Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra’s Leah Kardos on the first and last albums she bought, and an all-time favourite
FIRST
Vangelis
‘See You Later’
(Polydor, 1980)
“This is not the first album I ever bought – that was Billy Ocean’s ‘Greatest Hits’, which I purchased with my pocket money in 1989 – but I have so much love today for this bleak, proggy, slightly jazzy, criminally underrated Vangelis album. I remember it being played at home when I was a kid, and being completely spooked by it. ‘Suffocation’ is terrifying and brilliant, and the full-length, cleaner-sounding ‘Memories Of Green’, predating the ‘Blade Runner’ OST, is a perfect gem.”
LAST
Blevin Blectum
’Omnii’
(Deathbomb Arc, 2023)
“I was completely charmed by this latest release from the experimental electronic artist Blevin Blectum – who is Bevin Kelley, one half of the experimental duo Blectum From Blechdom. It’s a wide-eyed trip through weird and wonderful retro-futuristic galaxy-scapes. It’s got something of the earnestness of late 1970s Vangelis, the awed scope of Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ and a dash of the alluring naffness of Ron Jones’ early soundtracking for ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’. An absolute winner.”
ALWAYS
Björk
‘Biophilia ‘
(One Little Indian, 2011)
“For me, it’s the most ambitious, generous and loving Björk record. The sound of an artist reaching out to the edges of the universe and into the microscopic matter of being, to encompass and articulate the poetry of existence. I remember when I first heard ‘Crystalline’. I was walking to work, and as the breakbeats kicked in I had to stop and lean against someone’s front fence until it was done. It was so visceral and amazing, it was like my body couldn’t take it.”
