{"id":8082,"date":"2026-01-15T16:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T16:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/steve-davis-my-life-in-music-152859\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T16:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T16:16:09","slug":"steve-davis-my-life-in-music-152859","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/steve-davis-my-life-in-music-152859\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Davis \u2013 My Life In Music"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MAGMA
K\u00f6hntark\u00f6sz
A&M, 1974
<\/strong>Sometimes I don’t necessarily think you<\/em> find music, it<\/em> finds you. I went along to the Roundhouse to see the support band with a friend, and Magma were the headliners. I didn\u2019t really know about them at the time, but my musical outlook was altered from then on. It was totally unusual\u2026 it wasn’t playing by the rules that I’d been subjected to by radio or by peers at school. It’s quite funny how they have to be categorised \u2013 jazz-rock, prog, fusion \u2013 because they’re just their own entity, in my opinion. Magma are the musical equivalent of Marmite. Some people are just gonna scratch their heads, but for me, [Magma founder] Christian Vander is up there as a hero and a musical giant. They are my favourite band.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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MAGMA
K\u00f6hntark\u00f6sz
A&M, 1974
<\/strong>Sometimes I don\u2019t necessarily think you<\/em> find music, it<\/em> finds you. I went along to the Roundhouse to see the support band with a friend, and Magma were the headliners. I didn\u2019t really know about them at the time, but my musical outlook was altered from then on. It was totally unusual\u2026 it wasn\u2019t playing by the rules that I\u2019d been subjected to by radio or by peers at school. It\u2019s quite funny how they have to be categorised \u2013 jazz-rock, prog, fusion \u2013 because they\u2019re just their own entity, in my opinion. Magma are the musical equivalent of Marmite. Some people are just gonna scratch their heads, but for me, [Magma founder] Christian Vander is up there as a hero and a musical giant. They are my favourite band.<\/p>\n

ROBERT WYATT
Rock Bottom
VIRGIN, 1974
<\/strong>It\u2019s probably my most-played album ever. It reminds me of my childhood, and it\u2019s such a beautiful album. Obviously there were things that were upsetting about it, inasmuch as it was the album he made a year after having the accident [that left him paralysed from the waist down], but the poignancy added to the gravity of it. And the melodies are brilliant. If people have never heard that album before, they\u2019re like, \u2018What on earth am I listening to?\u2019 Which shows how much of a genius he is. I think even kids today would go, \u2018This is beautiful.\u2019 I used to strap mine in the back of the car and play them Caravan and all that, back in the day. A trapped audience, that\u2019s what you need!<\/p>\n

ALBERT MARCOEUR
Ma Vie Avec Elles
BAILLEMONT PRODUCTIONS, 1990
<\/strong>I ended up putting Magma on at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London in 1988, and it resurrected my interest in that style of music, over and above the soul music rabbit hole I\u2019d been down [for most of the 1980s]. In the Magma fan magazine, there was an article on Albert Marc\u0153ur. I\u2019d never heard of him, but they were raving about one of his albums, so I put it on and I absolutely hated it! But I\u2019ve learned that usually when you absolutely hate an album, it\u2019s going to become one of your firm favourites. And in three or four more listens\u2019 time, I was just hooked on how clever this guy is. He\u2019s been dubbed the French Frank Zappa. I don\u2019t speak French, but musically he was lighting my brain up.<\/p>\n

AUTECHRE
Chiastic Slide
WARP, 1997
<\/strong>I had a radio show on Phoenix FM, but it was becoming tough to come up with two hours of music every week, especially when I was still playing snooker a bit. So I hit upon the idea of inviting artists I liked to come on the show, and they would also pick all the music. There was a band called Sanguine Hum, and they chose a lot of electronic music, which was a real ear-opener to me. Chiastic Slide I thought was incredible, and really changed my musical leaning. Up until that point, I\u2019d been listening to more angular \u2018rock in opposition\u2019 stuff, but I found this quite beautiful in another way. The rhythms were more dancey, but there was an undercurrent of cleverness going on that appealed to me.<\/p>\n

CYRUS
Inversion
BASIC CHANNEL, 1994
<\/strong>As a result of discovering Autechre, I slowly started to listen to a bit more techno, even though I\u2019d never been anywhere [that played it] \u2013 I had a day job when the rave scene was going on! Along the way, I discovered dub techno, which I thought was more interesting than some of the absolute boof boof stuff. This is a 17-minute track that just repeats endlessly, and the beauty is in how slowly it evolves. I remember thinking, \u2018Maybe if my life had been different and I\u2019d have gone to Berghain or something, this would have been a good thing to have got off on.\u2019 Me and Kavus Torabi were invited to DJ at the Bloc weekender, and overnight we got the reputation for being techno DJs, which was funny.<\/p>\n

TEETH OF THE SEA
Highly Deadly Black Tarantula
ROCKET RECORDINGS
<\/strong>We used to DJ the track \u201cField Punishment\u201d quite a lot. And I\u2019ve got Mike Bourne of Teeth Of The Sea to thank for my next Sliding Doors moment, because I went along to Cafe Oto one night and he was there with a band called Hirvikolari, playing a modular synth. I\u2019d never seen one before, and I was transfixed, thinking, \u2018There\u2019s no keyboard, it\u2019s just a load of wires and flashing lights \u2013 how is he doing this?\u2019 So I went up to him afterwards and introduced myself and he explained what it was, and that led me to go and buy one for myself. So the next phase of my life became learning a modular synthesiser and realising how much fun it was. And that\u2019s when The Utopia Strong was formed.<\/p>\n

THE UTOPIA STRONG
Dreamsweeper
SELF-RELEASED, 2020
<\/strong>I was quite happy learning how to play a modular synth, but I hadn\u2019t envisaged that once our first album came out, I\u2019d be required to play on a stage. So that was a total mindfuck! We supported Teeth Of The Sea at Oslo in Hackney \u2013 it was sold out, and it was the most nerve-wracking thing I\u2019ve ever done in my life. But it went really well, and we decided to put the recording out on privately released vinyl. So Dreamsweeper was the moment when I actually felt like I came of age as a musician. I\u2019d broken free of the shackles of being an ex-snooker player and novelty, to actually there\u2019s something going on here. So I have a very special place in my heart for that particular album.<\/p>\n

PHILIP JECK
Vinyl Coda I-III
INTERMEDIUM RECORDS, 2000
<\/strong>My good friend Stunty has a YouTube channel called StuntrockConfusion, and he has introduced me to so many electronic, experimental, avant-garde composers that otherwise I\u2019d never have known \u2013 and Philip Jeck is one of them. He\u2019s a turntablist: multiple turntables, mixing, looping. It makes me want to get my Technics decks out and see what I could achieve, if I had two or three of them, and how you can mix all the stuff together. I\u2019m so upset he passed away [in 2022] because I would have loved to have seen him, I was just a little bit late to the party. But it\u2019s opened up a whole world of music that, once again, I didn\u2019t know existed.<\/p>\n

The Utopia Strong\u2019s Doperider is out now on Rocket Recordings<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post Steve Davis \u2013 My Life In Music<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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MAGMAK\u00f6hntark\u00f6szA&M, 1974Sometimes I don’t necessarily think you find music, it finds you. I went along to the Roundhouse to see the support band with a friend, and Magma were the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,65,5087],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-lists","category-steve-davis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}