Under the Influence: XAM Duo

You may already know Matthew Benn and Christopher Duffin via their respective work with psych explorers Hookworms and DIY dreampoppers Deadwall, but the pair also work together as XAM Duo, whose mesmeric debut album draws from a sublime combination of droned-out electronics and astral jazz. We asked them to provide an introduction to ambient music, and while they admit these tracks may not "traditionally" fulfil that criteria, the playlist certainly meets their own definition – as Benn explains, “I treat it as music you can fall asleep to.”

Gas – Untitled 2

[Pop, Mille Plateaux, 2000]

Matthew Benn: “I sent my friend some tracks that I was working on, and he said, ‘You should give this a listen.’ I was like, ‘Shit, it’s already been done!’ It’s a very natural sound; it sounds like running water and wind blowing in the trees. It’s not his most ambient album, but it was the first one I listened to, so it’s the one that’s stuck with me the longest.”

Christopher Duffin: “The dance element is really subliminal. When we do our live sets we want to incorporate a little part of that, rather than just being really heavy all the way through.”

The Necks – Open

[Open, Fish of Milk, 2013]

MB: “We went to see The Necks while we were in the middle of recording this album. I’d never seen them before; it’s super intense. All their albums are one track and usually an hour long – this particular one’s a bit more experimental. There’s no electronics, it’s super spacious and minimal – it taught me not to be scared of playing one little phrase round and round again, and develop on that. If you do it properly it can become quite meditative. ”

CD: “I remember reading a quote, I think it was in Miles Davis’s autobiography; he said silence is the easiest thing to play, but the hardest thing to make sound right. I’ve always really liked that; things don’t have to be constantly in your face.”

Terry Riley – Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band

[A Rainbow in Curved Air, CBS, 1969]

MB: “We recorded the first time we ever played together. We went out for Indian food, sent lots of records to each other and just talked about music for maybe a month or something. I knew Chris was planning on playing saxophone, and I was sending examples of saxophone with synthesizers like this album. Terry Riley had this set-up called the 'Time Lag Accumulator’ – it’s got this really disorienting effect where he’d play something and then it appears in the other channel 15 seconds after. It all gets really chaotic, but in a really beautiful way.”

CD: “On the track I Extend My Arms we actually looped the organ that way… well, we didn’t loop it, it was a very long delay and a very short delay to emulate a similar kind of sound. That was one of the records that really blew me away when Matt sent it over.”

Spacemen 3 – Feel So Good

[The Perfect Prescription, Glass, 1987]

MB: “Probably my favourite album ever. There’s a few other tracks on this record that I could’ve picked – maybe like Transparent Radiation or Ecstasy Symphony would’ve been more apt – but this one has a drone running all the way through it, and it’s so softly sung and played.

"The horns remind me of those old Stax records, and The Rolling Stones in the early 70s: I Got The Blues, stuff like that. I have a playlist on my phone where I’ve actually taken the two loud songs off this album, so it’s kind of… ‘all chiller, no filler’. It’s got to a point now where the opening chords of that playlist are almost like a sedative. If I ever need to get to sleep I just put that on, I’m just instantly flat out. So I probably usually don’t make it to this song that I’ve picked.”

Ornette Coleman – Sleep Talking

[Sound Grammar, Sound Grammar, 2006]

CD: “This kind of spiritual, jazz-tinged stuff has formed the basis of a lot of the more ambient kind of stuff on our record. This track sounds exactly like the title suggests; there’s beats that almost fade in and out and vaporise, it feels really lucid.

"The saxophone lines sound like half-remembered thoughts or conversations; it just keeps trailing off and separating itself, which I really like. I love all of Ornette Coleman’s stuff, but this track just floors me every single time.”

Alice Coltrane – Journey into Satchidananda

[Journey into Satchidananda, Impulse!, 1971]

CD: “The first time I heard it, it just absolutely took me to another place. When I got into Alice Coltrane, I’d read about what it would sound like, and it kind of sounded exactly as I was expecting and not like I was expecting at all. We both love Pharoah Sanders, who’s on this record, and Rashied Ali plays drums on it as well, who’s just the best.”

MB: “I listened to this album a lot in Morocco, and when I put this album on now it almost sounds like dry heat, like desert.”

Luke Abbott and Jack Wyllie – Xantako

[Luke Abbott and Jack Wyllie, Buffalo Temple, 2015]

CD: “The very first thing that Matt sent over. I just presume, when anybody asks me to play saxophone on anything, they just want a million notes a minute, but hearing this piece felt really comforting. You can hear the air flow, you can almost feel the instrument in your hands. It totally just takes you on this really sedate journey without pushing you around.”

MB: “It reminds me of how they did those Colin Stetson records – they put something like 25 microphones all over him, just playing one saxophone part, so they recorded his throat, and the air, and all the valves... It sounds very natural and organic.”

John Hassel and Brian Eno – Ba-Benzélé

[Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics, Polydor, 1980]

CD: “I just panicked and thought, ‘Brian Eno!’ After the first chunk of recording that we did, I did a bit of research about bands that have natural-sounding instruments as well as electronics, and this record came up. It just helped me think about the shape of the sound, and the space, and how it’s quite delicate but it pulses at the same time. I also love the fact that they fell out after it: after Eno did My Life in the Bush of Ghosts [with David Byrne], John Hassel didn’t like it, and he told him, haha.”

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XAM Duo is released via Sonic Cathedral on 4 Nov. The band support Anna Meredith at Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds on 1 Nov, and The Early Years at Wharf Chambers, Leeds (24 Nov) and Aatma, Manchester (25 Nov)