Greg Sage meant the Wipers to be records without a road. The mystique never paid the bills, but the records outlived the plan.
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.
Underground Resistance refused photos, wore balaclavas and built its own distribution. How a Detroit collective turned anonymity into independence.
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.
The Electric Eels played five shows in Cleveland, lost their last venue to a lawnmower, and became a legend through one Rough Trade single and decades of archival releases.
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.
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 […]
