Name  Bruce Soord, me and from The Pineapple Thief.

Best known for  Maybe being the founder of The Pineapple Thief (TPT) way back in 1999. Or maybe as a mixing engineer/producer-songwriter. Or maybe even more specifically as a Dolby Atmos mixing engineer for music. Or none of the above!

More from Spin:

• Phoebe Bridgers, boygenius Reunite For ‘Sound Check’
• Alanis Morissette Gets Festive On First Holiday Album
• Judas Priest Bassist Ian Hill Announces Retirement After 56 Years

Current city  I’m in the middle of nowhere in South West England.

Really want to be in  Actually where I am now. I’ve just moved to a small village on the Somerset Levels, which is an area of lowlands teaming with wading birds, wildlife and rustling reeds. There is a spot within the reeds where I sit and watch the birds in the water and listen to the wind. That’s my dream place.

Excited about  The Pineapple Thief are about to tour North America and Europe which never gets boring. In fact, I can’t quite believe I’m able to make a living out of this kind of thing.

My current music collection has a lot of  Well, prog rock. I grew up listening to ‘70s prog. Not so much of the self-indulgent stuff that gave the genre a bad name. But more of the “songy” stuff like Supertramp, Alan Parsons Project, and Floyd, which led me on to singer-songwriters like Al Stewart, Colin Blunstone, Cat Stevens, and later on to Beck.

And a little bit of  ‘80s new romantics!

Preferred format  Well I’m going to have to say Dolby Atmos Music. It’s designed to immerse you, like sitting in the middle of a sphere of sound. The only issue is to get the best experience you have to set up speakers in the ceiling and behind you which is not that easy… 

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:

1

Tales of Mystery and Imagination, The Alan Parsons Project

When I heard this album, I must have been 13 years old, it was the moment in my life when the penny dropped. It’s a proggy record from 1976 with orchestras, sound effects, different singers, and a gatefold sleeve with a booklet. The prog lot.  From that moment on music was everything to me. It’s the reason I bought a guitar and started to make my own music.

2

Crime of the Century, Supertramp

When I was a kid at school there was a group of us who would have away days to cities in the U.K. to trawl the secondhand record shops (there were loads back in the ’80s). We would come back on the train with record bags bulging, absorbed in the liner notes. This album was bought on one of those trips and I fell in love with it immediately. In 2016, John Heliwell, who plays saxophone and clarinet for Supertramp, agreed to play on a TPT song. It was an emotional moment!

3

Sea Change, Beck

Sometimes you play a record and it blows your mind. I can probably count those occasions on the fingers of one hand. This was one of them. Pure melancholia, an amazing band, an amazing mix by Nigel Godrich and the best string arrangements I have ever heard. Apparently by Beck’s dad.

4

Mobile Home, Longpigs

The second and final album from this band from the Britpop era, but I wouldn’t class them as such. I feel it’s very much underrated. There’s a song on this record called “I Lied I love You” which was played during our wedding ceremony. By pure chance I was at a party in Somerset and I looked over at this guy and thought, “He looks like Crispen Hunt (the lead singer).” He ushered me over and stone the crows, it was him! I told him about my wedding and he gave me a hug. 

5

Quiet Life, Japan

This defined my student life, back in 1991 in Leicester. I would play the vinyl in my little student room and drift away… 

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.