
Angus Hyland
PartnerPentagram
Angus Hyland is a graphic designer, author and creative director. He has been named one of the UK’s top ten graphic designers by The Independent, and has received over a hundred creative awards, including five D&AD silver awards. After running his own successful studio in Soho for ten years, he became a partner in Pentagram’s London offices in 1998.
What role does music play in your day-to-day life as a creative?
From about the age of ten, music has always been there; although my relationship with music is very different to what it was growing up. I’m from the vinyl generation, acquiring new records and obsessively playing them at every opportunity, everything was built around that process. Nowadays music slots neatly into my periods of downtime, it’s my decompression chamber at the end of a long day.
Tell us about your playlist:
I’m a compulsive playlist maker, I suppose it’s my way of appeasing the record collector in me. Coming up with a good concept for a playlist is key, although concepts can also be crippling; thirty iterations later and still agonising over the overall tone and composition.
I decided to approach my playlist for Various Artists a little differently, almost spontaneously. Instead of fixating on the theme, it was a playlist of consequences; one song followed the other, the exquisite corpse. Although, in an attempt to impose a deadline of sorts, I decided to hang the entire playlist off the song ‘September’ and it’s now October… So read into that what you like!
- September – 2003 Digital Remaster – David Sylvian
- Zum Wohl – Cluster
- The Belldog – Brian Eno, Moebius, Roedelius
- By This River – Serafina Steer
- Three Hours – Nick Drake
- Suzanne – Nick Cave, Perla Batalla, Julie Christensen
- Sisters of Mercy – Leonard Cohen
- Katie Cruel – Bert Jansch, Beth Orton
- I Walk On Guilded Splinters – Dr. John
- Trouble Man – Marvin Gaye
- Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) – Gil Scott-Heron
- Walk On By – Album – Remaster – Isaac Hayes
- Concrete Jungle – Jamaican Version – The Wailers
- Bring On The Night – Remastered 2003 – The Police
- Future Days – CAN
- Bob the Bob – The Lounge Lizards
- The Wonderful Year – Roger Eno & Kate St. John
- Revolving Birdsong – John Foxx
- Sigur 3 (Untitled) – Sigur Rós
- Blackstar – David Bowie