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Appleblim‘s reputation was forged in the dubstep arena, but the listening tastes of the Bristol-based producer, DJ and label-owner in fact run far and wide.

His Rinse FM podcasts of 2008 hold a special place in FACT’s heart for representing the vanguard of contemporary bass music alongside classic jungle, folk, techno and much else besides – depicting a world where Alice Coltrane and Davy Graham rub shoulders with Gescom and 2 Bad Mice, where Mr Fingers and The Beach Boys meet T++ and Shed.

A lifelong wax obsessive who once worked the counter at Camden’s Record & Tape exchange and used to play bass in NME-approved math-rock outfit The Monsoon Bassoon, the Apple Pips head honcho knows his onions, and retains a wide-eared but discerning enthusiasm for new and old music of all kinds – a quality all too rare among established artists.

For this, the latest instalment in our monthly Five Records series, we asked ‘Blim – who plays the Bloc Weekend festival in Minehead, March 12-14, and will release a new EP, Lipsmacker, with Al Tourettes on Aus in May – to pick out a quintet of cherished records from his collection and tell us their significance to him. Below is what he came back with…

01: DEAD OF ALIVE
‘YOU SPIN ME AROUND (LIKE A RECORD)’
(EPIC 7″, 1984)

“This is the first record I ever bought with my own money, from Asda in Nottingham (my Mum had already bought me that cornerstone of UK hip-hop, Morris Minor and the Majors’ ‘Stutter Rap’!).  I vividly remember the first time I played it, sliding the fresh untouched vinyl out of the sleeve, the feel of the tone-arm switch on my dad’s turntable getting clicked to the ‘down’ position, the intoxicating smell of the brand new 7-inch, and then the pumping synth bassline hurtling out of the speakers! I reckon it’s begging for a re-edit, in fact I saw Richie Hawtin at The End about 8 years ago, and he dropped the beats, synth and bass from it into his set – it sounded fricking amazing!


“Obviously Pete Burns looked bonkers, and that was appealing…”



“When I was about 8 or 9 my mate’s mum was bang into Dead Or Alive, I used to call round his after school, and she’d put this on, and ‘Thats The Way (Uh Huh)’ and we’d dance around the living room! Now, i didn’t understand at the time that Pete Burns was a massive queen, and that this was essentially Stock, Aitken & Waterman doing the ultra-gay Hi-NRG style of Patrick Cowley and Bobby Orlando, but I must’ve had a penchant for gay disco very early on! Obviously Pete Burns looked bonkers, and that was appealing…I also loved Pet Shop Boys’ early stuff, which again was a British take on that camp electronic disco sound. I love the way that pop music can subvert you without you even knowing it, the way things get into your head and have an influence before you even really know why…”



02: DOC SCOTT
‘DRUMZ ’95’ (NASTY HABITS REMIX)
(METALHEADZ 12″, 1995)

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“This record just says it all for Drum & Bass for me, so sleek, so minimal, so tough, so much space – the perfect Metalheadz roller. I was lucky enough to make it to one of the last Metalheadz Sunday sessions at The Blue Note on Hoxton Square [in London]. The queue was massive and there were people from all over the world repping at it, that was the first time I’d experienced that – once inside it was easy to hear why. I followed Metalheadz round countless other venues after that: Dingwalls, Leisure Lounge, Heaven.


“Countless times we’d stagger out of a Grooverider set and just be like ‘What the f**k just happened?'”



“I just remember the feeling of being pummeled by these insane beats. For me it was a kind of an innocent time, in the sense that I hadn’t a clue what these records were, how they were made, where one stopped and the next started…countless times we’d stagger out of a Grooverider set and just be like ‘What the f**k just happened?’, your head ringing with the echoes of these incredible beats, that just took you out of your body and somewhere else entirely. I can feel the shivers down my spine and almost smell the smoke and see the strobes in my head as I listen to this…I proper used to stand right by the speakers, and I know now that my ears are suffering for it, so kids: INVEST IN SOME EARPLUGS EARLY! Don’t be a div like me…”


03: BERT JANSCH
IT DON’T BOTHER ME
(TRANSATLANTIC LP, 1966)

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“I wanted to be ultra cool and pick all kinds of well obscure things, but I just can’t leave out Bert…it’s associated entirely with a particular time, place and person really, one of my best mates when I first moved out of home and into bedsit-land in Plymouth. He had been given a box of old vinyl by his ex-girlfriend’s dad, as he [the dad] didn’t have a turntable anymore. It ended up having a massive influence on us, as it had Nick Drake, Robbie Basho, Derek Brimstone, Pentangle and of course Bert Jansch in it.


“I’d just dropped out of school and it sums up the feeling of freedom I was having…”



“The cover says almost as much as the music for me, a bare mid-’60s bedsit, just a mattress and a couple of cool cats sat around – completely what we thought our lives were like! My mate busked with his acoustic guitar, and this record was on every night in his place. I’d just dropped out of school and it sums up the feeling of freedom I was having…The style of singing and playing was unlike anything I’d heard before; some might say his singing isn’t his strongest point, but I love his voice, I love people with individual voices, just being themselves. And the guitar playing, it’s insane, so complex – but it sounds so effortless…

“Again, I knew Bert before I was aware of it, through Jimmy Page’s guitar playing for Led Zeppelin – you can hear Bert’s influence on tracks like ‘Blackmountainside’ (check Bert’s ‘Blackwaterside’) and ‘Bron Y Aur Stomp’ (check Bert’s  ‘The Waggoner’s Lad’). Apparently Jimmy used to sit in awe watching Bert down in the folk clubs of Soho. It’s a time I romanticise massively in my head, so much amazing music came out of that scene: Davey Graham, John Renbourn, John Martyn, Paul Simon, Sandy Denny…”


04: DIGITAL MYSTIKZ
‘NEVERLAND’
(DMZ 12″, 2005)

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“OK, time for a FWD>> anthem. Trust me, when Hatcha and Youngsta first started dropping this down at Plastic People, it used to go off! Triple reload style! Mala just consistently does things that little bit different, nothing sounded like this at the time. That sparse, almost electro drum intro, which he drops in with the 808-style bass, fully in, no effing about! I love that, there’s so many supposed ‘rules’ of how to make a dancefloor anthem but sometimes people just do their own thing and it just…works. The weird almost flute-y melody, the incomprehensible chants, it all just keeps building and building, and then…the bleeps! Standing in a dark room hearing that breakdown through a massive system, it’s taken me so far out of my body, it’s better than any drug. Cheesy but true!


“It’s taken me so far out of my body, it’s better than any drug.”



“The early days of DMZ and FWD>> were magical for me, I have too many amazing musical memories of that time. I remember looking up once at DMZ when it was in 3rd Base, after having my eyes closed, raving to ‘Anti War Dub’ by Mala, and the entire place was absolutely going off – I mean every single person front to back was shocking out to a ridiculous degree, and seriously everyone had a massive smile on their faces, from behind the decks, to the back of the room! It’s one of those moments that stays with you forever, and I really hope one day I can manage to give people something similar; I think that’s what everyone’s striving to do when they DJ isn’t it? To create a pocket of happiness and magic…flipping heck I’m such a hippy!”


05: JAN HAMMER GROUP
‘DON’T YOU KNOW’
(NEMPORER 7″, 1977)

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“OK, this is off the LP Melodies, and full props must be given to Max Tundra for turning me onto this…it’s gorgeous. It’s a classic example of one of those records that when you first hear it you have no idea what decade it was made in –  it could be this year, it could be ’86…in fact it’s ’77.

“I played with Andrew Weatherall at Watergate in Berlin last year, and he played a set that typified that vibe completely, I was just grooving away thinking, where and when the heck are all these tunes from! I had made a bit of a dick of myself as I warmed up for him, ‘cos i had started my set too fast – by the end I was playing all this Funky and Techno at +5, and it was just far too banging for that early in the night. And there’s Andrew Weatherall, someone I’ve been inspired by since i was 15, standing behind me getting ready to go on, and i’m just cringing ‘cos I can’t just pull the pitch down now…arrrrrrgh!


“I had made a bit of a dick of myself as I warmed up for Andrew Weatherall…”



“What he did next was just proof that he was a dude who has been doing this a long time. He started with a long ambient piece, then slowly built up from there, all these 100 bpm, slow-burning god-knows-what disco and post-punk tunes, then into deep house, then gradually into the sickest new-school acid and house set (well I think it was new-school! They could all have been Future Sound B-sides for all I know!). Definately a pro! Well, back to the Jan Hammer tune: the shimmering synths, the bubbling oscillations, the soulful vocal – it ain’t all about ‘Crockett’s Theme’, you know (absolutely massive tune though!). File under ‘Sexy Space Funk Groove Comedown Soul Anthem’…or something.”


Appleblim appears at Bloc Weekend at Butlins, Minehead UK, March 12-14.  Appleblim and Al Tourettes’ Lipsmacker EP (featuring remixes by Linkwood and Deadboy)  is out on Aus Music in May, and Apple Pips has new music coming from Orphan101, Komonazmuk, Joe and Arkist in the next few months.

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