credit: Ebru Yildiz
by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Locate S,1, the latest project of DIY staple Christina Schneider, are set to release their sophomore album, Personalia in April, a brilliant move past the confines of lo-fi and avant-garde. While 2018’s Healing Contest hinted toward this direction, the new record embraces pop from the heart, with personal songs and reflection of our ecosystem and where they fit into it, all delivered with infectious beats and shimmering hooks. Due out via Captured Tracks, Locate S,1 was kind enough to share some of the influences that lead to Personalia with us.
Give the title-track from Locate S,1’s upcoming record a listen below and see what music helped bring it all into being, from The Sylvers and Hot Chocolate to ABBA and Joni Mitchell.
Ben Reed - “Station Masters” (2016)
CS: It’s really upsetting to me that this album isn’t completely famous. The arrangements, voicings, melodies, harmonies, vocal performances are all infinitely surprising and inspiring to me. Absolutely fresh.
The Only Ones - “Miles from Nowhere” (1979)
CS: Peter Perret and his early bands are personal heroes to me for bringing such powerful and inspired songwriting, arrangements, and guitarmonies to English punk music. I love the desperation of these songs and wanted to capture a similar feeling with the song “Personalia”. I love the concept of writing a super powerful anthem about how much you feel like a piece of shit.
Pete Dello & Friends - “Do I Still Figure in Your Life” (1971)
CS: What a heartbreaker. I love the lyrics, melody, the intimacy of the vocal and the way the drums are produced. I was inspired to try doing this good of a job writing an intimate heartbreaker with some simple chords because I have a tendency to go overboard chord-wise. That became a song called “Futureless Hives of Bel Air”.
Urszula Dudziak - “Papaya” (1975)
CS: I love the myriad influences on this album. Funky jazzy disco with some melodies that sound like they could have come right out of Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer (released just a year before!). Artists like Urszula Dudziak inspire me not to commit to any one genre, but to do what feels and sounds good. Good is timeless! Though I'm noticing I'm kind of stuck in the 70's, aren't I?
Jim Pepper - “Witchi Tai To” (1971)
CS: This is one of the most beautiful recordings I’ve ever heard in my entire life. My friend Sam Lisabeth played this for me on a tour we were doing together and we proceeded to listen to every single recorded version of this song we could find. It helped break my fear of repetition which I use a lot of in Personalia. I realized if a musical phrase is really that blissful, you never want it to stop. Makes me feel glad that I’m not dead!
ABBA - “I Am the City” (1981)
CS: ABBA inspired a lot of the arrangements and vocal harmonies on Personalia, but this song is specifically to blame for the ending of “Sanctimitus Detrimitus”. At the end of this already huge song, they build on it by combining the chorus with the verses so the melodies get layered as harmonies over the different parts. I had plans to completely steal the maneuver but the chord changes I had written forced me to do it a little differently.
Hot Chocolate - “Confetti Day” (1978)
CS: I mean… what’s not to love? We tried to steal a lot of these sounds for Personalia.
The Sylvers - “Only One Can Win at Love” (1972)
CS: At a certain point Personalia had all programmed drums and I thought it was done. Listening to these Foster Sylvers recordings I realized how much I love the sound of real drums and how much life they bring to a groove, so we got Clayton to go in and play drums on everything.
Joni Mitchell - “Shiny Toys” (1985)
CS: When I was a kid first learning to play the guitar, my dad printed out the tabs to Amelia and told me to learn it by the end of the summer. My love affair with her hasn’t ended since then. Getting into her mid-career albums, I’m amazed at her ability to so gracefully evolve with music technology. This song in particular made me really curious about working in the box and put to rest my fears about upbeat, synthetic music not being “serious" enough.