вЂњBut I understand that people might like it to have been. вЂњIt wasnвЂ™t really a scene at all,вЂќ Marcus told me in 2009. Laura Marling used to go there, as did Noah and his вЂњWhaleвЂќ and a chap called Jay Jay Pistolet (now known better as Justin from the Vaccines). The pair met Winston and bass-player Ted Dwane (previously a member of punk band, Sex Face) while at university in Edinburgh and by late 2006 this new group were practising on the street outside MarshallвЂ™s country and bluegrass night held in a long-since closed, 80-capacity KingвЂ™s Road basement bar called BosunвЂ™s Locker. He met keyboard player Ben Lovett at KingвЂ™s College School in Wimbledon (another friend of theirs, Matt Owens, went on to form Noah and the Whale, Marcus joined a big-band jazz outfit called, oh yes, DГ©tente). Marcus Mumford was born in California, but moved to London as a child. In fact, as their producer Marcus Dravs noted two years ago, вЂњIf you make sound as fat sonically as hip hop, then you can fill an arena, easy.вЂќ That is the key to the Mumfords right there, take something as old and as the hills and present it in a whole new way. The four grew up on jazz, brash pop and crunchy rap as much as they did with anything that could be called вЂњtraditionalвЂќ music. While a quick earful of the west Londoners will reveal a lot (country music, Arcade Fire, Dylan), whatвЂ™s less clear is what else is underneath. вЂњYou can never really tell what your influences are,вЂќ reckoned Mumford banjo and dobro player Winston Marshall back in the autumn of 2009.

Each week weвЂ™ll take a band, pull apart the threads that make them who they are and build a Spotify playlist from those influences. For every artist whose ideas makes your wig spin there are a huge pile of influences вЂ“ from specks of colour to swathes of sound вЂ“ that delivered them to that point.

No great band is born without a struggle and no great records are born in a vacuum.

Mumford and sons the cave soundtrack