The Records That Made Me: Metronomy

With The Records That Made Me, VF uncovers the vinyl releases that have influenced and shaped our favourite musicians, DJs and artists.

“I was saying recently how I’ve gone through my life judging things by their appearance and it’s never done me wrong”.

Metronomy frontman Joseph Mount has spent his vinyl-listening life being pulled in by artwork. Some of his earliest memories were spurred by a fascination with covers, an unsurprising fact given the brightly coloured, visually exuberant artwork of Metronomy’s career to date.

“I remember there’s a Gypsy Kings record that my parents had that looked kind of crazy so I picked that one to listen to,” Mount recalls. “There was this Devo record they had, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, where they had coloured tights over their heads. I also liked Lou Reed’s Transformer. As a young boy, the artwork was a rather fascinating picture”.

This interest in artwork continued into adulthood with Mount’s listening habits and, ultimately, his own work. “I wouldn’t have discovered the bands that I’ve discovered if it weren’t for vinyl and being able to be intrigued by artwork,” he explains. “That carried on to when I finally released music, it didn’t feel like a real thing until it was out on vinyl”.

Read on to find out the records that made Metronomy’s Joseph Mount.

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Ramones

Road To Ruin

(Sire)

My parents would go to car boot sales and buy stuff in a half-educated way–they maybe would recognise some of the names on the record or know the band, but wouldn’t know much about them.

They bought this Ramones record. It’s the only one they had and I used to love it because of the artwork. It was weird, I used to have asthma attacks and for some reason, I’d like to listen to Road To Ruin and it would calm me down. I would have been very young, like five, or six years old and had this very strong connection to it.

On the front cover, it’s got cartoon drawings of the band, and on the back cover, it’s got a photo of them. I remember trying to match up the picture on the back to who was the drummer, that kind of thing. I have nice memories of that record.

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Beastie Boys

Hello Nasty

(Capitol Records)

This record was quite expensive. There were a few records which came out in the late ‘90s when I had a Saturday job and I would have to save up money to buy them. Hello Nasty was something I coveted and wanted–it’s a big, nicely packaged double album.

I remember buying it and because of what happens when you spend money on a record, you end up listening to it again and again. I spent the whole summer of 1998 listening to it non-stop and getting to know it very well.

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Marvin Gaye

What’s Going On

(Tamla)

I had this brilliant day once when I was in Totnes, where I grew up, and I went to a charity shop and someone had dumped their amazing record collection in a charity shop–mint condition, all very well looked after. The charity shop was selling each record for 50p.

I spent £10 and bought loads of incredible records, took most of them to a record shop further down the high street and sold them on for more money. Among them was Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, in perfect condition. That didn’t really mean anything to me at the time, I’d never listened to the album before but I’d seen it on lists of the hundred greatest records of all time, whatever.

It’s always quite interesting when someone tells you something should be brilliant and you listen to it and you’re like, well, I’m not really into it. But now I love that album and it’s become one of those records, where if I don’t know what to listen to, I’ll listen to it.

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Björk

Homogenic

(One Little Indian Records)

When I got Homogenic, it was when I was getting more interested in album artwork. I think Homogenic’s artwork was done by Me Company, a group of a few designers that would do a lot for Warp Records and Björk. It was when I suddenly realised people were actually paying attention to types of paper and their weights and embossing and all that stuff.

I guess, at the time, there was a bit of a renaissance for vinyl and people started thinking of more exciting ways to package things. Visually for me, if you’re ever going to put a record in one of those frames, Homegenic’s not a bad one to pick.

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Outkast

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

(Arista)

I think there are four records in this one because it’s a kind of quadruple album and two of those records have barely been played by me and the other two have been played like crazy.

The Love Below is a record that I completely played non-stop and almost wore out. That’s the record that if I saw it in a record shop, I would buy again because I probably need another copy.

Metronomy’s Posse EP Volume 2 is out now via Ninja Tune.

Read more of The Records That Made Me series here.