A selection of Ty Segall’s favourite songs
“I get excited by the idea of pushing people that like my previous records,” Ty Segall began. “It’s like how I enjoy with some of my favourite artists, where they’re like, ‘Oh, so you like this poppy record? Ok. Can you handle the really fucked-up one that comes after it?’ If you’re still buying the ticket to the ride, well, alright, let’s keep going.” It’s a revealing statement from the garage rock stalwart.
Ever the restless creative, Segall’s voluminous plethora of bands, side-projects, and 15 solo albums cover the vast gamut of fuzzed-out lo-fi in all its scuzzy permutations across heavy metal, sun-bleached psych and even progressive, percussive arrangements on latest album Love Rudiments.
Hailing from California’s Laguna Beach and surfing since the age of ten, the heady spirit of the West Coast’s freaky heritage hovers all over his work, coupled with a semi-conscious effort to preserve his beloved counterculture under threat from society’s pernicious sanitisation, explaining to Spin back in 2012: “It just used to be so open-minded. I remember being a little kid and seeing artists and hippies and acid-heads and burners and freaks all around. But they can’t afford to live there now. And you can’t get any of that rad, grimy shit back. Because someone’s scrubbed it away.”
Perusing his selection of Bandcamp tracks from 2021 illustrates his natural affinity for music that inhabits the fringes. It also touches on the disparate styles his gelatinous discography has mulched over. From weirdo egg punk to foggy jazz to cavernous sludge metal, Segall’s collated platter serves as an intriguing insight into his expansive, creative hinterland.
Oog Bogo’s ‘Tower’s Ladder’ makes sense, a dizzying blast of corroded garage jams throbbing with sped-up vocals and razor guitar shreds courtesy of The Meatbodies’ bassist Kevin Boog. “This EP is total weirdo four-track bedroom punk vibe,” he explained. “If you listen to it on headphones, you’re suddenly in Kevin’s bedroom with him. And I love that. It’s definitely not a band playing the tunes. It’s like you’re in the bedroom with the four-track.” In a similar vein are rubbery devocore aliens from Indiana, The Coneheads’ track ‘Out of Conetrol’, Segall praising succinctly “that whole record is the shit”.
Insisting on releasing Keeenly via his record label Drag City Inc, Japanese metal quartet DBMQ’s heavy-psych metal has a special place in Segall’s heart. “Not only have I been a fan of this band for years, I’ve been lucky enough to get to know them and they’re my friends,” he adds. “They’re the most annihilating, heavy, ripping, psychedelic live band around. This record does a really good job of capturing that power and that intensity.” Selected track ‘Blue Bird’ captures exactly the awesome power that so enchanted Segall after joining on tour back in ’19.
Leafing through the figurative Bandcamp record collection, Segall dusts off avant-garde blues maestro Snakefinger’s ‘The Spot’ from his debut LP Chewing Hides the Sand. Primarily known for contributing the atonal guitar noodles on eyeball-masked art collective The Residents, Segall laments, “He’s a really big influence on me as a songwriter and a guitarist in aesthetics and sonics. That record is just great, start to finish. He passed away of a heart attack. I feel like, as a fan, he could’ve made so much more. Obviously I would have loved to see him play. Far before my time!”
He adds: “I love those records where you get to walk into the world of wherever the music is being created and recorded, and it’s its own place while you are listening. This record feels very much like that to me.”
Speaking of Khan Jamal Creative Arts Ensemble’s Drum Dance for the Motherland, the ’72 piece of afrobeat jazz explorations is an intriguing choice, illustrating the nebulous nature of Segall’s creative intuitions, free and fluid to go in any direction, even on the same record.
