Bauhaus’ Daniel Ash and his Wobble Boxes

I spend an inordinate amount of time researching what kind of equipment players who were so skint they played whatever the could find and afford. It’s not healthy. Case in point, the delicious clangy tone that Daniel Ash got on those early Bauhaus records – not some meticulously crafted tone recipe involving sacrificial blood or […]

The making of Brian Eno’s Another Green World

While most peoples’ “all-time favourite desert island discs” lists tend to coincide with whatever they were listening to in their late teens/early twenties when their musical tastes were coalescing/calcifying – mine certainly did, at least when I kept such a list – sometimes you come across a record much later in life that is instantly […]

The Making of Roxy Music’s Avalon

Roxy Music – the eponymous debut from Roxy Music turns 50 years old this year, and the occasion is being most correctly honoured with an unexpected reunion tour – see you in the cheap seats at the opening show in September – but today I’m more interested in talking about their last album, Avalon, which […]

Wire – “Kidney Bingos”

Saluting of one of the most satisfying combinations of melody and gibberish, “Kidney Bingos”, the single from Wire’s 1988 album A Bell Is A Cup… Until It Is Struck. In a 1988 interview with McGill University radio station CKUT, Colin Newman offered these thoughts on the song: “There’s always been a very strong pop element […]

Roland 50 Studio

Japanese musical equipment powerhouse Roland turns 50 years old this year, and they’re celebrating the milestone with some pretty cool festivities. They’ve taken their 808303.studio online real estate, which previously housed a pretty cool brower-based version of two of their legendary instruments – the TR-808 drum machine and TB-303 bass synth – and added a […]

XTC’s English Settlement at 40

This year marks the 40th anniversary of XTC’s fifth album, English Settlement, a record that represents the inflection point in the band’s career between the frantic, high-energy post-punk they made their name with to the more orchestrated, pastoral sounds that defined the remainder of their active years. It also marked the final record that the […]