Scottish Albums of the Decade - A Muso's Pick

One particular record from this decade that made an impact on me was The Campfire Headphase by Boards of Canada. When it was released in 2005 I was still at university and The Twilight Sad wanted to get out of just playing one gig a year with songs that involved half an hour of noise. We’d started to write Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters and I remember buying The Campfire Headphase from Avalanche on the way for the train home one day. After listening to it a few times, I would try and play it at the same time as other records on separate players to see if the sounds would synchronise in some way, which sometimes worked.

There’s a lot going on there that helped me develop the sound of my guitar, with the layers of melodic synths playing repetitive chord sequences, processed and saturated through tape delays. It was something I found myself doing a lot. There were many Scottish records released in the 00s that helped us develop our sound, like Happy Songs for Happy People and Monday Night at the Hug and Pint etc...but The Campfire Headphase was a big influence. [Andy MacFarlane]