Northern Soul: Exhibition Playlist

The ten tunes in my playlist are all Northern Soul* records. They are a selection of what’s been playing in the studio while I have been making the paintings for the show.

I have been listening to Northern Soul since I was a teenager and it seems that it will be a lifelong obsession. The music has a profound effect on me emotionally. I think it is something to do with its combination of despair and elation.

The tunes always make me want to dance. The paintings in the exhibition are about the joy of dancing – I love it.

I always work to music and I think there’s a connection between dancing and the way these large works are made. Their sheer size means that making them is a very physical activity that uses a lot of space and involves a lot of movement.

Even though I have been listening to it for years I am still discovering new tunes. This playlist is a mixture of things that have been in my head for years, like Ray Pollard’s heart breaking 'The Drifter’ to tracks that I have stumbled across more recently like Hal Frazier’s ‘After Closing Time’.

This tune was actually the starting point for the last painting I created for the show. The lyrics planted the idea of a deserted dancefloor into my head. The image could be the dreaded moment before the lights go on - or - that moment of anticipation when you are gathering the courage to go out, on to the floor.

*Northern Soul is music from labels such as Chess, Ric-tic, Stax, and Okeh from the 60s that didn’t enjoy commercial success at the time but became popular with DJs and dancers in the industrial North and Midlands of England in the 1970s and 80s. As an authentically working-class movement it has much in common with the rave scene of the late 80s and early 90s.