The Music That Made... Her Name Is Calla

Kicking off a full week of Music That Mades, the Leicester/Leeds outfit bringing a whole new emotional heft to the discomforting fringes of post-rock. A couple of live sightings in 2009 found them entering what seemed like new dimensions of dramatic tension and release without veering near cliche, boding well for second album The Quiet Lamb, out around summer time. Singer Tom Morris took our questions:

First single bought: I didn't start buying singles for some time, so I think it must've been something like Solved by Unbelievable Truth or something like that. I'm pretty sure I bought a Goo Goo Dolls song once too.
First gig voluntarily attended: Unbelievable Truth at The Charlotte in Leicester. Andy Yorke blanked me when I asked him to sign a CD.
The record that most made you want to get into music: OK Computer by Radiohead. It was a hugely important record to me. It made me want to play guitar and write songs.
The three headliners at a festival you were curating: Radiohead, Grizzly Bear, Cat Power
A song not enough people know about but everyone should hear: And The Racket They Made by King Creosote. Absolutely gorgeous.
A song you'd play to get people dancing: All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix version)
The last great thing you heard: Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear. An absolutely brilliant record. They're such fantastic song writers. We played with them in Leicester a few years ago to about 25 people. A few years later, I'd watch Smog play to even less in the same town.
Your key non-musical influences: Films. Without a doubt. Not many people know, but I'm actually a huge western fan. And sci-fi. Not together. But as a band, we are all collectively into films - though we have wildly different tastes.
Your favourite new artist: I don't know if they're new or not, by I just started listening to Midlake and I'm enjoying their album immensely.

Editorial note: we were at both the Grizzly Bear and Smog (Bill Callahan by then, to be pedantic) gigs, and while 25 is slightly undercutting the turnout it's not by very much at all. Even Ed Droste remembers it. Here's last year's New England as rendered in Eastern European-style shadow animation by iLiKETRAiNS collaborators Broken Pixel.