
60 Years Ago Today: Love Me Do by The Beatles
05/10/2022
By admin
Someone to love. Somebody new. Someone to love. Someone like you. Time plays odd tricks. It’s 60 years ago that The Beatles released Love Me Do on 5th October 1962. The opening harmonica hook remains haunting and evokes the grainy black and white early Sixties. Melancholic images of fog on…

Wolfgang Voight/GAS, Königsforst
07/11/2020
By admin
A few days ago I happened to stumble across a list of Eight Great Minimal Electronic Records You Need to Hear. Minimal techno – if it’s what you could call the music on the list – is something I haven’t listened to a great deal so I thought I’d have…

Richard Skelton, These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound
24/10/2020
By admin
Aphotic and portentous, Richard Skelton’s new album has been played around these parts for a week. It’s magnificent. I’d even go so far to say that it’s a significant piece of modern music. The gloomy, droning soundscape evoked by Skelton on this album is perfect for both this time of…

Young Knives, Barbarians
25/09/2020
By admin
Just when you thought it was literally the end of civilisation, The Young Knives (or, more properly) Young Knives without the “The” any more have released a new album, Barbarians. And. It’s. Rather. Good. Indeed. Their last album was something like 7 years ago. It’s very very welcome. Their earlier…

Ralf und Florian, 1973
01/07/2020
By admin
Standout tracks: Kristallo, Heimatklange, Tanzmuzik. Ralf und Florian was the fourth Kraftwerk album. Like Tone Float, Kraftwerk 1 and Kraftwerk 2, it’s not available for listening other than Youtube or a bootleg. Schneider called their first 4 albums “archaeology” and there seems to have been no desire to re-release their…

Autobahn, 1974
27/06/2020
By admin
standout track: Autobahn It was the news of Florian Schneider’s death that compelled me to spend some time listening again to Kraftwerk. I suspect that Schneider was the source of David Stubbs’ identification of the “deep sardonic comic sensibility that always lurks beneath the surface of Kraftwerk”. If you’ve ever…

Wire, 10:20
21/06/2020
By admin
I almost missed this. Wire has a second album, 10:20, out this year. And it’s absolutely brilliant. Unlike Mind Hive, their most recent album – which I thought was their strongest in years – this one seems to act as a compilation of re-recorded, reworked songs from old albums or…

Florian Schneider, “sonic perfectionist”
15/06/2020
By admin
This month’s Electronic Sound has a heartwarming tribute to the enigmatic Florian Schneider, who died earlier this year. The piece, by Stephen Dalton, gives an excellent account of Schneider’s role in Kraftwerk. It’s particularly good in establishing the nature of the tensions between Schneider and Ralf Hütter that eventually led…

Mind Hive (2020)
26/01/2020
By admin
Tremendous. Wire’s new album is atmospheric. Autumnal. Claustrophobic. Menacing even. It’s like the nights drawing in. For me, it’s very much a brutal soundtrack to the period we’re currently living through. Droning guitars and dark-ambient synths (developing from their 2016 album, Nocturnal Koreans and 2017’s Silver/Lead). Newman and Lewis sing…

October 2019 Music
27/10/2019
By admin
Here’s some music I’ve been listening to this month that’s new to me… of at least I think it’s new to me:
September 2019 Music
11/09/2019
By admin
Here are new pieces of music (for me) I’ve enjoyed this month.

Music: No Pussyfooting by Fripp & ENO
28/07/2019
By admin
It’s 45 years ago that the musicians Robert Fripp and Brian Eno recorded the material which became the album, No Pussyfooting. It’s an album I picked up in the late 1980s/early 90s and still listen to from time to time whenever I’m having an ambient phase. I’m sure I got…