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 […]

Chill Out was released on 5 February 1990 on the band’s own KLF Communications imprint, and it remains one of the strangest origin stories in electronic music. The record that gave a whole genre its name was not built in a studio full of gear. It was, according to its sleeve, recorded “live on location” […]

On 4 August 1947, in a Berlin still boxed in by rubble and occupation zones, Klaus Schulze was born to a ballet dancer and a writer. He would grow up to be named among the founding fathers of synthesizer music. The detail worth marking on his birthday is stranger than the title suggests: when Schulze […]