Popular resistance

Given her reputation as an outsider artist - whether with Throbbing Gristle, in collaboration with others or alone - it initially seems surprising that the creators of Cosey Fanni Tutti's favourite records are pretty much all household names. Blondie, Captain Beefheart, The Velvet Underground, Kraftwerk and Leonard Cohen are among those who feature in her Baker's Dozen. And yet, as she points out, they were all themselves outsider artists with no respect for "the rules" when they first appeared: "The thread through all these choices is the freedom to do what you want to do." It's only over time that they've become canonical.

Over the course of her chat with the Quietus' Luke Turner, Tutti praises Julia Holter's rather challenging recent LP Aviary; recalls going to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey in the cinema while tripping; reveals a planned collaboration with Nico was scuppered by the latter's drug problem; bemoans being subjected to musak and "insipid shit" in shops; contemplates whether she, partner Chris Carter, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart could have formed a British answer to ABBA; describes The Doors as "sex on legs"; and goes even further about Jimi Hendrix: "He was the first person I ever saw who used his guitar like his cock. I loved that he had total respect for the guitar, but total disrespect for what people could expect it to sound like, which is where I come from really. It's an instrument, and an extension of self, and it's definitely an extension of him."

The article is an entertaining read that I'd thoroughly recommend - though I did take offence at Turner's suggestion that Tutti's native Hull was a "north-eastern outpost"...