“This particular song has a real resonance for me, because it’s probably the first piece of music I can remember the experience of listening to. ![]() He’s from Crete and he sort of interpolates melodies and rhythms in a way that’s thousands of years old really. Like a lot of people, he used music to maintain his identity and when I was a kid, he used to play a lot of the stuff that he brought with him - everything from contemporary rock to older folk and then Yannis Markopoulos as well. “My dad’s Greek and he came to Britain when he was nine or ten. The reason I love these songs is because they make me feel a particular way. I could talk about the stories behind them, what they meant to me at particular points in my life, the history of the musicians or the technique in their writing, but to be honest, it's all incidental. "I have tingles running through my veins just thinking about these songs and the way that they make me feel. "For me, the holy grail of songwriting is to create a genuine melancholia, but one that's simultaneously completely uplifting," he explains. Others meanwhile, are separated from him by time and place, but no less emotionally resonant. ![]() Some of the choices fall close to home for Kapranos, from a very early incarnation of old friends and fellow Glaswegians Belle and Sebastian to Edinburgh miserabilists Country Teasers. Similarly, only one of the nine tracks he's selected here was a single the rest are plucked from albums, radio sessions and - in one case - an old demo tape. "Passing listeners to the band might not expect that from us," he says, "but people with a deeper knowledge of what we write would recognise it instantly." He reels off a list of deep cuts from across his group's catalogue to prove his point, including '40', 'Fade Together', 'Katherine Kiss Me', 'Little Guy from the Suburbs' and 'Slow Don't Kill Me Slow'. Particularly, Alex Kapranos was looking to cultivate a feeling of melancholy with these songs, a mindset he readily admits might not be one that casual fans of Franz Ferdinand would associate with him.
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