Music
The records that shaped All We Are & BLESSED
The two acts are playing Red Bull Sound Select in Sydney this month and share their musical influences.
For this month’s Sydney leg of Red Bull Sound Select, we’ve enlisted Liverpudlian rockers All We Are, Sydney rapper BLESSED and Sydney vocalist and electronic multi-instrumentalist Exhibitionist to strut their stuff, all carefully curated by St Jerome’s Laneway Festival.
If you’re not familiar with All We Are, the post-punk trio has just dropped their debut album, Sunny Hills, touring around Europe in support of the release.
BLESSED, on the other hand, produces unique alternative tunes, influenced by rock, rap and everything in between, following on from the release of his self-produced Love Letters EP.
We asked All We Are to share 5 albums that shaped their sound, and BLESSED to share 5 amp-up rock tracks that shaped his.
ALL WE ARE
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People (2002)
Back at the beginning of the band we went on a writing session in Norway. This record was the soundtrack of that time and was at the birth of All We Are.
Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004)
Funeral was a gamechanger for us when it came out. The energy and drive coupled with the tender lyrics changed how we listened to music at a pretty young age.
New Order – Movement (1981)
Post-punk was at the core of our second record, Sunny Hills. Movement was one of the records that was on heavy rotation in camp AWA and the riffs and drum style of that record were really influential.
Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012)
This record changed our lives for sure. Although coming from a totally different world, the intimacy of the album is something that you can hear on AWA LP 1.
Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (2012)
What a record this is. Melodically and harmonically we took so much from this album. When we wrote LP 1 we also played to projections of movies and mixed the audio into our demos to try to get that cinematic sound and feel that defines this album.
BLESSED
Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
Bloc Party - Banquet
Nirvana - About A Girl
Limp Bizkit - Rollin'
Good Charlotte - Lifestyles Of The Rich & Famous
All We Are, BLESSED and Exhibitionist play Red Bull Sound Select in Sydney, curated by St Jerome's Laneway Festival, on October 27. RSVP here.