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Three Albums That Changed My Life: Fascinator

Fascinator is a strange one. You get the feeling you are transcending into someone’s weird and wonderful mind when you listen to his music or check out his videos. Not fitting in any one genre, he seamlessly shifts around the psychedelic realm with ease, and each one of his tracks is more of an experience than just a song. So it’s safe to say then, that his debut album Man is quite a trip indeed.

Part of the Spinning Top family (Tame ImpalaPondGUM), the release of Man marks the next step up in his career – and an accomplished one at that. It’s an impressive debut release from the mysterious musician, and has us eager to see whatever the hell he’ll come out with next.

Because we are so into Lord Fascinator and his record, Man, we asked the man himself to tell us a bit more about him and what three albums changed his life. Check out his answers below and head here to delve into Man – it’s well worth the ride!

Dirty Three, Horse Stories

I saw these guys for the 4th time recently at Sugar Mountain Festival and was reminded just how fucking religious they can be. Listening to them I get all kinds of tingles and tears. I feel nostalgic, hopeful and mournful all within a closed-eyed meditative breath. This album was my introduction to this – I was about to say “band”, but they really are something else. A conversation in a language of all languages.If you aren’t a hopelessly elevated devotee after the first three incredible songs of this album we are quite different beings.

Turkish Freakout (psych-folk singles 1969-80)

This is a compilation of…if you couldn’t tell… Turkish psych music. For some reason this stuff really pushes my buttons. I’ve spent a little time in Turkey and the second time I went to Istanbul I walked into a hip little record store and asked if they had any old Barış Manço and they looked at me like I was a total dork and tried to sell me a rare Euro pressing of Dark Side of the Moon, which I regret not buying now. But, it made me look more into Barış and realise he was actually huge and even had his own TV special. Other artists of note on this include Erkin Koray who I have since delved into deeply and Arif Sag. Actually it’s all good.

DJ Shadow, Entroducing

Who doesn’t love this album? Maybe people who haven’t heard it. Who hasn’t heard it? ANYWAY, I’ve been having a real resurgence with this shit. It fucking rules and definitely has had a deep influence on Fascinator. It wasn’t until I went back and listened to it a few years into ‘the fascinating’ that I realised the way I use loops and my whole approach definitely borrows from whatever he was doing on this record; an album he famously wrote almost entirely on an MPC.