5-10-15-20

This journal entry was influenced by a new Pitchfork news column in which guest contributors list the music they were in love with every five years of their life. See an example with Art Brut's Eddie Argos here.

TeamRobin:
Age 5

Pink Floyd - Keep Talking (The Division Bell, 1994)

My first real musical memory should have been one in which a young Robin has a major epiphany on a summer's day and dances in the street. As history will have it, it was in the back seat of my dad's VW Golf, with The Division Bell in the casette deck, and the voice of Stephen Hawking giving me a mini-lesson in how humanity unleashed the power of its imagination. All of this whilst we were parked outside an IKEA store.

It wasn't a major epiphany, and there was no dancing in the street - but at least the sun was out.



Age 10

Eels - Last Stop: This Town (Electro-Shock Blues, 1998)

I owe my parents for a lot of my early musical education; my mum for a double-cassette Motown compilation that I can remember inside out to this day, my dad for the hours of hearing Pink Floyd, Joy Division and Jimi Hendrix being blasted off the turntable. Very few artists or albums had the attention of the full family though, and we often couldn't agree on the music we should take for long road journeys - until Later With Jools Holland played host to Eels. Last Stop: This Town is a family favourite to this day, and Electro-Shock Blues is one of my Top 10 albums of all time.



Age 15

Jeff Buckley - Corpus Christi Carol (Grace, 1994)

Along with Muse's epic Absolution and The Black Keys' Thickfreakness, Grace was one of a number of albums taken on an ill-fated family holiday to Norway. Despite the sea-sickness, the mind-boggling cost of eating anywhere, and being stalked by rain everywhere we went, the music we took helped salvage what remained of our fragile collective sanity. The haunting beauty of Corpus Christi Carol is a standout from an album that never comes close to falling below the highest standard of artistic brilliance.



Age 20

Peter Broderick - Something Has Changed (Float, 2008)

As surprising as it may seem for me to not put any Sigur Rós, Cocteau Twins or Placebo (Robin's 'big three', as it were) into this list, my current listening habits mean that this is the most obvious musical link to me in the present day. Still in his early 20s and yet present on more albums than you could shake a stick at, Peter Broderick has been on the end of many "oh my god, that man is pretty fucking talented" plaudits, whether working with Efterklang, Horse Feathers, Library Tapes, or on his own solo records. The sublime Something Has Changed from his 2008 release Float (for Type Records) is a brilliant demonstration of how beautiful music can be when presented with not just the right kind of ingredients, but the right numbers. Minimal instrumentation yealds maximum rewards.