Simian Mobile Disco are ready. Ready to continue knocking the dance music world dead with their unique blend of techno and progressive dance floor ambiance, as expertly demonstrated by their universally hailed album Cerulean. It marks the start of the latest chapter for the duo, revisiting their dance music roots and developing an updated and hi-tech live spectacle. Ahead of a live album on the cards, an appearance at London's Factory 7 and a slated appearance at alpine based festival Snowbombing (probably the first of a year packed with dates), Pulse asked James & Jas to choose their 6 most defining inspirations and the sounds that shaped their musical aesthetics and styles. Over to you boys...
Aphex - Xtal
The first track on Selected Ambient Works 1 - this was one of the first of the Warp records that I got. Subsequently Warp records became a gateway into a world of electronic music that I knew nothing about. I listened to this over and over again, wondering what kind of instruments and effects you would use to make these sounds.
Freak - LFO
Psychedelia doesn't have to be wafty, dreamy sounding stuff. This is aggressively, weirdly psychedelic music and I remember searching for clubs where they might play records like this.
Steve Poindexter - Computer madness
Music technology has come a long way since this was made but there is something about the raw, instinctive spirit of this record that makes me wonder if we are improving the right things. This still feels like an exciting record because it's so human, so loose. It's easy to over think things when you have the luxury of going back to fix them, it takes balls to not fix things these days but records like this remind us that it's worth it.
BBC Radiophonic - Dr Who Theme Tune
We are big fans of the Radiophonic workshop stuff, the adventurous attitude towards making sounds is something that has always been at the heart of what we do.
Cluster - Holly Wood
Coming from a band background but becoming increasingly obsessed with electronic music, the Krautrock scene made lots of sense to us. You have the droney, repetitive, austere aesthetic that we were learning to love in techno but with instruments that we recognised. This was encouraging, they didn't have a 909 but they were making music like this, perhaps we could too?
Plastikman - Spastik
True techno defies musical notation, it's about sound and texture and generally it's simple. What we have here is essentially one drum machine and a delay box and the results are one of the best techno records ever made. It's a lesson to any of us who have looked at a track session that's not quite working and seen stacks of layers; the solution is probably not another layer.
Simian Mobile Disco play Factory 7, Hearn St Shoreditch on Friday 22 February. Head here for tickets and see here for tickets to Snowbombing 2013.