Composer Max Richter, 58, and designer Kim Jones, 51, may work in different fields, but they have much in common. Both are prolific collaborators and have worked together on catwalk-show music at Dior and Fendi, since Jones’s debut Fendi couture show in 2021.
The two are also passionate collectors and share a joint obsession for books and records. Jones keeps some of his records in his West London home and the rest in a storage facility, while Richter keeps his, alongside a substantial book collection, at Studio Richter Mahr, his home and creative base in the Cotswolds, which he shares with his wife, the artist Yulia Mahr. “We have a lot of shared love of the same authors,” confirms Jones, who has an extensive, museum-quality collection of Bloomsbury Group first editions. Richter’s books, and a black grand piano, form a backdrop to our Zoom call, where the two friends and collaborators got nerdy about records and collecting. Claudia Croft
HERMES
Kim Jones What was the first record you bought, Max?
Max Richter It was Kraftwerk’s Autobahn [1974] when I was maybe 12 or 13. I’d heard this music on a TV show and I didn’t know what it was so I wrote to the BBC [the band performed the title track on its science-tech show Tomorrow’s World in 1975]. We exchanged letters and I figured out what this thing was. Then I went and bought it with my pocket money. And it blew my mind.
KJ Do you have a big record collection?
MR I have a massive record collection. My record collection is out of control.
KJ Where’s it stored?
MR In the house. There are a few records in the studio, but the house, like your house, is a bit of an archive of all sorts of things. The records are, in a way, like a wonderful albatross that’s around your neck, but also a wonderful thing.
KJ Yeah, quite a nightmare to move around, aren’t they?
MR Right, exactly. Yeah, like your book collection, I mean.
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KJ I have got a huge collection of about 5,000 records. I’ve got one record player. I’ve kept my really favourite ones in the house, but the rest are all packed up safely in storage.
MR What was the first record you bought?
KJ God, I don’t know. Probably something by Madonna. I would just borrow my family’s records.
MR Well, that’s one of the nice things, isn’t it, about physical objects? Your parents or your family are playing music and you get your hands on it and start to play it while you’re a kid.
KJ I remember being able to have a record player in my room. I got a very loud speaker and I was quite into S’Express. Mark Moore, who [formed] S’Express [in 1988], is a really wonderful person. I had all these weird Philip Glass things that were more abstract ways of thinking. But if we’re talking about music let’s talk about your old studio [in Berlin]. Because I love the idea of liking your music and also going into industrial sounds occasionally.
MR We lived in Berlin for quite a long time. It’s kind of mad, it was different then. Now it’s become, in a way, more like other places, but 10 or 15 years ago it still had this wide open free [spirit]. It was like a laboratory. If you walk down the street in London, there’ll be an old sofa on the pavement that somebody’s chucked out. In [the Berlin district of] Kreuzberg you’d walk down the road and there’d be a modular synth on the pavement. It was that kind of place. You can’t help but get pulled into that universe. When we premiered Recomposed [in 2012, a reconstructed version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons], it was in Berghain. That was literally the first performance. It was the midweek. I think they shut for one night and we were in there.
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KJ I love this contrast. I find that’s what I always like with people, when there are different interests. That’s what makes someone really, really good, I think. Where they pull things from everywhere and all draw together. I mean, that Orlando section in Woolf Works [a Wayne McGregor ballet based on Virginia Woolf’s writings that Richter did the music for in 2015] was just like listening to Throbbing Gristle or something. I loved the snippets that come from every [music] scene and different areas. It’s really exciting that you blend them in with something very classical.
MR Orlando [Woolf’s 1928 novel] is about transformation and possibility. And it was so fun to just explode all the different languages and mash them up for that. You know, Wayne’s brilliant in that way, he lets me go crazy.
KJ What was your first concert?
MR There’s a few actually. I’m not really sure what the first one was. I went to quite a lot of punk gigs. I remember The Clash and Stiff Little Fingers. I remember being dropped off by a friend’s parents, and I think it might have been Queen, actually, at Wembley. I know the date because it was the day after John Lennon had been shot [December 9th, 1980]. It’s stayed in my memory because they played Imagine. Just Freddie playing the piano and [Brian on] guitar and it was an amazing moment. I mean, I was too young really to take in what had happened. But I definitely remember that show. It was amazing.
KJ I went to look at Freddie Mercury’s house, which was for sale, but it needed a lot of work.
MR In Kensington?
KJ Yeah. I like where I live, but I was quite curious to see what it was like. Because it was kept as if he was living there. It was fascinating. What sounds trigger you emotionally?
MR That’s quite hard to answer. I mean, basically everything. Because we’re emotional creatures, right? We live in our feelings. But I think the human voice probably because then it’s about relationships. If I hear your voice, if I hear someone else’s voice, I’m immediately connected to it, to them. And that’s emotional, so I think there’s something really basic about it, but it’s quite hard to answer.
KJ What songs would make you cry?
MR Well I cry at music the whole time. I was listening to something this morning that came on the radio, a piece from a Rameau opera [the 18th-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau], I’ll send you the link, Kim. It’s just… wow. It’s a mind-blowing thing. It’s from Les Boréades. It’s just wonderful. So yeah, that did it. And I’ve been listening to Handel’s Rodelinda a lot recently. It’s one of my favourites. Oh man, Handel’s amazing, isn’t he? He’s a bit of a role model of mine. I mean, he wrote 60 operas. As well as hundreds of other things.
KJ It’s about three and a half hours long as well. I like the Andreas Scholl version [from 2002], he’s a such an amazing countertenor. It’s really great to work to. I know it off by heart. I mean, I’ve seen that opera so many times at Glyndebourne, it gets me every time.
MR Yeah. I do love that you feel, with him, that he just gets it done, you know what I mean? He’s like a machine. It’s just so much amazing music.
KJ It must have been so amazing back then when people would go to see and hear that for the first time. I would love to be able to have a time machine to go back to one of those operas. What’s one record that would never leave your collection?
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MR There’s quite a few actually. A record that I come back to a lot is a Talk Talk record, Spirit of Eden [1988]. It’s one of their late ones, one of their really weird ones. I love that they went from being a straight-ahead pop band, almost like ABC or someone like that, into this crazy other language. It’s like they morphed into this other organism. And it goes back to what you were saying about people who take things from different traditions, different disciplines. That definitely is an amazing record. Really deep. You can hear the time in it. You can hear that they literally locked themselves in the studio and locked the record company out. It’s an amazing thing. What about you? If the house is on fire, which record do you run out the door with?
KJ Oh God, I don’t know, I’ve got some very rare promo records from Larry Levan’s collection. I’ve got the Pop Your Funk acetate [by Loose Joints] with Mel Cheren. So that would be quite good because he was the guy who set up West End Records [and NYC club Paradise Garage]. And I just love the fact that it’s Arthur Russell, and I love Arthur Russell [who recorded club hits under the name Loose Joints]. He was an amazing artist. I have a record box with my favourite records and they go from gabber [techno] records to classical. There are different albums from different times, including my mother’s copy of the Guilty album [from 1980] by Barbra Streisand, which was her favourite album. That’s all she listened to, so I know her by heart.
MR Love the Babs!
KJ And Babs did that when I went to see her in Hyde Park [in 2019]. She actually performed it, which she never, ever does, so that was quite amazing. They’ve got sentimental meaning, but they’re also people who are beyond amazing. How do you organise your collection? Are they in any sort of order?
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MR Yes, they are, but I’ve basically given up on trying to find one system because there’s obviously loads of classical music, but there’s loads of rock, electronic, dance, you know, all kinds of different things. If you just alphabetise it, then is it by composer? Is it by artist? There’s a jazz bit, there’s a classical bit. So they’re kind of all alphabetical but in different sections.
KJ Who was the first artist that you absolutely idolised?
MR Probably Mahler. I can still idolise Mahler. I know that’s quite teenage of me in a way, but I do think he made the definitive statement of symphony.
KJ Which albums would you consider have great artwork covers?
MR Actually, Kraftwerk, the Autobahn cover is pretty iconic. The motorway sign. And really strong iconography, like the Factory Records [releases, designed by Peter Saville, who is also interviewed inside 10 Magazine Issue 74], those are amazing. Very bold, bold statements.
KJ You should go to [the painter] Peter Doig’s studio because he has the speakers that Kraftwerk recorded that on.
MR Does he?
KJ Yes. Go there. I’m going to text you with him because he’s a big, big record lover. He has a lot of reggae, but he’s got the speakers set up so that they can be used properly. I think it came from Florian Schneider [a founder member of Kraftwerk]. And when Florian passed away [in 2020], Peter got given them.
MR Amazing! You know, years ago I got a funny mail saying, “You know that Recomposed you’ve done, Max? Do you want to do a Kraftwerk Recomposed?” [I did say] no, I don’t think I do, but they are brilliant. I love Numbers [from 1981’s Computer World] live, it’s so good. And The Model [from 1978’s The Man-Machine], all the poppy ones, and the layers of irony and humour in the music. It’s so beautiful.
KJ Finally, Max, if you weren’t making music, what would you do?
MR I think, for me, making music is just what happens when I get out of bed. In a way, it’s not so much about the music, but about living creatively. Obviously, I’m a musician, but the attitude behind it is, in a way, more important – living in a creative way and just responding to the world creatively. So I don’t really know what else I would do.
Taken from 10 Men Issue 61 – MUSIC, TALENT, CREATIVE – on newsstands March 24. Pre-order your copy here.
MAX RICHTER: MUSIC MAKER
Photographer JERMAINE FRANCIS
Fashion Editor GARTH ALLDAY SPENCER
Talent MAX RICHTER
Interview KIM JONES
Sittings editor GEORGIA EDWARDS
Grooming PAUL DONOVAN
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU
Production assistant SONYA MAZURYK
Location Studio Richter Mahr, Oxfordshire
Special thanks to NIC BESTLEY, HUXLEY and DIOR
On the cover Max wears DIOR MEN
