Duffin