Born in Garstang, Lancashire, in 1964, Mary Anne Hobbs is a DJ, radio presenter and music journalist. She began her radio career at Xfm before spending 14 years at Radio 1. In 2010, she worked on the Grammy award-nominated soundtrack to Black Swan. She currently hosts the BBC 6 Music weekend breakfast shows, as well as her own 6 Music Recommends programme. In January, she launches her new weekday mid-morning show on 6 Music and BBC Sounds.
1. Theatre
Everything That Happened and Would Happen, Mayfield Depot, Manchester
Heiner Goebbels’s epic three-hour performance piece explores the many dimensions of history between the first world war and the present day. It was set in a vast, dystopian former railway yard in Manchester in October and I found it deeply meditative. The director drew together elements of theatre, modern dance, experimental live music and architectural lighting design, while the performers built and collapsed their own beautiful sets as the show unfolded. The live narration spinning all the way through the piece suggested to me that history is incomplete, corrupt, full of confusion, and interpreted differently from every perspective.
2. Film
I was completely captivated by Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of the characteristics of obsession. In what may possibly be his final screen role, he plays a dressmaker to the upper class and royalty with such incredible duality. The quiet detail of his poise is underpinned by a furious obsession that can only be tempered by the darkest of measures. Jonny Greenwood created the score; it’s so perfectly crafted it dissolves within the fabric of the whole piece, so rather than hear it, you just feel it.
3. Music
You’ve not lived until you’ve seen Colin Stetson play live. Every time he performs in the UK, I’ll try to attend. I sprinted out of my BBC studio, took a train 200 miles and ran all the way to the Barbican so as not to miss a matinee performance by his avant-rock band Ex Eye at Max Richter’s festival in May. There’s such a visceral physical relationship between Colin’s saxophones and his own body, which he pushes to the limits of human capability, using a punishing circular breathing technique. His music sounds like the primal scream of wild animals.
4. Fashion
Virgil is the artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton and chief executive of the Off-White fashion brand, as well as being a multifaceted designer and DJ. I love the way he moves, travelling and seeking constantly, always taking time to teach and share his knowledge with the next generation. I see a natural meridian running between his work in fashion and his work with music, a point at which we all define elements of our identity. I am interested in the way he “samples” like a hip-hop artist in his clothing designs, drawing in fragments of earlier work that influenced him.
5. Art
Columns by Ben Kelly, The Store X, London
Ben Kelly is best known as the designer of the Haçienda nightclub in Manchester, [formerly] owned by New Order. One of the features of the club was its columns, painted with diagonal black and yellow stripes. Ben told me: “If you choose the right combination of materials, you can make them sing” and I think these columns have become Ben’s “chorus”. Thirty-six years later, he had a stunning exhibition of stark, bold columns made of mirrors, metals and plastics, each one uniquely shaped and vividly coloured. For me it’s an emblem of how we must embrace diversity if we’re going to hold this world up.
6. Building
I was invited to visit Funkhaus to see Nils Frahm’s studio in February 2017, at the monolithic former headquarters of GDR’s state radio. I was blown away by the interior: wall panels of leather, golden fabric and sculpted plaster, created to optimise musical sound. Throughout the building, I saw beautiful masonry, exquisite clocks and diagrams of electrical circuit boards painted like pieces of art on to the walls of the switch room. I’ve seen Martyn Heyne play solo guitar there, as well as Rival Consoles’s electronic set and Nils with his carousel of keyboards.
