Moondog died on 8 September 1999, four months after Mr. Scruff sampled Bird's Lament on Ninja Tune. His rounds, odd metres and city sounds were loop music before the machines.
The story of the Monks is almost always told as a costume. Five American GIs stationed at Gelnhausen, two German design graduates, shaved tonsures, black habits, a manifesto. It is a great story and it is also the least interesting thing about the record they made. What produced Black Monk Time was not an art […]
Every genre has a signature sound that producers claim to have built themselves. The hoover is the one where almost nobody did. For thirty-five years the rave stab that opens a thousand records has travelled through hardcore, gabber, jungle, hard house, drum and bass and back into chart pop, and the overwhelming majority of those [&hell
The story sells itself, which is the first reason to distrust it. Five boys at St Gregory’s College in Obalende, Lagos, borrow instruments, get signed by EMI, and cut a psychedelic rock album while still in school uniform. Try and Love came out on EMI Nigeria in 1973, catalogue NEMI (LP) 0032, with a parallel […]
Fifty years after The Saints pressed 500 copies of (I'm) Stranded in Brisbane, the details show that almost everything later read as punk ideology was a practical workaround.
In July 1992 Warp put an android in an armchair and called it electronic listening music. The sleeve was an instruction, the title was a joke, and IDM never recovered from either.
Davey Graham built DADGAD to chase an oud around Morocco. Jimmy Page renamed it after three continents and used it on Kashmir. A tuning is the most portable idea in guitar music.
Sahko Recordings was founded in 1993 to release one friend’s music. Six years later a trademark letter took a character out of Pan Sonic’s name, and the album that followed was named after the gap.
For most of recorded rock, amp tone was a one way door. You picked the cabinet, you placed the mic, you committed. If the mix later told you the guitar was too thin or too woolly, your options were to live with it or to book the band again. The device that quietly dismantled that […]
Thirty-eight years ago this week, on 22 August 1988, 10 Records and Virgin put out a single that had no business existing. “Big Fun” by Inner City was not conceived as a hit, not written for a label, and not even actively pitched by the man who made it. Kevin Saunderson had recorded the backing […]
