Simon Nicol turns 76 today. He gave Fairport Convention its name, its rehearsal room and, in the end, its continuity, without ever wanting to be the lead guitarist.
Eno's Music for Airports was built from sung notes and piano phrases on tape loops of unequal length, so the music never repeats the same way twice.
A Gibson leaned on a bass amp in October 1964 gave the Beatles a feedback intro. Who owns the technique is still disputed.
A label that began in a kitchen, a cassette series and a six-day convention. How K Records turned Olympia, Washington into an indie scene with its own rules.
A cassette that sounded terrible, a TB-303 used as a funk bass and a Glasgow techno label with doubts about the tempo. How Da Funk was ignored in 1995 and then carried by DJs into a major-label deal.
Big Star recorded Third at Ardent in 1974, saw it rejected, and watched it appear in 1978 in several versions. Here is why no definitive copy exists.
How Planet Rock rebuilt Kraftwerk's Numbers and Trans-Europe Express, hedged with a B-side, and settled for a dollar a record.
How Jim Jupp and Julian House built Ghost Box as a parallel Britain, from two 2004 releases to a Penguin-style grid and a hauntological catalogue.
On 29 September 1986, Iron Maiden released Somewhere in Time, and the sleeve promised a machine age: a cyborg Eddie, a neon city, and guitar synthesizers credited on the record for the first time in the band’s career. The detail worth keeping is a smaller one. The song that started life on a synthesizer is […]
In 1968 the BBC Radiophonic Workshop existed to score continuity idents, radio drama and the odd Doctor Who cue, not to make records. It had no mandate to release music and no budget line for a pop album. That did not stop two of its staff engineers from making one anyway, after the building emptied […]
